Atelier Bardill - Valerio Olgiati

The Atelierhouse Bardill replaces an old barn in the protected centre of the village Scharans. The building permission was granted by the local authorities only under the condition that the new building would have exactly the same volume as the old barn.

The client, Linard Bardill, who lives in a house a very short walking distance away from the site, needed only one single space, a room to work in. This working space occupies not even a third of the stipulated volume.

The rest of it constitutes a courtyard that is monumentalized by a huge round opening to the sky.This is where the house expresses greatness and clearness in contrast to the arbitrary geometry of its external appearance and to the small-scale environment of the village.

Architect: Valerio Olgiati
Location: Scharans, Switzerland

Collaborators: Nathan Ghiringhelli (project manager office Olgiati), Nikolai Müller, Mario Beeli

Client: Linard Bardill, musician + poet

Construction Supervisor: Linard Bardill

Structural Engineer: Patrick Gartmann, partner of Conzett, Bronzini, Gartmann AG, Chur

Project Area: 285 sqm

Project Year: 2006-2007

Photographs: Courtesy of Valerio Olgiati

VIA: TECNOHAUS

The PLUS House - Mount Fuji Architects Studio

One axis of the cross stretches toward the Pacific Ocean on south, and the other, the forest of Japanese oak and some white birch on west. The rooms in the lower structure and terrace on it enjoy broad vista of the sea and blue sky. And gentle shade of natural forest embraces the space in the upper one.

I didn’t want to just form the undulating landscape dotted with great trees as normal, nor design an elaborate architecture bowing down to the complex topography.

What sprang to my mind is a blueprint for an architecture which is perfectly autonomous itself, at the same time seems to emerge as an underlying shape that the natural environment has been hiding. It’s abstraction of nature, to say.

The architecture was realized by crossing two rectangular parallelepipeds at very right angles. The lower one contains private rooms and bathroom, and sticks half of the body out to existing narrow level ground. The upper one incorporates salon and kitchen, and lies astride the lower one and the mountain ridge. It almost seems like an off-centered cross pinned carefully on natural terrain.

Water-polished white marble (cami #120) was chosen as interior finishing material. It glows softly like Greece sculptures to blend blue light from the south and green light from the west gradationally, thus creates delicate continuous landscape of light which suggests the character and usage of the space.

Exterior is also finished with white marble. The surface get smoother as it approaches to the southern/western end till it takes mirror gloss (cami #1000) at the ends. The southern end of white cross melts into the blue of sky and sea, and the eastern end to the green of forest.

Carved out of nature, it never stops being a part of nature itself, however highly abstracted. Never relativizes the nature with its foreignness, nor generate contradiction to settle for being “artificial nature” by giving up being abstract and mimicking the nature.

The abstraction inspired by Mother Nature defines the nature itself, and still, stays natural.

That’s what I wanted from this abstraction and architecture.

Architects: Mount Fuji Architects Studio

Location: Shizuoka, Japan
Site area: 988.58 sqm
Building area: 232.77 sqm
Total floor area: 380.44 sqm
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Ken’ichi Suzuki

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  House M3KG

VIA: TECNOHAUS

Rodríguez Harvey House - Nicolás Loi

The house is located in Tunquén, a costal area in the central region of Chile, in a 5.000 sq.m. site overlooking the sea. The acces of the site is located in the lower part, so you enter with your back to the sea. The house is located in the upper part, in order to get the best views towards the ocean.

The area is a semi-dry region, with native trees and a strong and cold wind from the south-east. The orientation of the site is south, so the main views towards the landscape are to the south (This is the south hemisphere, so the sun comes always from the north). The sunlight comes from the north, the upper part of the site, opposite to the main views of the site.

This geographic situation determines the design, because the house must be open or transparent to the south to get the views, but it must also be open to the north light coming from the “rear” part of the house.

In order to achieve this, the design is based in three parts:

1. A reticular structure of wood columns and beams as the base for the scheme, which contains the exterior spaces of the house (entrance and terraces).

2. Three volumes inside this grid containing the main areas of the house (living space and bedrooms). By being greater un height, this three spaces gain light from the “rear”part of the site.

3. Three service volumes (kitchen and bathrooms) linked with each of the three main spaces of the house.

This scheme also solves the client needs: he wanted an integrated living-dinning-kitchen space, an exterior terrace protected from the wind, a main bedroom and a second one separated for acoustic and privacy needs.

This configuration of the main three volumes generates three intermediate semi-interior-exterior spaces: terrace, access and separation space between the two bedrooms.
The terrace is protected from the wind by wooden blinds, by a big laminated glass, and by an existing tree. The protection against the strong summer sun is achieved by inclined beams that only allow winter sunrays to pass.

The living area volume has a complete double height in order to get the sun light, and also protects laterally the terrace from the south-east wind. The dining and kitchen area are located one step above the living area, avoiding its furnishings from blocking the views.

The gests bedroom takes advantage of its greater height by placing a small attic containing a bed for the children. The interior corridor of the house also gets the north light through the space that separates the two bedrooms.

The house is built completely in pine wood, with a dark exterior varnish.

In adition, a gests cabin was built completely separated from the main house, connected by a pedestrian path.

Architect: Nicolas Loi – Loi Arquitectos

Location: Tunquén, V Región, Chile
Site Area: 5,000 sqm
Project Area: 139 sqm
Design Year: 2007
Construction Year: 2008-2009

Photographs: Marcos Mendizabal

VIA: TECNOHAUS