Montrose - SAOTA – Stefan Antoni Olmesdahl Truen Architects

High in ridge of Bishopscourt in Cape Town, this excellent site resulted in the demolition of the existing house. The website was divided through the existing front yard, which rose considerably in the finish from the cul-p-sac below. The brand new building’s form, perched because it is inside a commanding position, was perceived in the start to become a pavilion looking over the grass and also the forested valley below.

The clients’ brief were built with a couple of specific needs orientation for the Constantia Valley and distant False Bay, and also the dramatic sights in the mountain tops above Kirstenbosch were essential, as was the focus on developing the website to increase your garden and lawn area. Following a brief the front yard was moved towards the southern boundary from the site to permit this and open the grass and also the gardens for the sun and mountain sights. You will find breathtaking vistas south and west in the sleeping rooms and living spaces as the pool and balconies are situated around the north-east side, inside a courtyard protected against the Southeaster gales through the intersecting linear forms of the home.

The triangular form of the website, and it is elevation over the street and steep incline, needed extensive excavation and retaining, to be able to give a front yard of acceptable gradient, and extensive building platform on a single level, and garden balconies over-all.

The double-winged roof, floating over the bed room wing, and virtually glass box-enclosed living spaces, would be the primary architectural features. They are accompanied by secondary architectural elements like the cantilevered finish from the primary entrance feature wall, the floating stone-clad fire place, continuous perimeter cantilever balconies towards the sleeping rooms and also the wrap-around cantilever eyebrow.

Finishes include: polished granite flooring, no carpets, no curtains and also the floating feature roof with clerestory lighting. The clients’ preference was towards a clever modernist atmosphere having a definitive northern European flair. The imported light gray granite floor foundations set a dark tone for any colour pattern of awesome greys instead of natural browns, a refreshing vary from prevailing trends.

House D - Pauhof Architekten, Location: Bressanone, Italy

House D is really a single-family dwelling by having an integrated studio-gallery. Built on the steep slope, it weaves itself into its immediate surroundings and simultaneously alludes up to the more distant mountain landscape. On one side, it's baked into the suburban settlement, alternatively, it sticks out because the finish reason for a southward-facing winery. This ambivalence is stressed through the formerly existing gemstone wall that runs across the eastern side, trying in to the open landscape. The organic curve of the wall - a line characteristic for the whole western slope - the stone border from the private front yard, and also the snaking road to the street define the problem. In by doing this, we created House D like a type of joint that stretches beyond the steep slope for connecting the present elements.

The dwelling of the home - that's, the section and/or even the layout - is a result of the unusual character from the site. Around the south side, the home stretches across the entire entire building line, developing a four-story stacked volume (approximate height difference: 12 m). Otherwise, the rounded contour from the plan abstractly follows the home line. The constructing from the interior spaces is definitely an artificial reflection from the specific topographic situation. All sights are choreographed to capture because the still intact surrounding landscape as you possibly can while obstructing the immediate, less attractive neighborhood. The spiral span of circulation manifests itself within the hanging roof top (a snaking timber construction) that follows the bend from the northward-facing atrium, winds upward, is briefly based on the bed room façade, after which continues off in to the winery like a tapering pergola.

Four flooring, each using its own character, determine the spatial continuum. The low level houses the semi-public, neutrally well developed studio-gallery with fair-faced concrete walls and natural illumination from the side light and clerestory home windows around the slope side. The doorway towards the house leads using a wide, half-indoor, half-outside, concrete staircase towards the domain from the lady of the home: a 2-story-high studio library and adjacent work space having a glass wall searching lower to the gallery. Arranged round the quarter-circle-formed without any the gallery would be the children’s sleeping rooms, a guestroom, and also the bath- and utility rooms. Materials and colors generally play a particularly natural part and were planned within an inspiring collaboration using the artist Manfred Alois Mayr from Bolzano.Across the vertical, load-bearing layer of concrete, another staircase leads as much as the primary level of the home. Ideas discover the building’s only large-area interconnected level space with two directly adjacent balconies. About this floor the home opens out flat, encloses a type of atrium with connected living and dining area areas, a kitchen, and also the master suite. The reduced room height (2.44 m) and also the black wooden slat ceiling (such as the façade) impel the attention outward. A 1-and-a-half meter high ribbon window underneath the ceiling slices half of the home, giving a 180° breathtaking look at the mountain tops. Top of the level - enclosed within an isolated wooden box - is really a private space, a type of cozy living room.

On the making of the home: concrete was utilized for that subterranean areas and also the vertical load-bearing foundations timber for the visible volumes in the first floor upward. All outer façades and also the atrium-level walls are engrossed in a flamed oak cladding. The climate from the interior rooms is strongly based on the types of materials used: shined up oak, split gemstone foundations, fair-faced concrete (sometimes having a boasted surface), black terrazzo flooring, bottle-eco-friendly glass variety tiles, sisal walls …