Designed by Marc Koehler in Netherlands, the house is located on a very small plot in Ijburg, a recently developed suburb of the city of Amsterdam.  The house is designed as a monolythical sculptural mass, expressed by contrasting introverted private spaces (that form the mass) with open collective spaces that seem to have been ‘carved out’ from the solid volume as a continuous transparent void, visually and physically connecting them to the street, the garden and roof terrace.  This strategy seems to give the house a monumental and sculptural quality that articulates a sense of stability, simplicity and permanence.

The facade contains specific brick detailing inspired by techniques from the famous Amsterdamse school style from the 1920’s, which had become redundant in the 2nd half of the 20th century.  By intensive cooperation with brick and mortar suppliers, masonry consultants and brick layers, the architect managed to introduce these texture effects in contemporary building methods.

http://www.marckoehler.nl/

Located in Manchester, UK, Manchester Civil Justice Centre was designed by Denton Corker Marshall. An international competition-winning design for the headquarters of the Ministry of Justice in the North West of England, the biggest court complex to be built in the UK since the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

The building provides accommodation of around 34,000m² on 15 levels. It houses 47 courtrooms, 75 consultation rooms, in addition to office and support space.

From the exterior, it signals and literally displays the accessibility of the courts.  This building is part of the city, and the city part of the building.

The working courts and offices are expressed as long rectilinear forms, articulated at each floor level, and projecting at each end of the building as a varied composition of solid and void.  In side elevation, these elements collectively establish a dynamic and distinctive building profile; in end elevation, they form a powerful sculptural interplay of light and shade, depth and complexity.  The architectural implication is that the courts are not forbidding or concealed, but open and accessible.

The judicial interface is seen as the principal city scale signal of the Civil Justice Centre.  The eastern facade will become the memorable ‘sign’ that clearly establishes this as the courts building and unlike any other building in the city.

http://www.dentoncorkermarshall.com/

Foster + Partners has designed a major new waterfront development for Rimini, Italy, a seaside city in Italy. The plan calls for a new seaside promenade, a 1,000-foot-long pier, a hotel tower, and a museum for filmmaker Federico Fellini, a Rimini native and famed director of 8½ and La Dolce Vita.

The scheme comprises a new seafront promenade with a mix of related activities and public spaces including a hotel tower, which will extend Rimini’s historic beach culture and continue the existing urban grain. The project celebrates Rimini’s tradition of green boulevards, best characterised by the Via Vespuci.

The waterfront will be pedestrianised at certain times and will link directly to a linear public park – or green spine – which will provide much needed shade during the hotter months. This currently links the seafront to the historic city and will be enhanced with improved connections to the new promenade area.

A new hotel tower includes space for a Fellini film museum at its base. Its curving form anchors the wider project, while the building extends out to sea along a new 300m long pier, continuing the dialogue between the city and the water and referring to Rimini’s tradition of piers.

We are delighted to submit our proposal to reinvigorate the popular resort of Rimini. This is an exciting opportunity to unite the town with its seafront and to regenerate the public realm.

The scheme will use new technologies, such as rainwater collection and photovoltaics, to establish a long-term, sustainable commercial and environmental strategy for the town that is balanced with its rejuvenation in the short-term.

Image courtesy Foster + Partners

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RBW Core House is a rice building workshop project by Nonya Grenader & Danny Samuels. Nonya Grenader is principal of her own small firm. Her most recent three architectural projects have each received design awards from the American Institute of Architects.

With the insertion of a new core (bath, kitchen, and mechanical elements), modern conveniences were delivered to an existing 500 sq. ft. house at Project Row Houses in Houston’s Third Ward.

The renovation was seen not only as a single solution for this particular house (to be used by an artist in residence), but also as a prototype - exploring the newly inserted core as a strategy for updating the many typical shotgun-style houses in the neighborhood.

http://nonyagrenaderarchitect.com/

This mid 19th century rowhouse on a quiet street in Park Slope was in relatively poor condition when purchased by the client. The house next door had burned down many years before, leaving the lot vacant and overgrown, and the new owners wanted to build a structure in its place that would connect to the existing house.

The client’s ambitious program for the new structure required a new master suite with a spacious bath and dressing room, a dining room, a garage with a driveway (a luxury for city dwellers), and some outdoor living space. The spacious patio is surfaced in bluestone; the driveway in Belgian block. To avoid having to move to temporary quarters, the client elected to complete the project in two architectural phases, followed by an interior design phase.

The arched front entry casing served as a guide for re-building the doors from scratch to the specifications of the original configuration. This wall-mounted French console table-mirror features a marble top and and a gilded frame.

The double parlor was designed in one dominant theme to give it the feel of a single space. A 1930s tin ceiling was restored, and walls were painted in a warm yellow and finished with wax.

Because the client opted to locate the master bedroom on the parlor floor, special care was given to the delineation of the space as private quarters. The vestibule library, with its extensive built-ins, serves as a threshold to the master suite.

A spacious and functional kitchen opens onto the patio garden. The backsplash is Oceanside Glasstile mosaic tile with an iridescent finish.

http://www.coburnarchitecture.com/

Perched on the edge of a limestone bluff, this 5,500-square-foot home was designed by Gluckman Mayner Architects for a young father of three.  An art lover with a deep interest in Buddhist culture, the Client provided inspiration for both the form and serene aesthetic of the structure.

A koi pond at the front and a lap pool at the back of the house are key features, ensuring that water is visible from any of the interior spaces.  Exterior views to the city center, foreground views to a lake formed by the damming of the Colorado River, and abundant natural light further the sense of the house as a peaceful suburban retreat.

All of the main living spaces in the house are open and informal.  The living room was envisioned by the Client not as a formal sitting area, but as a space to be used and enjoyed by the family on a daily basis.

Interiors are designed to flow seamlessly out through large glass doors and windows.  All furnishings and key artworks in the home were designed or selected by Gluckman Mayner with functional elegance in mind.

http://www.gluckmanmayner.com/

Located in Ebisu, Tokyo, Dancing Trees, Singing Birds is a housing complex designed by architect Hiroshi Nakamura. Bird Park is an apartment where people and birds can live in total harmony.

They believe that the pleasure of living with nature can be communicated through architecture, and by living face to face with nature can raise the awareness of sustainable living in each individual.

Architecture is usually seen to be concerned only with humans, but by expanding the target to plants and animals, They thought it could familiarise more people to architecture. It is an apartment sympathetic to both human and to the environment.

The site is located in the very central district of Tokyo surrounded by trees over 20m high. They felt that such greenery was a precious asset to a crowded city like Tokyo, and wanted to preserve this forest ? to build with it rather than to build on it.

They began the process by measuring the shape and the location of each and every tree with a laser pointer and created a three dimensional computer model from the collected information. Then They consulted a tree doctor and discussed how They could build without damaging the roots.

The ‘huts’ They’re constructed according to the location of the branches, leaving enough room for the trees to sway in the case of tropical rainstorm. Towards the top of the building, They located small birdhouses echoing the shapes of the ‘huts’.

Living with the forest; to be able to smell the floTheyrs, to hear the leaves blowing in the wind, and to be able to listen to the birds sing. Bird Park became a place where people and nature can form a close and intimate relationship with each other, and by forming such relationship, I hope to enhance the quality of life in each individual.

http://www.nakam.info

A superior contemporary house was designed by Woollacott Gilmartin. Located in the heart of historic Hampstead Village, the house displays much subtlety and invention in the inter-relationship of spaces and interior detailing.

The house is set discretely behind a garden wall and plantings.  The building steps up and back to a rooftop studio.

Large fixed and sliding windows open onto an outdoor terrace and bring natural light and views into the single ground floor living space.

The basement level bedrooms are arranged around a courtyard garden.

Worktop and sink in ‘nero assoluto’ granite.  Lacquered black cupboards.  Built-in shelves. Bespoke curved fibrous plaster hood to hob extract. Pantry with butler’s sink and shelving.

The house is finished to the highest standard. Features include under-floor heating throughout, a security alarm system, an irrigation system, Douglas fir window frames, ceramic door furniture designed by Pierluigi Cerri, and taps by David Chipperfield. All of the bedrooms have built-in wardrobes and shelves for clothes and books.

Pilgrim’s Lane is one of the most sought-after streets in Hampstead, located quietly off the High Street. The house is within a short walk of all of the area’s shops and restaurants, and the vast open expanses of Hampstead Heath can be found at the end of the road. Hampstead Underground (Northern Line) is also within walking distance.

http://www.themodernhouse.net/

Rooftecture M was designed by Japanese-based architect Shuhei Endo. It’s a house comprising an atelier of a client. It exists in local city for about 3 hours by a train from Osaka and is located in a flat, general residential area. The site has the small frontage is small, and its shape of a long rectangle into the north and south. Except the north side to contact with calm frontal road the site is blocked up by the neighboring houses.

Setting of an atelier of client was demanded in a plan firstly. In this atelier, a lot of visitors are expected. House spaces were demanded to be calm down and not to be noticeable space from eyes of the circumference as much as possible.

For these situations, Rooftecture M suggests space by the act that bent one piece of seat. The act make the form that a roof and a wall are continued by the one piece of seat and surround one space in site linking with necessary volume.

A demanded function goes in and out of the space surrounded by it repeating various changes. An atelier set in the second floor level that face frontal road, and sanitary unit and the private rooms slide into the space as volume of rectangular solid which is long to the north and south. Living and dining room set as the space that connect the interval of these volumes and are kept the place that family gathered in naturally. In addition, for a resident, the space is made them to be able to take in necessary light and wind freely by cutting the seat.

This trial begins by making the state that a roof and a wall are continued by one piece of member. It is to reduce the potential function in architectural space to continuous strip, and it is to arrest it as flowing space. And Rooftecture M offer the space where a family can live on the whole, sharing continues strip partially. It catches community of family as continuous strips of partial sharing, and to suggest living environment that produce various relation.

http://www.paramodern.com/

Visit 3XN Architects website -here.
http://www.3xn.dk

Denmark’s new aquarium is inspired by the whirl streams of the sea, shoals of fish, and swirling starlings turning the sky black. Indeed, from the round centre hall of the building the different parts are ‘whirled’ in the slightly curved sequence of rooms. Approaching the ground, one will experience the building as floating in a circular reflection pool, and a walk through its interior is a travel through several organic worlds.

The starting point was the magnificent experience of actually watching fish in their element. We wanted to create that adventurous feeling, and we took inspiration in the natural phenomenon of the whirlpool or maelstrom drawing you into the deep. As a sculpture by the coast it unites the natural elements of water, air and earth.

- Kim Herforth Nielsen, Principal Architect, 3XN.

The Round Room is a center of navigation in the aquarium,and this is where visitors choose which river, lake or ocean to explore. Each exhibition has its own face towards the Round Room, each with its own entrance, starting with a buffer zone – a platform where sound and images are used The Blue Planet Copenhagen, DK to introduce the atmosphere communicated in the ensuing exhibition room.

Nature and culture can be mixed, controlled by topics and ideas, on the basis of the stories to be told or in interaction with the audience. The building is flexible enough to accommodate it all, and the dominant whirl, with its endless scope for variation, but also repetition and rhythm, holds it all together. The curves which define the absolutely unique and sculptural look of the building must be perceived as part of the backdrops to the sceneries of the exhibitions.