The home is a unique residential building displaying a contemporary architecture enhanced by its position. Nestled between natural landscape elements like the mountain that led to its shape and size and the forested land surrounding it, the modern home is a fortress-like construction offering a comfortable lifestyle despite the harsh conditions.

Located near Kelowna, BC, Canada, the residence that received its name from the neighboring city displays a massive brick wall supporting the interior spaces. Overlooking Okanagan Lake, the modern and imposing residence gathers views from many vantage points, both interior and exterior. Wood columns on the upper terrace support large overhangs and add an interesting character to the upper floor pavilion containing the social and entertaining areas, as well as the master bedroom. An infinity pool completes the luxurious features of this home.

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Of course if you enjoyed the Kelowna House, you can share this article with your friends on facebook or twitter, and we’ll appreciate it.

We don’t know the architect of this house, but what we do know about it, is that is one of the most stylish houses we’ve seen in a while.

The house is located in Brighton, one of the suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. This two story modern and contemporary home, features four bedrooms, three baths, and a cool private sun-filled landscaped courtyard. There is a lot we could say about this house, like the special care that was give to the wooden finishing, the clean, elegant front access, the astonishing interpretation of a modern Japanese garden and so much more.

But I’ll let the images tell this house stories, as architecture is better seen than explained .

By the way, the house is for sale, so if you can afford something like this, look into it. The home features “the latest in European design & flair” , according to the broker. Do you agree?

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Here’s a brief description from the architects if the curiosity kills you:

Magnificent views towards the city from atop Siglap Hill inspired the design. Master and family room are placed on the third level having the best views.

Living and Dining on the second level, connected with external verandahs / terraces that flow upwards and fold into the roof form with deep overhangs for sufficient shade and channeling the breeze through the whole house.

Two resort style ‘Cabana’ bedrooms are located on the ground level by the pool with a large open/covered terrace for poolside parties. A sculptural metal ‘drum’ anchors the ‘ship’ to the ground and houses the toilet/shower and barbeque pantry.

Roof gardens and timber decks provide added insulation from the sun.

Learn more at the Aamer Architects site – here.
Photography by Patrick Bingham – Hall

Studio Aiko was founded by Yair Alony and Meny Hilsenrad in 2005, and is a young & dynamic studio, specializing in a wide variety of CG content and visual effects.

Enough talk, check the videos and share your thoughts:

Check out the official website studio-aiko.com

Lopez Island Residence by David Vandervort Architects

This 1800 sf home is located on a heavily wooded, medium-bank waterfront property on Lopez Island, Washington.  The house is carefully sited amidst the existing trees and the existing land form which slopes up to the bank and view.  Connections to the outdoors and other features of the property informed the arrangement of space and form.  The angle of the living wing corresponds to the bank and creates an embraced outdoor deck area.  The house reaches out to the southeast path to the beach, to the gardens further to the east and most importantly to the west and northwest views of the water.

The structure comprises the main house with an isolated upper level master and the studio which houses his and hers art spaces.  The studio is connected to the house via an arcade which also serves as the main approach to the house.  There are Asian influences to the house, particularly in the entry process – including a Tibetan prayer wheel in a special niche.  The house forms are simple, derived from the site relationships and the desire to maximize daylight.  The materials are honest and enlivening – hard vs. soft, warm vs. cool.  It is a home designed for modern island living.

This museum created by the french architect JeanNouvel, displays some of the best art on planet Earth, and has exhibits of both contemporary and international artists. It contains over one thousand works by three hundred different artists.

Structure: BMW Welt, Munich
Architect: COOP Himmelblau
Year Finished: 2007

This building was designed to present some of the best cars in the world – the BMW. And was built for the customer experience in mind. The thinking was that one of the best car brands in the world deserves one of the best buildings – and it worked.

Structure: Addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri
Architect: Steven Holl
Year Finished: 2007

This museum was built on classical principals and is known for its extensive collection of Asian art. Time magazine listed it as #1 on the list “The 10 Best (New and Upcoming) Architectural Marvels” in 2007.

Structure: Cooper Union building, New York
Architect: Thom Mayne (Morphosis)
Year Finished: 2009

This curvy and “sexy” (as called by Time Magazine) is a school. Could you imagine going to school in a building like this? Everyday would be like a crazy tour of spectacular genius in architecture.

Structure: Parc de la Villette, Paris
Architect: Bernard Tschumi
Finished: 1987

Another great design in architecture from Paris. This one is a playground. An estimated 10 million people visit the park each year to take part in an array of cultural activities. This is a pretty good way to let your kids let go of some energy – don’t you think?

Structure: Yokohama Port Terminal, Japan
Architect: Foreign Office Architects
Year Finished: 2002

This was a project to “dream of.” It is looked at as “simplicity” but is far from that. Its shape is very irregular and the fluid and uninterrupted lines are folded like an origami into an unique structural system that allows its boarding level to connect to the city’s underground level – very cool.

Structure: Saint-Pierre church, Firminy, France
Architect: Le Corbusier
Year Finished: 2006 (from a design by Le Corbusier, who died in 1965)

This design was stalled for many years. It served many purposes – it was a secondary school, a shelter, and a Church. The construction began in 1971, and wasn’t even finished until 2006. Over 30 years of greatness in the making!

Article written by Laura. By day, Laura works for the Movebuilder.com

1. Restructuring the Existing Centre

The layout of the store was not intuitive. Walkways were complex and confusing, and it was difficult to navigate. To improve this, the layout of the indoor levels (G, 1st, 2nd, and 5th) has been entirely re-designed and smaller retail spaces have been added. The key to designing the individual levels was to think “empty” in order to enable the future implementation of an improved orientation system. The preconditions for this complex undertaking were:

- For each rental space, a newer space of equal size but higher quality had to be provided.
- Each tenant had to be relocated twice during the construction time.
- The ongoing daily shopping activity should be only minimally disturbed.

2. Create a new Centre!

To this end, the atrium, with its escalator network, took centre stage. The atrium serves as the nucleus and has
become the store’s central orientation point.

3. The Atrium: a sweeping upward perspective

The atrium, which unites the horizontal and vertical visual axes, has becomes the store’s new nucleus and
central orientation point. The ceilings of the individual levels are rounded and “rolled” upwards. In this way, the atrium expands up towards the retail levels, appearing larger and more open than the atrium in its previous incarnation. The atrium and retail areas seem to melt together, bringing the individual levels into a mutual dialogue and making the store into a special continuum.

This effect is supported by the lighting and materials strategy:

Both the materials and the manner of material transitions within the individual levels are also present in the
atrium (large perforated metal areas appear as if emerging from a white foundation). The light fixtures, placed
freely on the ceilings of each level, cover the rounded bends of the atrium and the escalators, until they are
transformed into light points vertically set in the perpendicular cladding of the central room.
Overall, the atrium appears light and dynamic – the relatively short individual storeys now appear lofty.

4. The Interior

The retail areas of the new store are distributed like ice floes on each story. These floes are marked by a change
in floor covering and ceiling material, thereby forming a star-shaped pattern of paths on both the ceiling and the
floor.

In this way, the materials on the floor and ceiling facilitate orientation within the building. Paths and retail areas
are explicitly marked and visible from afar:

Large perforated metal areas in the ceiling demarcate the retail areas. These areas form a multifunctional, highly
flexible ceiling system and house the primary technical installations, security technology and product lighting. In contrast, the network of paths is mirrored with a high-quality plasterboard ceiling. Both ceiling concepts flow in rounded edges up over the entire atrium. Together with the escalator panelling, this creates a unified effect that stretches across the entire interior of the Gerngross department store. The interior is then expanded through
resting station, sitting lounges and temporary displays.

5. The Gerngross Facade

The facade of the new building forms the logical continuation of the interior: the ice-floe theme of the interior
space continues on the new facade. To this end, large-scale, amorphous colour fields were applied. Leaving some space in between, an ornamentaly designed, semi-transparent white area was then attached. Together, these layers form a conglomerate of light and colour. In the evening, this effect is reinforced by a lighting concept between the two layers of the facade.

A large-scale white frame also emphasizes some areas of the facade (e.g. main entrance, bay), thereby showing
them off to their best possible advantage. Due to the large scale of the facade, the entire building is harmonized, and the true size of the building is emphasized. Advertising media, such as logos and slide-in plates, have been aggregated and drastically reduced as compared to their former state.

The ornamental pattern was designed to ensure a continuous view from the building into the street space (50%
free cross-section). Furthermore, the entire facade was thermally re-engineered and technically modernized, so
the ornamental pattern functions simultaneously as sun protection.

6. The “Tilting Effect”

Depending on where they stand, viewers perceive the facade differently:

From a level viewing angle, it appears more like a white-ornamental field. As the viewing angle gets steeper, the
background colour of the house comes more strongly into focus. This creates a tilting effect, which follows the passers-by.

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From the architects:

“An out-scaled structure, like the agricultural buildings that surround it, the house is both traditional in its morphology and innovative in its use of materials. Shingled with raw fibre-cement panels on the walls and roof, it is a house beyond the domestic scale, simple and rot-proof, capable of standing the test of time.

The house is striated with bands of horizontal windows, giant louvers that cut the sun at its most powerful, with new points of view at each level. It is protected by its wimple from the hot summer sun and inundated with light in the winter, needing neither air-conditioning nor heating on sunny days.

The interior is in wood, painted or natural, in planks or panels, composed almost exclusively of made-to-measure furniture pieces:

from the refectory table for meals to the day table with hideaway television set; from the large wraparound couch in the living room to the stainless-steel kitchen island;

from the balustrade bookshelf along the stairway to the wall night-lights made of aluminum panels with cut-outs of fireflies, fish, and frogs;

from wall-to-wall beds where people sleep foot-to-foot to overhanging bunk beds floating in the landscape. It is a playground for architects, children, and adults, a vacation colony lost in the countryside.”

via moco

Atlantic Beach is an established beach community on Long Island, immediately outside of New York City.  It is filled with modest houses from the 1920’s and 30’s in Tudor, Spanish and Art Deco styles.  As real estate prices rose in the last decade, the village saw a lot of “tear-down” activity, as older houses were replaced by much larger homes.

The Kowalewski residence is an attempt to insert a distinctly modern house into the village context in a manner that is respectful of the scale and architectural traditions of the community.  The house does not maximize either the bulk or lot coverage allowed by zoning.

It is oriented with the narrow face – only slightly wider than the former house on the lot – toward the street, with the traditional side driveway and rear garage.  Siting the compact footprint at the north edge of the 85-foot-square lot preserves a wide side garden with mature trees.  In form and materials the house recalls the village’s Art Deco heritage.

The 3600 SF house was designed as the primary residence for a family with two small children.  For privacy, the street façade is nearly blank, while the principal rooms all open onto the garden to the south.

The ground floor has an open plan for casual living and maximum connection to the outdoors.

The second floor a hallway with continuous skylight leads to four bedrooms and three baths.  A sun room / guest suite on the third floor opens onto a large roof terrace with panoramic views of the island and the ocean.  The clients are collectors of contemporary art and the work of some of their artist friends – like the marble floor in the entry foyer – is incorporated into the architectural design.

The structure is steel, with light-gauge metal framed floors and walls and energy-efficient EIS envelope.  Principal exterior materials are stucco, black slate, stainless steel and glass.

The steel and wood stair floats in a tower glazed in shingled panels of frosted glass, like an over-scaled jalousie window.
Visit the Belmont Freeman Architects website – here.

Photographs by Christopher Wesnofske

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The 2200 sq ft house was created by Rick Berry, from Scott Edwards Architecture, is in the heart of the coastal community of Manzanita, Oregon. The composition illustrates the northwest vernacular, including large overhangs and expanses of glass walls, natural indigenous materials for example concrete, and cedar, and multiple opportunities to enjoy the open floor plan both inside and out.

Visit the Scott Edwards Architecture official website HERE.