Style of Design

Property development group Euroboden is building a unique apartment house at Johannisstraße in Mitte, Berlin’s downtown district. J. MAYER H. Architects’ design for the building, which will soon neighbor both Museum Island and Friedrichstrasse, reinterprets the classic Berliner Wohnhaus with its multi-unit structure and green interior courtyard.

More images and description after the break.

A suspended lamella facade not only provides privacy but also draws historical reference to the elaborately decorated facades from the Wilhelminian period. Plans for the ground floor facing the street also include a number of commercial spaces. The generously sized apartments will face south-west, opening themselves to a view of the calm, carefully designed courtyard garden. Spacious, breezy transitions to the outside create an open residential experience in the middle of the city that, thanks to the variable heights of the different building levels, also offers an interesting succession of rooms.

The units’ varying floorplans and layouts indicate a number of housing options; condominiums are organized into townhouses with private gardens, classic apartments or penthouses with a spectacular view of the old Friedrichstadt. The integrated design concept, which incorporates everything from façade to stairwells, elevators to apartment interiors, promises a unique spatial and living experience with an eye to high design.

© Laurent Brandajs

Architect: Bekhor Architecte
Location: Ixelles, Brussels , Belgium
Client: Eva Franken
Total Area: 300 sqm
Project Year: 2007
Photographs: Laurent Brandajs

The project take place in an atypical urban environment for a town like Brussels where row or town houses in a well aligned facades are rather the standard.

On the left side, the Léon Cuissez street has different scales of buildings and some unusual alignements. From multiple storey apartment buildings to small houses lost on the background as a witness of old discontinued urban outlines.

© Laurent Brandajs

Formerly, the place was a carpentry workshop that became neglected during the last 20 years. At the very beginning, this wall was just a protection between the private property and the public space, a fence wall. It was just 2m high with no other utility than to separate. The existing volume was constructed around 1930 by raising the main elevation over the existing fence wall and completing the volume enclosure behind it.

ground floor plan

The project guideline was first to play around this blank wall and to keep it as it is. To erect such a wall in an urban space is something difficult to vindicate. In this case the wall is used as a binder from the left, with the one level houses on the back, to the right, with the higher apartment building.

There were no certainty about the foundation of such a wall.It was decided to create a new steel structure inside the volume that would be at distance of these existing walls. Any other intervention would be based on this principle of “distance”.

© Laurent Brandajs

The facade of new part with the suspended cube on the right, is a result of the structure’s extension.

The structural grid in steel is filled by a wooden frame. The facade is expressed backwards the existing blank wall.

In order to emphasize the attitude towards this brick wall, a stair is backed on it and animated by an overhead light, offering different atmospheres during the day.

© Laurent Brandajs

The second guideline was to relink this unordered urban space. The new “skyline” of the project is made of different in a row of “step volumetry”.

Levels are open spaces, but each have connection with closed rooms in order to make privacy possible.

Material treatments are chosen to break the frontier between the inside and the outside.

These materials like steel, zinc, wood or coating are used in both situation in a fluid continuity.

© Laurent Brandajs

Architect: Bekhor Architecte
Location: Ixelles, Brussels , Belgium
Client: Eva Franken
Total Area: 300 sqm
Project Year: 2007
Photographs: Laurent Brandajs

The project take place in an atypical urban environment for a town like Brussels where row or town houses in a well aligned facades are rather the standard.

On the left side, the Léon Cuissez street has different scales of buildings and some unusual alignements. From multiple storey apartment buildings to small houses lost on the background as a witness of old discontinued urban outlines.

© Laurent Brandajs

Formerly, the place was a carpentry workshop that became neglected during the last 20 years. At the very beginning, this wall was just a protection between the private property and the public space, a fence wall. It was just 2m high with no other utility than to separate. The existing volume was constructed around 1930 by raising the main elevation over the existing fence wall and completing the volume enclosure behind it.

ground floor plan

The project guideline was first to play around this blank wall and to keep it as it is. To erect such a wall in an urban space is something difficult to vindicate. In this case the wall is used as a binder from the left, with the one level houses on the back, to the right, with the higher apartment building.

There were no certainty about the foundation of such a wall.It was decided to create a new steel structure inside the volume that would be at distance of these existing walls. Any other intervention would be based on this principle of “distance”.

© Laurent Brandajs

The facade of new part with the suspended cube on the right, is a result of the structure’s extension.

The structural grid in steel is filled by a wooden frame. The facade is expressed backwards the existing blank wall.

In order to emphasize the attitude towards this brick wall, a stair is backed on it and animated by an overhead light, offering different atmospheres during the day.

© Laurent Brandajs

The second guideline was to relink this unordered urban space. The new “skyline” of the project is made of different in a row of “step volumetry”.

Levels are open spaces, but each have connection with closed rooms in order to make privacy possible.

Material treatments are chosen to break the frontier between the inside and the outside.

These materials like steel, zinc, wood or coating are used in both situation in a fluid continuity.

© Laurent Brandajs

Architect: Bekhor Architecte
Location: Ixelles, Brussels , Belgium
Client: Eva Franken
Total Area: 300 sqm
Project Year: 2007
Photographs: Laurent Brandajs

The project take place in an atypical urban environment for a town like Brussels where row or town houses in a well aligned facades are rather the standard.

On the left side, the Léon Cuissez street has different scales of buildings and some unusual alignements. From multiple storey apartment buildings to small houses lost on the background as a witness of old discontinued urban outlines.

© Laurent Brandajs

Formerly, the place was a carpentry workshop that became neglected during the last 20 years. At the very beginning, this wall was just a protection between the private property and the public space, a fence wall. It was just 2m high with no other utility than to separate. The existing volume was constructed around 1930 by raising the main elevation over the existing fence wall and completing the volume enclosure behind it.

ground floor plan

The project guideline was first to play around this blank wall and to keep it as it is. To erect such a wall in an urban space is something difficult to vindicate. In this case the wall is used as a binder from the left, with the one level houses on the back, to the right, with the higher apartment building.

There were no certainty about the foundation of such a wall.It was decided to create a new steel structure inside the volume that would be at distance of these existing walls. Any other intervention would be based on this principle of “distance”.

© Laurent Brandajs

The facade of new part with the suspended cube on the right, is a result of the structure’s extension.

The structural grid in steel is filled by a wooden frame. The facade is expressed backwards the existing blank wall.

In order to emphasize the attitude towards this brick wall, a stair is backed on it and animated by an overhead light, offering different atmospheres during the day.

© Laurent Brandajs

The second guideline was to relink this unordered urban space. The new “skyline” of the project is made of different in a row of “step volumetry”.

Levels are open spaces, but each have connection with closed rooms in order to make privacy possible.

Material treatments are chosen to break the frontier between the inside and the outside.

These materials like steel, zinc, wood or coating are used in both situation in a fluid continuity.

© Ulrich Schwarz

Architects: UTArchitects / Tim Bauerfeind, Henning von Wedemeyer
Location: Berlin, Germany
Collaborators: Matthias Lötscher, Ralf Grubert
Client: RZB e.V.
Engineering: Pichler Ingenieure Berlin
Project Area: 1,000 sqm
Project Year: 2008-2009
Photographs: Ulrich Schwarz

A farm estate was converted into a training centre for carpenters and restorers run by the Restoration Center Berlin. The estate, located in the southern part of Berlin, was founded as a plantation in the 18th century. During the 19th century the farmhouse was built on the foundation of a former building, being extended two times afterwards. During the DDR-times the building degenerated, at the access yard barns have been demolished and instead it has been occupied by garage buildings.

The basement of the farm house was dried up, roof and facades have been refurbished. Along with the restoration of interior wood fixtures some ancient wall and ceiling paintings have been exposed and restored.

exploded axo

With the demolition of garages the new workshop building creates the original u-shape of buildings around the yard. Rooms for administration and training classrooms are located in the farm house. The craftsmen education is being held in the workshop. The workshop is designed as a building which opens up towards the yard and the farmhouse.

The external geometry strongly refers to the old farmhouse, while the workshop is lower in height. Therefore the farmhouse is still recognized as the head building of the composition, while the new building is set-back and appears as an open shell with the interior connecting with the yard.

© Ulrich Schwarz

Facade and roof of the workshop form a continuous surface, which is wrapped over the historic courtyard to create an open hall. The sheltered exterior, the machine hall and the and the craftsmen studio in the mezzanine are separated by glass walls to support communication between the trainees and to offer views into the yard from all corners of the house.

© Ulrich Schwarz

While the facades towards the farmhouse and the yard are glazed full height, the street facade is predominantly closed and only structured by vertical window slits. On the yard side the metal roof cantilevers up to four meters in order to create sun- and weather protection as well as for sound protection towards the neighborhood. The space under the cantilevering roof is used for temporary deposits, and also as a workspace, for educational lessons or rests during the summer.

© Ulrich Schwarz

The workshop is a low-cost wood construction, reinforced by floor slap and stairs. All materials are of simple origin: facade and roof surfaces have corrugated metal sheets on the outside and painted cardboard plates on the inside. All surfaces on the inside are of spruce wood. Both buildings are heated by a central wood heating, filled with leftovers of the daily production.

© Ulrich Schwarz

Architects: UTArchitects / Tim Bauerfeind, Henning von Wedemeyer
Location: Berlin, Germany
Collaborators: Matthias Lötscher, Ralf Grubert
Client: RZB e.V.
Engineering: Pichler Ingenieure Berlin
Project Area: 1,000 sqm
Project Year: 2008-2009
Photographs: Ulrich Schwarz

A farm estate was converted into a training centre for carpenters and restorers run by the Restoration Center Berlin. The estate, located in the southern part of Berlin, was founded as a plantation in the 18th century. During the 19th century the farmhouse was built on the foundation of a former building, being extended two times afterwards. During the DDR-times the building degenerated, at the access yard barns have been demolished and instead it has been occupied by garage buildings.

The basement of the farm house was dried up, roof and facades have been refurbished. Along with the restoration of interior wood fixtures some ancient wall and ceiling paintings have been exposed and restored.

exploded axo

With the demolition of garages the new workshop building creates the original u-shape of buildings around the yard. Rooms for administration and training classrooms are located in the farm house. The craftsmen education is being held in the workshop. The workshop is designed as a building which opens up towards the yard and the farmhouse.

The external geometry strongly refers to the old farmhouse, while the workshop is lower in height. Therefore the farmhouse is still recognized as the head building of the composition, while the new building is set-back and appears as an open shell with the interior connecting with the yard.

© Ulrich Schwarz

Facade and roof of the workshop form a continuous surface, which is wrapped over the historic courtyard to create an open hall. The sheltered exterior, the machine hall and the and the craftsmen studio in the mezzanine are separated by glass walls to support communication between the trainees and to offer views into the yard from all corners of the house.

© Ulrich Schwarz

While the facades towards the farmhouse and the yard are glazed full height, the street facade is predominantly closed and only structured by vertical window slits. On the yard side the metal roof cantilevers up to four meters in order to create sun- and weather protection as well as for sound protection towards the neighborhood. The space under the cantilevering roof is used for temporary deposits, and also as a workspace, for educational lessons or rests during the summer.

© Ulrich Schwarz

The workshop is a low-cost wood construction, reinforced by floor slap and stairs. All materials are of simple origin: facade and roof surfaces have corrugated metal sheets on the outside and painted cardboard plates on the inside. All surfaces on the inside are of spruce wood. Both buildings are heated by a central wood heating, filled with leftovers of the daily production.

ROW Studio designed a new luxury apartment complex in a heavily wooded area in southern Mexico City. The buildings are placed around the existing trees and all facades are covered with plants to conceal the structures.  This strategy gives the interiors “the sensation of living in the treetops”.  Parking and service areas are located below the buildings to maximize the porosity of the soil and to avoid any visual obstruction on the ground level.  There is a visual continuous garden, from the entry of the complex to the back of the site, as greenery flows from the ground level, up the facades of the buildings and into the surroundings.   The ground level apartments are protected with a “land fold” of bushes for privacy which also screen their private patio.     Wooden rooftop decks provide great areas for gatherings, meals, parties or to just simply enjoy garden views.

More images after the break.

Architects: ROW Studio – Álvaro Hernández Félix, Nadia Hernández Félix, Alfonso Maldonado Ochoa.

Use: Luxury Apartments Complex and Offices.

Client: Fundacion Acapulco

Architect of Record: INMOSUR SA de CV – Arch. Álvaro Hernández Cabada.

Location: Mexico City

Contributors: Alejandro Maldonado, Ana Mancera, An­tonio Scheffler, Ildefonso Navarro, Gloria Maldonado, Patricia Suárez.

Project Date: August 2009

ROW Studio designed a new luxury apartment complex in a heavily wooded area in southern Mexico City. The buildings are placed around the existing trees and all facades are covered with plants to conceal the structures.  This strategy gives the interiors “the sensation of living in the treetops”.  Parking and service areas are located below the buildings to maximize the porosity of the soil and to avoid any visual obstruction on the ground level.  There is a visual continuous garden, from the entry of the complex to the back of the site, as greenery flows from the ground level, up the facades of the buildings and into the surroundings.   The ground level apartments are protected with a “land fold” of bushes for privacy which also screen their private patio.     Wooden rooftop decks provide great areas for gatherings, meals, parties or to just simply enjoy garden views.

More images after the break.

Architects: ROW Studio – Álvaro Hernández Félix, Nadia Hernández Félix, Alfonso Maldonado Ochoa.

Use: Luxury Apartments Complex and Offices.

Client: Fundacion Acapulco

Architect of Record: INMOSUR SA de CV – Arch. Álvaro Hernández Cabada.

Location: Mexico City

Contributors: Alejandro Maldonado, Ana Mancera, An­tonio Scheffler, Ildefonso Navarro, Gloria Maldonado, Patricia Suárez.

Project Date: August 2009

© Julian Weyer

Architect: C. F. Møller Architects
Location: University College Vitus Bering, Horsens, Denmark
Client: University College Vitus Bering Denmark
Landscape architect: C. F. Møller Architects
Engineers: Grontmij | Carl Bro
Contractor: Pihl & Søn A/S
Project Area: 8,000 sqm
Project Year: 2008-2009
Photographs: Julian Weyer

Teaching and entrepreneur start-up office facilities side by side – that’s the philosophy behind the distinctive extension to the existing 1970’s structure of the University College Vitus Bering Denmark in Horsens. The new Innovation building is designed to sit on a brick base, which is a direct continuation of the existing complex’ architecture, but from there on it is distinctly different and unique.

site plan

The building’s dynamic and innovative character is expressed via its spiral shape. On the facades, the movement is seen in the glazing strips that stretch towards the sky across the six storeys of the building and create the impression of a spiral sequence, while internally it is expressed via the main staircase in green fibre cement, which runs in a spiral form between the storeys in the unifying internal atrium. The inclined forms of the building also have the practical advantage of allowing a necessary fire escape route to be cut through the building.

© Julian Weyer

The basic floor plan of the building is a simple and flexible layout, to allow the integration of numerous uses and adaptations. The large and dynamic green stairway element leads to common meeting facilities and a roof terrace with a beautiful view of the Horsens Fjord. The stairs land in a different position on each level, thus activating the entire atrium as the central hub of the building. The atrium is covered by a dynamic, diagonally split roof-plane with circular skylights, of which one half forms the common roof terrace.

section

The Vitus Bering Innovation Park is one of the first office complexes in Denmark to be classified as low-energy class 1, which means that its energy efficiency is twice that of the minimum required by the Danish building regulations. The low level of energy consumption is achieved through such factors as highly insulating windows and extra insulation on all of the building’s external surfaces. Another feature is the building’s intelligent air conditioning system, which adjusts itself according to the number of people present in each individual room.

@ Julio Barreno

Architect: Julio Barreno
Location: Ubrique, Spain
Technical Architect: Rocío Román Aguillar
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Julio Barreno

Taking a look to an aerial view over the historical centre on the city of Ubrique, it advises us about the importance of the patios in the traditional typology of this city. The existence of these patios makes fluffier the high density of the historical centre of these cities in the south. This is very important to protect the people from the hot weather.

@ Julio Barreno

This proposal in Colon square is a restoration of an old building with traditional character.

The works on the façade were only a process of cleaning or rubbing a lot of ornamental elements that made it a bit dirty. I decide to simplify the appearance using two or three elements from the original façade; the wholes (wooden windows), the balconies, with the original railings; and also the number above the main entrance.

@ Julio Barreno

The colour used in Ubrique for the facades is fundamentally the white one; this is something that the authorities force to.

Using this white colour in our proposal we found a way to get that several traditional elements construct a new abstract language, specific for this building. Some of the figurative traditional elements are able to design a new appearance for this new element in the city.

The program is a singular housing in the upper floors and a local in the ground floor.

@ Julio Barreno

The patio in the original house was another important green point in the Ubrique´s map. In the new proposal the patio is considered always as a GREEN ELEMENT, a NATURAL ELEMENT. This is the origin of the design of the rest of the elements that complete the building. This is why the wood used for the design of the windows that delimit the patio has a natural appearance as well as the steps of the stairs that link the first and second floor.

floor plans

The floor is constructed using compressed soil, because that is what beige marble is at last.

The ceilings are also treated as natural elements, probably trees, covering different areas inside; one of them controls the space above the stairs and the other one distinguish the dinner area from the living one.

@ Julio Barreno

I like to see this as a NATURAL LANDSCAPE INSIDE.

The fluency of the floors is the most important theme in this project. We have to talk about just one space that is composed of different areas delimited with light glass walls and mobile elements.

@ Julio Barreno

In this house you live around a patio, this is the structural topic of the house. Here you need to move across this landscape, around the patio, to understand the house, to live in it, organizing the program you live in a sequential way.

During the day the patio is the main space, through it, the house receives a lot of light and sun, and it fills up of life. At night, it becomes a singular element that links visually different rooms in different floors.