Month: May 2024

Is architecture a part of the landscape or vice versa? How can design enhance the sense of Place? In order to consider the building in question, the foremost impression is that it contributes to the overall identity and character of the site. Contextual architecture seeks to create buildings that feel like a natural extension of their surroundings, enhancing the aesthetic and functional value of a place. It is an approach to design that considers the surrounding environment, culture, and historical context of a building’s location. The goal is to create structures that harmonize with their surroundings and complement the existing landscape and built environment.

Standing on the empty construction site of a future performance hall, the ‘Olevodroom’ is a reconfiguration of a cycling track that occupied the site since 2021. Commissioned by the City of Leuven and Arts Centre 30CC to build something that would bridge past and future, we decided to use both. From the velodrome, we repurposed all the wood without cutting any boards, challenging ourselves to find a new shape within an existing one. Pallet racks, reclaimed from an old warehouse and painted in bright colors, were inserted as a support structure that allows the curves of the velodrome to bend and swirl freely, seeking a new shape that invites and shelters. The shape reminds us of the crater of an extinct volcano. We were looking for a simple gesture, a movement, like an embrace, that marks a spot where anyone can hang out at any time.

the store design echoes the concept of a pavilion in a park, fostering visual and spatial connection to the lush greenery of the lakeshore.
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Natural materials and thoughtful design let this family home in the hills near Austin, Texas, blend in with its woodsy landscape. Despite its rural feel, the modern home has a near-urban location with expansive views of downtown Austin. The pros at Cu…

This project is a weekend house in the mountains of the Sierra de Arteaga, in the state of Coahuila in northern Mexico. The house is laid out on the slope of an old orchard in mountainous surroundings, to have minimal impact on the site and natural vegetation. This solution also ensured the best views, as the orchard vegetation is much more open and lower than the surrounding forest.

In one of the areas of former Ljubljana suburbs, where bourgeois houses were built during the interwar period, stands an unusual hybrid. The original house with its cubic volume, typical of the early modernism of the 1930s, with semicircle fringes and scanty details stretches towards the garden with its modern addition – a light floating pavilion. The pavilion uses the original volumes’ curvatures as a formal starting point, but we can tell by its expression the unmistakable continuity of works from Ljubljana architectural studio Ofis. When clients and architects met for the first time the house was far from its former glory.