Articles by Andreas Luco

Situated in the Golden Triangle, a verdant suburban area of Norwich, Cast Corbel House has been redesigned and crafted by Norwich and East London-based architects, Grafted. The newly refurbished home features a rear extension with an updated geometric precast and brick façade that celebrates material exploration and craftsmanship. Grafted launched in 2022 as a design and build firm, realizing an opportunity to produce ambitious architecture whilst simultaneously creating highly crafted design.

The interior design of the Parkway office project with a small area of 85 square meters and an amorphous geometry was referred to us while the client was worried about meeting his quantitative and qualitative needs, looking for maximum use of the space.

Originally composed of three floors and a yard, this building in Campo de Ourique was in an advanced state of degradation. The ground floor, which served as a commercial establishment, was reconverted into a common area and passageway for two completely independent single-family housing units. 

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.

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.

Bungalows Luxury Tulum is a private condominium of 9 apartments located in the Aldea Zama development, in the heart of the Mayan Village in Tulum, Quintana Roo. Within this development, the master plan determined areas for locating buildings, parking areas, and jungle zones, so that the land for the building was already free from green area restrictions and boundaries as these zones were already assigned around it. This condition not only reduces the program to work on but also leaves us with less surface area to work on free and green spaces within the design of our complex.

The house is located in a gated community in Villa Rosa. Aimed at the middle class, this type of development is expanding due to the affordable costs of the lots in relation to the values offered by the real estate market in urbanized districts. The pre-existing constructions are homogeneous and of varied scale, characteristic of these enclaves without determining references.