Articles by Cristobal Rojas

Kimmel Eshkolot Architects “Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen” sits at Mount Herzl, Israel’s National Cemetery, and one of the most important sites in the country. The Memorial is a personal and collective structure that commemorates Israel’s fallen soldiers with an undulating funnel-shaped formation of bricks that opens the hall to the sky, flooding the void with natural light.

This summer house of 160 m2 is situated in a quiet and elegant neighborhood in the town of Naousa, at the island of Paros. It’s a house for a family of musicians. The house’s white volumes are structural and remain simple and cubic. They follow the voids and masses of the neighboring buildings, proliferating from the views to the sea and assimilated to the context. They evolve around the swimming pool and the interior “protected” courtyard, the microcosm of the house. Exterior space flows like a spiral from the ground floor courtyard to the top terrace, which has a magnificent view to the sea and the town of Naousa. Next to the pool, the music studio, serves also as a guest room. Materials used are simple and minimalist: concrete floors and roofs, dark grey metal frames, bright white Cycladic walls. The house follows the principles of bioclimatic design. Thermal insulation on the roofs and a new technology thermal insulation system for the walls, protect the interior space from the extreme weather conditions created by the strong Northern winds in this part of the island. The house works in a twofold manner with its main facade on the street becoming a cinema screen during the night where the wind creates a mute choreography of the moving shadows of the plants projected, a silent invitation for music to enter the scene. The house has won the award for best completed project within the year 2017 from the Greek Society of Architects SADAS-PEA.

The building is located in a quiet residential area of Zurich (Switzerland), very close to the lake. It contains five apartments, designed individually to react to different context and provides a broad mix of apartment types. Each flat has its own entrance to offer a maximum of privacy. The volume seems to expand in all directions, generating a complex and sculptural form, which creates interesting interiors. The reason for using different window formats was to correspond to the respective view and perspective from the inside. The big openings in the facade let a lot of daylight in and create an unconventional composition with different positions and proportions. The top floor has additional roof lights to let even more light in.

The building is located in a quiet residential area of Zurich (Switzerland), very close to the lake. It contains five apartments, designed individually to react to different context and provides a broad mix of apartment types. Each flat has its own entrance to offer a maximum of privacy. The volume seems to expand in all directions, generating a complex and sculptural form, which creates interesting interiors. The reason for using different window formats was to correspond to the respective view and perspective from the inside. The big openings in the facade let a lot of daylight in and create an unconventional composition with different positions and proportions. The top floor has additional roof lights to let even more light in.

The felling of an expansive tree in a private garden in Southern Germany left a huge gap on the site boundary overgrown densely with high bushes and trees. For this gap a structure was designed occupying the space without closing it off. In the shape of a classical garden shed the Garden Folly merges well into its dense green surroundings, creating a place to sit outside in the garden but at the same time being inside.

Open living in deep space

Magazzino Italian Art is a private initiative conceived by Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu to house their collection of postwar Italian Art. The commission consisted in a full renovation of an existing 11,000 square-foot building and an additional 14,000 square feet of new construction. The existing L-shaped structure was erected in 1964 as a distribution center for dairy products and surrounded by loading docks and canopies. The new space needed a taller clearance, since some of the collection’s pieces were large, as well as highly controlled natural light.

The concept of The Window House starts with two fundamental questions.

The concept of The Window House starts with two fundamental questions.

Small house is a small project in the chain of “multilayered space” project. It is located in an alleyway of NhaTrang city, that dense construction density along with many spatially chaotic architectural forms.