The design was for a home in Tokyo’s suburbs, inhabited by a couple in their 30s. A flexible, future-proof renovation was planned for this couple to live in their earthquake-retrofitted apartment for the next 50 years.
A 100m² apartment, situated in downtown Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The residential building, built in 1961, presents a variety of floorplans and has a commercial area at ground level.
There is a wide gap between having just enough and having just too much. This refers to the amount of occupied space per person or the amount of clutter that occupies a person. Having less in less space has – once again – become a worthy living model. Worthy, because the equation is compelling: The less space per person, the less expansion into unbuilt areas.
The house was built at the end of the 19th century as one of six hotels for the daughters of a Baron. Almost a Herrerian toy, it is a rectangle of 26 x 11.5m of granite masonry, topped by a four-sided tiled roof.
The project is located in front of a hill, at a distance of a hundred meters from the lake shore. Two houses dating from the 1930s with small courtyards (aka “sky well”) were to be connected and transformed into a teahouse and also a rest space for tourists. The operator of the property has not been decided until now. The timber-frame structures still remain intact except for the roof of one small volume. To preserve local memories, we decided to keep the old houses and touch them as gently as possible. At the same time, we wanted to create an unprecedented experience with the juxtaposition of tradition and contemporariness.
Located in the district of Rosemont-Petite-Patrie, near Père Marquette Park, the project consists of the renovation and expansion of a “shoebox”. The typical “shoebox” was erected by the working class in the 1940s and was originally a modest and economical 1-story single-family house. In a desire for heritage conservation, the district classified the “shoeboxes” into different categories of interest. In this case, it was mandatory to preserve the existing façade, but we were allowed to add a second story. To respect the original volume of the shoebox and preserve its heritage values, it was intuitive to propose a set-back second-floor addition. This pronounced recess provides an intimate green terrace on the street side, facing south.
The self-commissioning of a space destined for the office of our own architecture studio is the result of this rehabilitation in the Historic Center of our city, Toledo, in what was an abandoned sheet metal and paint workshop in the late 1970s.
This project deals with the renovation of an apartment in a large-scale residential complex from the 1970s in the outskirts of Cologne. The apartment is inhabited by a family of four. With 82 m2 of living space, it is small by today‘s standards. Nowadays, 47 m2 per person are average in Germany. Our objective is to bring the apartment in line with contemporary spatial expectations. This invariably led to questions about standards of living, appropriateness and adaptability of existing structures in transformation scenarios.
VNBC is a transformation of a family dwelling in Brussels. Part of a set of worker’s houses built in the 50’s in the residential and very green district of Boitsfort, in the south of the city, this house was composed of three very closed facades on the outside and of multiple small spaces without any connection or fluidity between each other.
Helvetia is the alteration and renovation of a double-storey Victorian terrace in Fitzroy, Melbourne. The residence had been separated into two dwellings in the 1960s to operate as a boarding house and reconfigured again in the 1980s into a three-bedroom apartment at ground level and a one-bedroom with a studio at the first floor. Muddled, confused, dark, and in a sad state of disrepair, the challenge was to resurrect Helvetia. In removing the two rooms above and below in the center of the building and utilizing the side laneway, Helvetia has been transformed into a light-filled family-sized home with multiple gardens, a flexible floor plan, a dramatic central entryway, and a towering sunlit atrium.
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