Arches puncture floors and walls of Glebe House by Chenchow Little Architects

Chenchow Little Architects has completed a house in the Glebe suburb of Sydney featuring upside-down arches in the walls and curved openings in the floors.

Glebe House is designed to playfully reference its neighbour – a Victorian terrace with decorative arched windows.

Instead of matching these arches, Chenchow Little Architects chose to use them in various other ways.

On the facades, the shapes are turned upside-down to create large, high-level windows with views of the Sydney skyline.

Arched openings also create voids between the house's two floor levels, emphasised by an accompanying spiral staircase.

"Unlike traditional Victorian houses, the arched openings in the Glebe House occur in both elevation and on plan," explained the studio, which is led by architects Tony Chenchow and Stephanie Little.

"The arched windows on the elevation align with arched cutouts in the floor-plate to create three-dimensional internal voids within the space."

Glebe House is the residence of a family of five. Previously, the site was home to an old cottage, but this was demolished to make room.

The shape of the house was dictated by surrounding buildings, which also include a 1980s housing block.

To respect setbacks from these existing properties, as well as the sight lines from their windows, only one volume was possible on the site.

This shape is roughly four-sided in plan, but the northeast end is significantly wider than the southwest end, and there are some angular setbacks at the building's corners.

Inside the building the layout is kept fairly simple, to allow the geometry of the arches to be fully expressed.

The ground floor is largely open-plan, containing a kitchen, dining area and living space, and a connecting sheltered terrace. This terrace is fronted by the only arched window with a traditional orientation.

Upstairs, rooms are organised either side of a central corridor, which is punctured by curved openings in three places. There are four bedrooms on this floor, including a master suite with an additional two floor openings.

"The double-height voids maximise light penetration into the centre of the dwelling and add to the sense of space," added the studio.

Textural material finishes were chosen both inside and out. White-painted timber boards are arranged vertically across the facade, as well as in the living space and bedrooms, while the bathrooms feature hexagonal mosaic tiles.

Timber also features often, on flooring, partition walls and kitchen cabinets. Vertical timber mullions also provide the necessary support to the upside-down arched windows.

"The vertical mullions of the windows reinforce the verticality and rhythm of the cladding and help to abstract the facades of the dwelling," said the architects.

Chenchow Little Architects often works on quirky residential projects. The studio was longlisted for a Dezeen Award in 2018 for its Darling Point Apartment.

Photography is by Peter Bennetts.

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Jeffrey Dungan Architects builds Harrison Residence on Florida waterfront

Alabama practice Jeffrey Dungan Architects has modelled this white-rendered concrete house in Florida's Panhandle on a range of architectural styles.

Harrison Residence is in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, a small town on the Gulf of Mexico known for its white sandy beaches and clear water. It forms part of a greater area in the northwest of the state called the Panhandle after its shape.

Jeffrey Dungan Architects built the three-storey home next to a nature preserve and a coastal dune lake, Draper Lake, which Dungan notes is a unique natural occurrence.

"They are extremely rare and only occur in about four other places in the world: Madagascar, New Zealand, Australia and Oregon," Jeffrey Dungan told Dezeen. "These are unique ecosystems."

"The dunes are all that separate the lakes from the Gulf of Mexico and during storms the dunes are breached and the fresh and saltwater mix," he added.

The architect created the waterfront home in an L-shape with cast-in-place concrete, used to withstand the region's hurricanes and storms. White stucco covers the facade and makes the project stand out against its dense pine and shrub surrounds.

Dungan created the house for clients who enjoy travelling but who also wanted a beach home to relax in.

It features a fusion Mediterranean and more historic European architectural styles as seen in the arched doorways, dark gridded windows, curved lines and wood details.

"The clients love to travel all over the world and in some ways they have a bohemian kind of bent, so intuitively I wanted the house to speak in a European accent, but also it's a beach house, so there should be something playful about it," Dungan said.

The layout comprises a living room, two bedrooms with ensuites, and a covered outdoor sitting area on the ground floor.

The ground level is elevated to take cues from an element of Renaissance architecture known as a piano nobile. It was chosen by the architect "to make the most of views and also to take advantage of breezes coming up from the ocean."

A staircase in the entry leads to an open-plan kitchen and dining room upstairs, as well as a living room, master suite and office. Also located on the first floor are a screened-in outdoor area, a terrace and an outdoor shower.

The top floor contains a sitting nook and a bathroom. Rounding out the residence is a two-car garage, located below the master bedroom.

The interior design features contemporary designs that contrast with the classical architectural elements of the building.

A monochrome colour palette of whites and creams drives the decor with black accents for contrast, including window trim. Pale wood covers most of the floors and ceilings.

"I am always trying to have a sense of history in my homes, and yet 'historical' is the last thing I would ever want to be said about my work," Dungan said.

"I'm always after something that feels organic and alive," he continued. "I love movement in architecture in lieu of stiff and rigid places that suck the life out of you."

Harrison Residence is located in the Florida Panhandle, a region that is closer to Alabama and Mississippi than it is to more well-known Florida cities such as Miami and Orlando.

Dungan's studio, which he founded in 1999, is based in Birmingham, Alabama.

Florida is home to many waterfront properties, including San Marino Residence by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, a concrete home by Studio MK27  and a villa by filmmaker Alejandro Landes, and all of which are in Miami.

Photography is by William Abranowicz.

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Intricate Patterns Hand-Carved into Fruit and Vegetables by Takehiro Kishimoto

All images © Takehiro Kishimoto

When he’s not cooking them, Japanese chef and food artist Takehiro Kishimoto (previously) is turning fruits and vegetables into intricately carved sculptures too beautiful to eat. Using sharp handheld blades, Kishimoto combines the centuries-old art of Thai fruit carving with the Japanese art of Mukimono to decorate apples, carrots, broccoli, and broad beans with geometric patterns and elaborate designs.

The precision easily could be mistaken for digital photo manipulation were it not for the process videos that Kishimoto shares on his Instagram, where he also writes that he hopes the Thai carving tradition will spread around the world. With more than 284,000 followers watching flowers bloom from stalks and carrots become interlocking chains, we’d say that his hopes already are coming true. To see more of the artist’s handiwork, go ahead and hit that follow button.

 

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MYT+GLDVK completes eclectic food court Cocina Abierta in Mexico City

Architecture studio MYT+GLVDK has created an upscale food court inside a Mexico City shopping mall with elements that take cues from Japanese and Mexican design traditions.

Cocina Abierta, or Open Kitchen, comprises several restaurants offering different world cuisines, and a variety of seating options in which to enjoy different foods.

Among the variety of dining options is a German-style Biergarten with an outdoor patio, a cocktail bar with art deco accents, and a few choices for Mexican food. Local firm MYT+GLVDK describes it as Mexico's first "multi-cuisine restaurant".

Cocina Abierta is located in the Artz Pedregal shopping centre, a mixed-used development designed by Mexican and Spanish firm Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos.

The complex also includes office space and a generous public park in the centre of the development.

A large central opening reveals a helical staircase and ramp that circle around one another, leading up to mezzanine overlooking the space.

Two restaurants, called La Imperial and Moshi-Moshi, have a more defined seating area, and are distinct from the other vendors.

La Imperial, a Mexican restaurant, was designed to "evoke the golden age of cantinas and adds baroque and late 19th-century Mexican touches", according to the studio. A patterned tile floor, an antique bar, and whitewashed brick walls are among the traditional element.

Moshi-Moshi, a Japanese eatery, has a lighter and more contemporary palette. Pale wooden booths with denim accents recall Japanese design, and the space is lit by hanging fixtures that are meant to reinterpret traditional paper lanterns.

The restaurant is laid out in four rows of booths, between which run conveyor belts carrying individual plates of sushi for diners to choose from.

"Moshi Moshi brings together the Cocina Abierta interior design with a new range of materials — including blue terrazzo, denim and wood — along with the comprehensive redesign of this renowned conveyor belt sushi restaurant," said MYT+GLVDK.

The Mexico City studio is a newly formed firm that resulted from the merger of two offices, led respectively by husband and wife Andrés Mier y Terán and Regina Galvanduque.

Galvanduque also completed the Ryo Kan hotel in the city's Cuauhtémoc neighbourhood, which is designed to merge Mexican materials and Japanese traditions.

Other restaurant projects in Mexico City include a "cave-like" space by Michan Architecture that is illuminated by oversized, prismatic skylights, and a small Italian restaurant by Taller ADG that is located within a board-formed concrete vault.

Photography is by Isa Arjona.

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Space Popular's Brick Vault House slots into slender green grid

A green steel frame and shallow arched ceilings form the structure of Space Popular's geometric Brick Vault House in Valencia, Spain.

Projecting out from a sloped site in the suburb of New Santa Barbara, the four-bed dwelling is the first completed building by the multidisciplinary studio Space Popular.

Brick Vault House was built in collaboration with local architects Estudio Alberto Burgos and Javier Cortina Maruenda as a new-build prototype for a local developer.

Its unconventional superstructure – a 10-metre-high and 10-centimetre-thin steel frame with vaulted brick ceilings – is intended to be easily replicable to suit various different sized plots.

"They wanted a house that was 'different' but still fulfilled the usual expectations of a medium-scale detached home," explained founders Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg.

"This first house was to serve as a prototype for a larger plot where they plan to develop more in the future," the pair told Dezeen.

"We suggested a grid system with which we could resolve the typical details that would allow them to create different configurations in the following houses, avoiding replication but still maintain some level of standardisation."

From street level, the dwelling resembles a small two-storey villa. However, following a set of stairs down the sloped site to home's entrance reveals the gridded structure in its entirety.

This is designed by Space Popular to "create an arrival sequence" that gradually reveals the different scales and features of the house.

"We think having a variety of spatial qualities and views around which to structure your daily life is an important value in medium and large homes," explained the studio.

"That the place where you sit in the morning for breakfast could have a different feel to where you spend your afternoon, or your summer versus winter routines could make use of spaces differently configured, is something we strive for."

While providing the building's structure, the green grid has also been developed to blur the boundary with the outside.

The grid is therefore half-filled with habitable white cubes, positioned to maximise solar gain and natural light, leaving space for a number of covered outdoor spaces.

"We wanted to create a unifying element between interior and exterior, as well as reveal the way the house is held up," the studio said.

"We think one feels more at ease living in spaces where the way it all comes together can be easily discerned."

This feeling of a blurred boundary with the outside is enhanced throughout the dwelling where its brick-vaulted ceilings extend outside over the outdoor areas.

The ceilings, after which Brick Vault House is named, are called Guastavino vaults – a version of Catalan vault named after a Spanish architect who introduced the technique to the US.

They were used by Space Popular as they are structural and self-supporting arches, and can be constructed by hand without the need for scaffolding or formwork.

Inside, no floor of Brick Vault House is the same. However, they are each built around a three-storey staircase in a bid to reduce the need for corridors.

The house has a mix of open-plan living areas and bedrooms. They are complete with deliberately simple finishes to retain focus on the belongings of the tenants.

Now complete, Brick Vault House's modular system will be replicated on various other plots by the developer, and adapted to suit the specific sites.

Space Popular is a design studio founded by Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg in in 2013 in Bangkok, where for five years they taught architecture.

Other recently completed projects by the firm include a spa in Bangkok, and a video installation at the gate of a historic palace in Seoul.

Photography is by Mariela Apollonio styled with furniture by Teulat.

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