Reused Shipping Container, Wood and Concrete Shape This Cozy Refuge in Brazil

Massive counter-weighted windows encase the facade—framing views of equally enormous Douglas firs.

This lodge is a 120m2 house located in a rural scene in a southern region of Chile. The brief was to design a house with two bedrooms and two bathrooms with a main shared space, interpreting an old small traditional southern Chilean dwelling. The challenge of the proposal was to get that traditional southern look, which implies very opaque facades, but with a full translucent side where the landscape and light can get inside the building, creating its own private world. The house is placed between a forest of native trees, giving its back to the main street. So, the house is oriented to the north and west to get the most of sunlight, which this south down is much appreciated. The concept of the design is organized based on 3 contrast between old and new:
1- Removing non-structural walls and floors: the main structural shape and volume are maintained the same as the old traditional house, but the interior is liberated from any non-structural dividing element, which helped to create a clean and continuous space.
2- Concentrating the apertures: The main source of light is the north façade, keeping the other free opaque as a traditional southern house would have, so the proportion of void and mass was not lost.
3- Material contrast: Big floor to ceiling windows in contrast to recycled traditional timber shingles, an evident contrast between old and new. The distribution of the house is developed in an almost square plan, divided into three volumes:
The main one has the public areas of the house: kitchen, dining room, sitting room and mezzanine.
The east one, the widest, has sleeping rooms and bathrooms with the main access of the house.
And the west one is 1.5m wide acting as a corridor and informal dining room adjacent to the public areas of the main volume. The mezzanine is an opportunity to use the roof space, with a lot of light and natural heating, having control over the main space.

Depending on where you live and your own local climatic conditions, you are either experiencing the end of summer or the very first days of fall. Of course, we cannot get our homes ready for fall festivities once the season is well and truly here. The preparations, much like in the case of a switch […]

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This 7,000 sf house is nestled on a heavily wooded hilltop site in Ross, CA with breathtaking views of Mt. Tam and the San Francisco Bay over native California Oaks in one direction and the town of Ross through majestic old-growth redwoods in the other. The parti is a composition of simple volumes that maximizes a sense of openness to these views while maintaining privacy from neighbors and creating distinct zones within the property. Materials were carefully selected to strike a balance between a precise modernist language and the woodsy pastoral sensibility of this Northern California site. The volumes are clad in a terracotta rainscreen with rheinzink fascias. Custom aluminum doors and windows have extremely minimal sightlines. The landscape design was carefully considered to create different outdoor experiences to enhance the house. The floating master suite volume pushes out over the main living volume towards the canyon and views. The main dining kitchen area opens up to a lush lawn while the main living space steps down from a concrete plinth onto a wood floor that extends outdoors to a wood deck and anchored by a linear fire element. Guest rooms face the concrete terrace and look out over the mirror surface of an infinity edge lap pool hovering two inches above deck level. A fountain conceived as an 18″-high monolithic volume of water is visible from the entry and doubles as a spa. A home theater is located in the basement and a separate volume houses a gym area with a spa and an office for the owner’s business and his employees complete with its own private deck.