Touring a 645 sq ft PREFAB HOME with a Perfect Exterior! #hometour

Interior designer Hope Mendes rejuvenates a dated, 700-square-foot cabin in Northern California to use as a family hideaway.

Nestled in the Santa Cruz mountains, surrounded by old-growth redwoods, this dreamy home is a spiritual sanctuary for a creative couple.

The Alexander Construction Company made Palm Springs living accessible to the masses.

The privileged view of nature was the core starting point for this project on the mountainous region of Nova Lima, State of Minas Gerais/Brazil. An adventurer couple chose us to create this special project in such an exclusive area. At first, the site’s high declivity seemed to be a big challenge, but it was also what inspired us to come up with the implantation’s solution. Exploring its natural landscape and the Elephant’s Hill view, it was possible to set the social floor at the height limit, above the trees. The street facade turned out to be the side elevation and the main facade now faces towards the side boundary. Due to the high declivity of the area, we were able to create a 3 level house. On the ground floor: garage, laundry, and storage. On the first floor, the office was fully integrated with the living room and a guests’ ensuite. Finally, on the second floor, there’s the hosts’ ensuite, with the most privileged view of the landscape. A slight angulation to the east gave us the opportunity to have both the ensuite and the barbecue area to take advantage of the morning sun and the region’s predominant ventilation. At the same time, it helped to protect the ground floor from the sunset light using a concrete wall that blocks the sunlight inside the house. With the major orientation E-W, the house opens to the northern landscape. Extensive eaves on the north view’s perimeter protect the openings of the summer sun, at the same time as the glasses receive the necessary natural heat to naturally warm the inside during the winter.
We requested that two trees were precisely placed by the topographer in the middle of the elevated deck that connects the house to the suspended heated pool. These also work as a natural filter to the sun’s radiation, minimizing the sun’s entry in the living room and the kitchen. The 25m pool, a client wish, is a fundamental part of the volumetric composition of the house. Sustained by two concrete columns, they elevate the pool 6m above the natural floor level, providing to whom’s inside the pool a view of the treetops and the imponent Elephant’s Hill. With the capacity to generate about 1400kW of energy per month through photovoltaic panels, the house is self-sufficiency on energy, warming the pool water and neutralizing the energy consumption from equipment and artificial lightning.
Columns and ribbed slab represent the constructive system. The use of apparent concrete in the house’s wall, swimming pool, and slabs bring the timelessness wanted to the project.

Minimalism is an integral part of Brazilian design and concrete an essential component of this narrative. Combining brutalist design with contemporary minimalism and a whole lot of green, the Tunnel House designed by Consuelo Jorge Arquitetos offers the best of both worlds. Overall design of the house feels simple, clean and modern with wooden shutters […]

You’re reading Tunnel House: Brutalist Design Meets Green Contemporary Charm at this Brazilian Home, originally posted on Decoist. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Decoist on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

STUDIO BLUECERIGO This new photographic agency wants to be a place of diffusio
and creation as well as a place of life in its own right. For the
sake of integrating daily rituals of guarding into complex
working hours, a large part of the space is dedicated to the
children of promoters and collaborators. The original space has been completely restructured to create
an open and versatile place. The addition of shutters to the
openings allows to modulate the natural light, inherent to the
photographer’s work, according to a device that is both simple
and aesthetic. The space is fragmented by the implantation of “place-
objects” which reconfigure the full and the empty spaces to
offer unusual visual breakthroughs compared to the relatively
modest scale of the places.