Mix&Match by Flavia del Pra for GAN

This product by GAN is as fresh, sophisticated and cheerful as Brazil, its country of origin. The collection adds a new twist to classic concepts with innovative shapes, copper and ceramics. Bowls, side tables for serving and presenting food, pedestals that give pride of place to a work of art or a lovely plant… Find the perfect spot and add a little everyday pleasure to your home.

Mix&Match, by Flavia del Pra, for GAN

King Albert House by ONG&ONG

King Albert House, Singapore, by ONG&ONG

Nest Collection by Form Us With Love for +Halle

This refined collection seeks to explore sheltering, in what could be seen as reassessment of open spaces. Triggered by the idea of gatherings, the Nest collection vividly plays with ideas of high and low, with seats perching on slim wood and steel legs in small clusters.
‘When extending the range, we wanted to add an unenclosed but somewhat secluded seat. The result is the new Easy Nest, a clean cut, high back armchair-a perfect covering, short of blocking your field of view.’ says John Löfgren, Founder and Creative Director at Form Us With Love.

Nest Collection, by Form Us With Love, for +Halle

La Pinada House by Fran Silvestre Arquitectos

The aim of the project is to give a new and even identity to a house belonging to the same family for several generations. The original house formed by the aggregation of different interventions at different times, with different construction systems. Each of the rooms in the house describes a moment in life of this family story. Thus it was essential to maintain the structure, spaces, uses, garden and memories, presenting them in a new way. The further layer built in the history of this place employs new volumes used for new parts of the program. In this way leisure areas are projected, containing always the scale of the building and are presented as a sort of aggregation of small parts, which draws courtyards and narrows areas, as the traditional Mediterranean architecture does.

The interior respects the intermediate levels system producing a large spatial heterogeneity in rooms with a wide variety of sizes and heights. The supporting structure of the original house is housed inside the furniture that has the same gray shade as the trunks of some of the species that inhabit the garden. The house is woven both among the trees and among the good memories that live in this pine forest.

La Pinada House, Paterna, Valencia, Spain by Fran Silvestre Arquitectos
Photography: © Fernando Guerra | FG+SG © Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

Flagship by Alfredo Häberli for Baufritz

Designed by Alfredo Häberli Design Development to showcase the exceptional craftsmanship of German company Baufritz’s timber homes, the project features a main building (“the Flagship”) and a separate adjacent structure that sits atop a wide column.

Flagship, by Alfredo Häberli Design Development, for Baufritz

Villa CD by Office O architects

The house is situated in a residential allotment with “bungalow” houses from the early sixties, surrounded by dunes, not far from the Belgian seaside. To bring the house into accordance with the surrounding houses and the environment and to answer to the building regulations, the design of the house was inspired by the bungalow typology. At first glance it looks like a single story house.

Next to the strict building regulations the residents had very specific demands; they wanted to live on the same level as the street, but they did not want passersby to be able to look inside. On the other hand they also wanted the possibility of inviting people, giving them all comfort, without loosing their own privacy.

The concept of the residence starts from a horizontal concrete plateau that cantilevers against a concrete conical wall. Underground, on the other side of the wall, two hidden rooms with patios provide a counterweight to the horizontal plateau. This conceptual approach answers the specific and seemingly contradictory demands. The bungalow is situated on the new concrete plateau hidden behind the concrete wall. It is carried by the platform, and can thus extend beyond that of the neighbors. It has a completely open view over the allotment behind the house and seems to release itself from the latter.

The original site slopes down a full level compared to the rear of the garden.The platform, a table/land, allows the surrounding terrain to remain naturally rough (another building restriction). The main living areas seem to float over the landscape. On the other side, they are embedded in the gardenscape and connected to the street level.

The plateau covers a carport situated on the lower basement level. The ramp with concrete staircase next to the slope leads to the entrance of 2 studios and the carport. For reasons of privacy, the studios with bathroom and kitchen are situated in front of the conical wall. A cutout in the horizontal surface has been made for these rooms that each have a courtyard providing air and light. This way, both studios can have big windows while preserving a sense of privacy and intimacy.

The positioning of the bungalow on the plateau creates large terraces for the residence (in the back as well as in the front) which can be used as an evening streetside terrace. The terrace is shielded by the conical wall, which is provided with a composition of cutouts devised to provide the residence with ample light, optimal view and elegant passage. This wall ensures the privacy of the residents while guaranteeing well-choosen views towards the street and the dunes.

Villa CD, Oostduinkerke, Belgium, by Office O architects
Photography by Tim Van de Velde

Exhibition: Jonathan Muecke & Juliaan Lampens

For its seventh furniture series, MANIERA invited the American designer Jonathan Muecke to a residency in Belgium. The one-week stay was to take place in specific architectural surroundings with the aiming of being an inspiring source for the designer, as Henry Van de Velde’s Wolfers House was for Richard Venlet’s MANIERA 03. From a number of possibilities that MANIERA offered Muecke, the designer almost immediately chose the Van Wassenhove House by the Belgian architect Juliaan Lampens.

Jonathan Muecke & Juliaan Lampens, Maniera Gallery

Mexican Modernism by Francisco Artigas

Francisco Artigas was a man of order. The many modernist houses he designed in the 1950s and ’60s were as strict and exacting as his wardrobe, as tidy as his soap dish. The majority of these were in Mexico City, at the Gardens of El Pedregal subdivision developed after World War II by Mexico’s most acclaimed architect, Luis Barragán. 3 Artigas reportedly designed and built more than fifty houses there, making him the Pedregal’s most prolific architect by far. 4 (By contrast, Barragán produced no more than a half dozen buildings for the Pedregal, and only one of these, the Prieto López House, remains intact.) The houses Artigas built were occupied by top professionals, business leaders, powerful political families, film stars, and other native and foreign elites. They were featured in popular Mexican movies of the era and reproduced in newspapers and magazines around the country and beyond. 5 These cool, crystalline pavilions represent the glamour, optimism, and excess of their time and place much as the Beaux-Arts mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, or the modernist villas of Palm Springs, California, embody theirs. Their architect, however, though admired by well-informed mid-century modern enthusiasts, remains essentially unknown to a larger public. He is well worth a look.

Read more: Regionalism Revisited: The Case of Francisco Artigas

Llewellyn House by studioplusthree

Working in the context of the renewal of a derelict urban heritage property, the approach to this project began with considerations of typology, density and affordability. Key to this was the appropriate adaptation of a Federation-style cottage into a home for two musicians that allowed for future flexibility, and that made the most of its constraints both of site and budget. The result is the transformation of a derelict property into an open, light-filled home for two musicians.

The starting point was a dilapidated, water-damaged house containing a warren of dark and uninhabitable rooms. The rear portion was demolished to provide a series of open living spaces in its place. Located in an area undergoing rapid renewal, the design takes advantage of the detached cottage typology. The narrow side alley, common to this type but often neglected, offered an opportunity to extend the living area to create a lightwell and wall garden, allowing light to penetrate deep within the centre of the house.

The route through the house was conceived as a journey of changing light, colour and materiality. Original Federation interiors have been restored in crisp white, whilst new elements are introduced in a restrained palette of dark timber, steel and porcelain. A contrast of light and dark materiality is used to knit together old and new. This duality continues in various material combinations. In the kitchen, natural materials are contrasted with the manufactured; such as French-polished timber veneers in combination with crisp, large-format porcelain sheets.

In the living room, bespoke joinery exploits the depth of recycled brick walls, creating pockets of storage along the edges of the tightly constrained site. Flush finishes form continuous planes from inside to out, creating one large living space that expands to fill the outdoor side alley. These new living spaces are open to the outdoors, yet tempered from the strong northern sun by the depth of a black steel awning, detailed so that it appears to float over the rear timber deck. In a minimal and modern interpretation of a traditional verandah, its glossy surface reflects the garden into the house. The dialogue between old and new continues by contrasting the roughness of aged, dry pressed recycled bricks, with glossy black steel. It is a project united by contrast – rustic and slick, thin yet massive, dark and bright.

Llewellyn House, Marrickville, NSW, Australia, by studioplusthree

Lakeside House by Shinichi Ogawa & Associates

Lakeside House, Yamanashi, Japan, by Shinichi Ogawa & Associates