DPR House Renovation by MCK Architects

Located in Sydney, Australia, here is a residence completely transformed and renovated by MCK Architects, the DPR House.

DPR House from MCK Architects 
"The conceptual framework for DPRHouse was one of house as landscape, a house that would have a topography where activities were acted out on a terrain that flowed and folded and hinged, a circuit of movement was flowing internally, externally vertically and horizontally, providing a dynamic and fluidity to the plan."


BUILDER: Artechne
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER: Simpson Design Associates
HYDRAULIC ENGINEER: Taylor Thomson Witting
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: Aspect
QUANTITY SURVEYOR: QS Plus
JOINERY: DUWA
PLANNING CONSULTANT: Mersonn
HERITAGE CONSULTANT: City Plan Heritage

PHOTOGRAPHER: Willem Rethmeier & Simon Wood

Week End House 2+, a Container House by Jure Kotnik Arhitekt

Jure Kotnik has designed this two story 300 square foot container house for one of his clients located in Trebnje, Slovenia.
There are some big benefits to this type of construction: very low end-price compared to traditionally built houses, assembled within a few days, easy to move and eco-friendly to name a few.
Instead of using recycled shipping containers, Jure Kotnik uses containers specially designed for housing.
Now the big question: would you be ready to live in such a house?

Week End House 2+ by Jure Kotnik Architect:

“Sky high prices of real estate in the contemporary world have stimulated the search for and development of alternative housing solutions. One such attempt is the ConHouse system of small-size housing container units, which takes the housing/office ISO container to the next evolutionary level. As opposed to the other container projects, which mostly feed on the excess of available cargo containers, ConHouse pushes the development of containers manufactured especially for housing and office purposes.
Even though the past 20 years have significantly changed the face of architecture, the basic form of these containers has remained the same. The ConHouse system now upgrades them to enable a quality of living comparable to classical housing. This is achieved mainly through rationally designed ground plans, carefully selected materials, a well-lit interior and the customized outer appearance of individual units. By enabling its occupants to coshape their compound unit according to their particular needs, ConHouse takes after the inventive automobile industry, where car owners can choose the components they desire, and after the IKEA-developed winning recipe of interior design.
The 2+ is a two-level mini housing unit composed of two containers perpendicular to each other. It shows that a minimal number of containers combined in an innovative fashion offers fresh yet functional architectural solutions. The upper container provides a projecting roof above the entrance as well as serves to shelter the back terrace. The ceiling of the bottom container is also a terrace of the first floor.
The pink-dotted façade illustrates the wide range of possibilities for tailor-made exteriors, the choice of which is as simple as deciding about which mobile phone cover to put on. The system’s modular nature enables containers to be added to or subtracted from the compound as needed, so that the ConHouse can grow or contract depending on the actual spatial needs of the people using it. Lower prices of such live/work units make them competitive as compared to traditional housing and are intended to increase the number of home-owners, who can then use the extra cash to expand their living space or invest more into interior design.”

Villa Topoject by AND

A cedar-clad house near Seoul by Korean architects AND spirals up from beneath the ground.

The black-stained cedar panels encase the top floor of the two-storey Villa Topoject, projecting ahead of the glazed west face to provide a sheltered balcony.

Below this balcony, a decked terrace at ground floor level overlooks a shallow pool of water in the garden.

A grass lawn surrounding the house slopes onto the building to cover the roof, where a concealed, walled garden is located.

A living room, bedroom, study and greenhouse occupy the first floor, while a guest suite and storage area are buried into the landscape below.

Other submerged buildings we’ve featured in recent months include a dreamy holiday bunker in Portugal and a house in Spain with wedged concrete wings.

The following project description is from AND:
Villa Topoject:

"The house is located in a small valley in a mountainous area near Seoul, Korea. While the valley slopes up, series of houses intermittently continue facing a 3 meter wide road. Instead of making walls or fences towards the road, the house gently lifts up the topography to form private spaces inside. The house opens up toward the south view and a small creek on the side.

It is a home for a couple who wants to enjoy rural life while still commuting to the city. It is a small house, but at the same time, it is a house that entails rich stories. The residents are in contact with land like farmers; also, they observe nature like tourists.

Gradually lifted landscape of the mountainous topography becomes a floating mass over a little stream. Villa Topoject rejects the dichotomy of object building versus landscape building. It is a mutant born as a hybrid of the two kinds, and it focuses on the transformation process between the two typologies. The boundary of the site is pulled in as the topography becomes an object, creating semi private outdoor spaces. The private living spaces are formed inside. The continuous exterior spaces meet the interior spaces at all levels adding compact, yet rich spatial qualities. The boundary between exterior and interior, land and building, subject and object becomes ambiguous.

Architect:  AND – Architecture of Novel Differentiation
Eui Yeob Jeong (principal), Tae Kyoung Lee
General Contractor: AND
Structural consultant: THE Structural Engineering Co.

Building Summary:

Project Name: Villa Topoject
Location: Gyeonggido, Korea
Completion: June, 2010

Plot: 600m2
Living Area: 199m2
Structure: RC
Exterior Finish: stained red cedar panels + dryvit

Photography is by Byun, Jong Seok.

Mid-Century Ranch Renovation in Aspen by Rowland+Broughton Architecture

Denver-based studio Rowland+Broughton Architecture and Urban Design has completed the remodeling of this mid-century ranch located in Aspen, Colorado.The 3,600 square foot residence has now four bedrooms, three bathrooms and an awesome rooftop terrace with an outdoor hot tub overlooking the mountains.

Adding an entire wall of exterior glass doors to the centralized living room gives all of the public spaces in the house a strong connection to, and views of the park-like back yard. A rooftop terrace adds additional space for entertaining, relaxing and taking in mountain views.”