Articles by Cristobal Rojas

In a usual circumstance, the front of the house is the most important – not in our case. House 24 is sited on a triangular plot, a constraint that we took on as an opportunity to really engage with the siting and planning of the house – to achieve a meaningful footprint that actualised the client’s spatial, functional, and privacy requirement. Moreover, the site adjoins a lushly landscaped state land that we endeavoured to take advantage of at every available opportunity and every habitable space.

The stunning single-family residence located in North Bondi was designed both for easy entertaining and private family time. A narrow site with overlooking issues paired with a commitment to passive solar design and natural daylighting drove much of the resulting form. Due to the nature of the site, planning and time management was crucial in ensuring the project ran smoothly.

The single-family house rises from a 10-20m wide and 90m long lot in Laax, Switzerland. Local building legislation only permitted the construction of volumes aboveground at opposite ends of the property. One end of the area is situated in the “village zone”, while an “agricultural zone” surrounds the other end. Two completely opposite worlds form the context of this house.

The ordered  is a second home in Coyhaique, Chilean Patagonia, located on the River Simpson, on the outskirts of the city, 1.5 km from the city center.

The main objectives of the house are two. Firstly; that it integrates the forest into the daily experience of the user and Secondly; that it receives as much light and sun as possible during the entire day. For that purpose, the program is fit in a 2Y letters diagram that creates not only double orientations for entering the sun at different times of the day but also exposes the inhabitant to views that surround him. In other words, the extremely extended perimeter of the house and its bifurcations, in opposition to a compact organization, potentiates the experience of being, not in front of the exteriority, but within it.  More specifically, of being among the sun and trees in a parietal relationship.

The building is located on the Costa Nova dunes, between the beach and the Avenue Nossa Senhora da Saúde leading to it. The sand is cut by a wide net of wooden walkways, which go over the dunes and allow pedestrian crossing from the urban cluster to the beach. To the east, the street is mainly composed by small apartment buildings, two or three stories high. At street level there’s no actual sea view but one can sense its presence beyond the dune.

This is a renovation for our own apartment in Kanagawa. .8 (TENHACHI) Architect & Interior design reconfigured the layout of the 67-square-meter property, creating one big open space with two open box spaces. The concrete ceiling and beams are left exposed throughout, contrasting with the white walls and furniture doors that have been added. None of the walls reach the ceiling, which allows us to see that the new infill pieces are different from the structure of the original concrete.