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      Black shutters and concrete wall conceal Te Pakeke retreat in New Zealand

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      This holiday home in New Zealand by Fearon Hay Architects hides from neighbouring properties while having uninterrupted views of the mountainous landscape.Te Pakeke house is situated north of the popular resort town Wanaka, surrounded by mountains and looking out across the waters of a vast lake.
      Its owners had tasked Fearon Hay Architects with creating a winter holiday retreat that had the feel of a secluded cabin.

      However, as the site was positioned on the corner of an arterial road, it meant the house would be visible to neighbouring properties and passersby.

      With this in mind, the practice worked to create a series of layers around Te Pakeke that can provide the owners with a sense of privacy.

      An L-shaped concrete wall wraps around the front of the house, obscuring it from view. It also offers protection from chilly prevailing winds.
      Beyond the wall is a gravelled courtyard where inhabitants can sit and relax throughout the day.

      A series of perforated black screens that are each edged with brass have then been made to wrap around the Te Pakeke’s facade.

      House in New Zealand sits on a concrete plinth surrounded by trees

      These can be pushed back concertina-style to open up the interiors to the surrounding landscape – when closed, they almost completely black-out the interior and give a shadowy look to living spaces.

      Inside, the house has been finished with moody concrete walls. Concrete has also been used for elements such as the breakfast island and countertops in the kitchen.
      Textural interest is added by a boxy mirrored volume that conceals laundry facilities. The practice specifically selected a reflective material so that this part of the home would appear to “dissolve” within the interior.

      In a nod to the materiality of traditional cabins, beams of timber have been used to line the house’s ceiling.
      Tree stump-like side tables also appear in the living room, which has a plump grey sofa and metal-frame armchair arranged around a wood burner.

      Fearon Hay Architects was founded in 1998 by Tim Hay and Jeff Fearon. The practice was exclusively based in Auckland, New Zealand until 2018 when they opened a studio in Los Angeles.
      Other residential projects that, like Te Pakeke, benefit from views of New Zealand’s impressive landscape include Kawakawa House by Herbst Architects, which perches on a concrete plinth overlooking a dense canopy of pōhutukawa trees, and Avalanche House by Intuitive Architects, which frames dramatic vistas of a mountain range.
      Photography is by Simon Wilson.

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      Aurora Arquitectos transforms ruined Lisbon building into fun family home

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      A fireman’s pole lets children slide down between floors in this house that Aurora Arquitectos has created in Lisbon, Portugal.The building that the house occupies is nestled along Bartolomeu Dias street, west of central Lisbon.

      Although the structure had fallen into a state of almost complete ruin, it was purchased by a couple who wanted to establish a home where they could live for the foreseeable future and raise their three young children.

      Aurora Arquitectos was tasked with carrying out the residential conversion.

      “This is an upstream project in a time when the city has been gradually emptied from its inhabitants under the pressure of tourism and real estate speculation,” said the practice.
      “This is a project of resistance since it grows from the desire of a family wanting to remain in its own neighbourhood.”

      The original building was two storeys and measured just 60 square metres.
      As Aurora Arquitectos had to reconstruct nearly the entire building, it decided to extend the structure to create three more storeys and an extra 169 square metres of space.
      The new portion of the building has been painted bright white.

      “The family lived for some years in the Netherlands in a typical townhouse, known as a typology that has a vertical distribution of the program, so we can also say that influenced the design process,” the practice explained to Dezeen.

      Aurora Arquitectos opens up 1970s apartment in Lisbon with angular skylights and folding walls

      Inside, the traditional arrangement of rooms has been reversed. The sleeping quarters are on the bottom two floors, while the communal living spaces have been spread across the upper three floors to benefit from views of the nearby Tejo river.

      This excludes the playroom that has been situated at the rear of the ground floor, complete with curving in-built shelves where the kids can display their toys.
      The room can be reached via a fireman’s pole that extends from the kid’s bedroom directly above.

      “The family has three children and they like to spend all their time together, so the option was to concentrate their sleeping area,” added practice.
      “But once they grow up and need separate bedrooms one can transform the playroom into a bedroom, and the pole area into a bathroom.”

      As the playroom faces onto a narrow lane often frequented by pedestrians, the rear elevation of the home has been fitted with oversized privacy shutters that can be slid across the windows.
      On the home’s front elevation, the practice has simply restored the existing patterned tiles and freshened up the “Lisbon-green” paint that features on the doors.

      Rooms across all levels of the home have timber flooring and white walls, cabinetry and light fixtures. Perforated white metal forms the treads of some of the staircases.
      A splash of colour is provided by a recessed window in the kitchen that the practice refers to as “the green eye” as it is lined with jade-coloured Verde Viana marble.

      On the fifth floor is an outdoor terrace inset in the house’s pitched roof.
      The terrace is backed by a glass wall that looks down to the home’s living room on the fourth floor. Here there is a large window seat where the inhabitants can sit and relax with a book.

      Aurora Arquitectos was established in 2010 by Sofia Couto and Sérgio Antunes.
      The practice has completed a number of other projects around the Portuguese city of Lisbon – others include a brightly-hued hostel that occupies an old family home, and a renovated 1970s apartment that features angular skylights and folding walls.
      Photography is by Do Mal O Menos.
      Project credits:
      Architecture: Aurora ArquitectosArchitecture team: Sérgio Antunes, Sofia Reis Couto, Carolina Rocha, Bruno Pereira, Tânia Sousa, Rui Baltazar, Dora JerbicBuilding supervision: GesconsultEngineering: Zilva, Global, LDAConstruction: Mestre Avelino

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      Ruxton Rise Residence in Melbourne is arranged around a planted courtyard

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      A courtyard dotted with olive trees sits at the heart of this grey-brick home in Melbourne that Studio Four has created for its own co-director.Ruxton Rise Residence has been built for Studio Four’s co-director, Sarah Henry, and sits on a greenfield site in Beaumaris – an affluent suburb of Melbourne that’s host to a number of mid-century properties.
      While keeping in mind the mid-century typology, Henry was keen to create a tranquil home where she could spend quality time with her two daughters.

      “Designing for my own family was an opportunity to pare back a home to the bare essentials, and explore what is required for a young family to live minimally and mindfully,” Henry told Dezeen.

      “The house exemplifies the absence of what is not necessary, in both building form and detail,” she continued.
      “If I could summarise the objective for our new house in one sentence, it would be to create a little bit of something precious rather than a lot of something mediocre.”

      All the communal spaces of Ruxton Rise Residence face onto a central open-air courtyard planted with olive trees.
      It’s designed to act as an additional room in the house where inhabitants can gather together to enjoy the sun, or relax alone with a book.

      “Physically the house envelopes the central garden,” explained the studio’s other co-director, Annabelle Berryman.
      “It connects all internal living spaces and the design enables everyone to enjoy the house together, while providing subtle layers of separation and privacy,” she continued.
      “The landscape, and its movement and shadows, provide a calming effect that permeates the whole house.”

      The courtyard is bordered by a series of expansive glazed panels. These can be slid back to access the home’s interior, where the studio has forgone “trends and illusions” and instead applied a palette of simple and natural materials.
      “Our challenge was to design an interior that reflects the integrity of the built fabric and possesses a high level of humility,” said Henry.
      “All materials and building techniques were selected for their honesty, as well as their ability to patina over time, as it is important a house gets more beautiful as it ages.”

      A chunky grey-brick column loosely divides the living area – on one side lies a formal sitting room dressed with a woven rug and a couple of sloping wooden armchairs.
      On the other side is a cosier snug that has a plump navy sofa and a coffee table carved from a solid block of Oregon wood.

      The warmth and tactility of this table encouraged the studio to introduce a wooden dining set in the kitchen – the chairs are by Danish designer Hans J Wegner. Surrounding walls are clad in concrete-bricks, while the cabinetry is pale grey.

      All-white house by Studio Four blends indoor and outdoor spaces

      This austere palette continues through into the sleeping quarters, which are also painted grey. The same concrete bricks have also been used to form the headboard in the master bedroom.

      In the bathrooms, surfaces have been covered with tadelakt – a type of lime-based waterproof plaster often used in Moroccan architecture to make sinks and baths.
      Even the facade of the home, which is slightly set back from the street, has been washed with grey plaster.

      Ruxton Rise Residence is one of several homes that Studio Four has completed in Melbourne.
      Others include Central Park Road Residence, which has cosy interiors inspired by the Danish concept of hygge, and Bourne Road Residence, which has a stark all-white facade.
      Photography is by Shannon Mcgrath.

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      Five houses where the courtyard is the heart of the home

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      Charmaine Chan has highlighted 25 recently completed courtyard houses for her book Courtyard living: Contemporary houses of the Asia-Pacific. Here she picks five of the most interesting. As the book’s title suggests, Courtyard living: Contemporary houses of the Asia-Pacific is a compilation of houses completed in the past 10 years across Asia and Oceania that are focused […] More

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      Underground House Plan B is a hideout concept for the next global crisis

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      Sergey Makhno Architects has envisioned a subterranean concrete home built for enduring the “unpleasant surprises” that may await in the post-pandemic world. Kyiv-based studio Sergey Makhno Architects told Dezeen that the global coronavirus crisis was the “trigger” for visualising Underground House Plan B, a piece of conceptual architecture. “We realised that the world has many […] More

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      Grove Park house by O'Sullivan Skoufoglou Architects has wooden lining and verdant views

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      O’Sullivan Skoufoglou Architects has created ash-lined living spaces with expansive windows inside a gardener’s home in Lewisham, southeast London. Grove Park is an end-of-terrace house that was originally built back in the 1980s. The wood-lined rooms that O’Sullivan Skoufoglou Architects has created are on the home’s ground floor, which was extended by incorporating a small […] More

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      Timber and Indian stone tiles feature inside VS House in Ahmedabad

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      Architecture studio Sārānsh used a range of materials to create a rich sense of tactility inside this family home in Ahmedabad, western India. VS House is situated on the fringes of the city of Ahmedabad. It was built seven years ago as a four-bed home but has been reconfigured by Sārānsh. Now it hosts three […] More

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      Seven Santorini island retreats by Kapsimalis Architects

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      From converted caves to underground pools, here are seven hotels and houses on the Greek island of Santorini designed by local studio Kapsimalis Architects. Saint Hotel, Odi Stepping down towards the sea from the cliffs of the village of Odi, Saint Hotel features terraced patios with bright blue pools and white walls. In total the hotel […] More