Optical GLass House by Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP

Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP have designed the Optical Glass House in Hiroshima, Japan.

.

Project description

This house is sited among tall buildings in downtown Hiroshima, overlooking a street with many passing cars and trams. To obtain privacy and tranquility in these surroundings, we placed a garden and optical glass façade on the street side of the house. The garden is visible from all rooms, and the serene soundless scenery of the passing cars and trams imparts richness to life in the house. Sunlight from the east, refracting through the glass, creates beautiful light patterns. Rain striking the water-basin skylight manifests water patterns on the entrance floor. Filtered light through the garden trees flickers on the living room floor, and a super lightweight curtain of sputter-coated metal dances in the wind. Although located downtown in a city, the house enables residents to enjoy the changing light and city moods, as the day passes, and live in awareness of the changing seasons.

.

Optical Glass Façade
A façade of some 6,000 pure-glass blocks (50mm x 235mm x 50mm) was employed. The pure-glass blocks, with their large mass-per-unit area, effectively shut out sound and enable the creation of an open, clearly articulated garden that admits the city scenery. To realize such a façade, glass casting was employed to produce glass of extremely high transparency from borosilicate, the raw material for optical glass. The casting process was exceedingly difficult, for it required both slow cooling to remove residual stress from within the glass, and high dimensional accuracy. Even then, however, the glass retained micro-level surface asperities, but we actively welcomed this effect, for it would produce unexpected optical illusions in the interior space.

.

Waterfall
So large was the 8.6m x 8.6m façade, it could not stand independently if constructed by laying rows of glass blocks a mere 50mm deep. We therefore punctured the glass blocks with holes and strung them on 75 stainless steel bolts suspended from the beam above the façade. Such a structure would be vulnerable to lateral stress, however, so along with the glass blocks, we also strung on stainless steel flat bars (40mm x 4mm) at 10 centimeter intervals. The flat bar is seated within the 50mm-thick glass block to render it invisible, and thus a uniform 6mm sealing joint between the glass blocks was achieved. The result?—a transparent façade when seen from either the garden or the street. The façade appears like a waterfall flowing downward, scattering light and filling the air with freshness.

.

Captions
The glass block façade weighs around 13 tons. The supporting beam, if constructed of concrete, would therefore be of massive size. Employing steel frame reinforced concrete, we pre-tensioned the steel beam and gave it an upward camber. Then, after giving it the load of the façade, we cast concrete around the beam and, in this way, minimized its size.

 

fonte:

http://www.contemporist.com/2013/01/10/optical-glass-house-by-hiroshi-nakamura-nap/

Mudanças de uso para edificação centenária.

 Originally a church built in 1908 and converted to a library in the 1970s. From 2009 to 2011, owner Mario Kalpou worked with interior designers Hecker Guthrie to transform the library into its current incarnation as a restaurant in Cronulla, a suburb of Sydney, Australia.

Interior Design: Hecker Guthrie

Photography: Shannon McGrath

fonte:

http://www.contemporist.com/2012/12/04/the-old-library-by-hecker-guthrie/

A Casa Celeiro, Eelde - Holanda

In Eelde, The Netherlands, there’s a house that captures the essence of ancient forms. A domestic architecture follows the shape and volume associated to a different kind of program: a barn! Despite the perceptible similarities with a traditional Dutch barn, this two-story building is all about modern details and ambiance. Let’s explore this wonderful countryside home a bit more…

A sloping metallic roof seems to float over a wooden deck pavement that surrounds the entire perimeter of this 320 sq. m. house. The access to this brilliant architectonic solution is made through a concrete path that guides our steps into an elevated platform. In fact, the so called similarity between the house and a typical barn becomes very clear from the outside: large barn-style doors punctuate the entire facade opening views to the countryside.

All the ground floor spaces (entrance hall, kitchen, bathroom, living and dining room) benefit from a remarkable facade cladding in horizontal wooden blinds that allows an efficient air circulation through a transitory covered space before entering the house.
The upper floor takes advantage of the geometry of the pitched roof creating voids and mezzanine areas above the social spaces. Four bedrooms and a bathroom complete the private zones of this stylish barn house.

But what really catches our attention is the constructive process behind this contemporary approach to a traditional form: a steel framework assumes the “skeleton” of the building while a wooden cladding works as the “skin”. Interior atmospheres follow the same organic principles: wood for ceilings and pavements. The countryside has now a new friend… a modern piece of architecture that quietly observes the change of seasons, offering its inhabitants and visitors a splendid place to enjoy the views!

 

fonte:
http://www.busyboo.com/2012/11/19/barn-house-ka/