Houses: The Latest Architecture and News

Our friends from Le 2 Workshop sent us House on the Water, a self-sufficient house for nomadic life offshore. Designed as a rental house for people who want to be independent it’s available only through water. It is located by Navagio beach, NW coast of the Greek Zante island.

The orientation was developed to maximize the use of solar energy. Strong decisions and consequence in driving its proportions guarantee the uniqueness of (formo)design. Dynamic and simple form are the result of the yach architecture interpretation. The core, made of concrete, is combined with steel cantilever structures. Foundation for the house is a concrete counterweight foot stabilizet with the sea bed pile system.The floating deck, which rises with the water level thanks to the railing installed in the core structure, leads you to the stairway. The top deck is available for the residents as well.

Eco-friendly features like the water desalination, energy accumulation, ventilation methods, water recycling, heat and energy consumption, tidal and solar energy systems are all there. HotW was designed to be sustainable. It is not only the installations, but it’s form and orientation. Vertical lines on the facade are the rails for computer driven shading system.

More images after the break.

For the Tic-Tac House, FGMF based their work on a simple everyday object, the clock. “It expresses the constant need for change: nobody acts the same way in the morning, afternoon or evening. No one even reacts the same way to different seasons… so why should our houses be always the same?” they explain. The building is a light pre-fab structure, made up of five modules. The central module acts as the kitchen and bathroom core of the house, while the remaining four rotate and can be reconfigured independently to suit the owner’s mood and the demands of the weather.

Take a look at all the model images and some renders after the break.

The HOC is a schematic design for a small (2,000sf) house in Portland, OR. Architecture W design exploration began with using children’s wood blocks to explore simple concepts of space and light and shade, whilst concurrently thinking of Mies’ experimental Brick and Concrete houses. The project builds upon the modern movement’s legacy of an architecture built on an honest expression of material, structure, and strong ties to the landscape. The House of Cards uses the building blocks of architecture; using plan and section to explore the interplay of volumes and spaces, both inside and out.

This villa is located in plot ORDOS project.

Architects: Mass Studies Project Team: Minsuk Cho, Kisu Park, Joungwon Lee, Hyunseok Jung, Sanghoon Lee, Cheonkang Park, Joonhee Lee, Kyungmok Park Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China Design year: 2008 Construction year: 2009-2010 Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm aprox