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IKEA Inspires a Tiny House
IKEA has built a tiny home that’s living large. Refreshingly the house doesn’t skimp on style or amenities, and it has been designed with sustainability at its core. The tiny house movement — typically dwellings smaller than 500 square-feet — has been surging in popularity for more than a decade, and increasingly so in the past year as travelers seek safe, remote and compact havens during the pandemic. Now IKEA is getting on board by designing and decorating a tiny house through the IKEA Tiny Home Project. IKEA is no stranger to clever design for small spaces—but the furniture giant recently took on a tiny living challenge unlike any other it’s…
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Five LA Pavilions Balance Privacy with Nature
In Los Angeles, California, the Garden House designed by ANX/Aaron Neubert Architects is a perfect example of how a home can be both private yet fully immersed into nature. At the center of the architecture is a circulation spine, finished in a smooth exterior plaster, that connects a series of Shou Sugi Ban clad pavilions distributed across the site. The pavilions separate different areas of the home and are designed to optimally allow the surrounding landscapes to infiltrate into the home. The central courtyard is wrapped by all the rooms and can be accessed as an exterior living space. The surrounding gardens visually leak into the interiors through the numerous operable window…
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Two Shou Sugi Barns in Rural New York State
Architecture firm BarlisWedlick collaborated closely with the homeowner on this country compound located two hours north of New York City in Ancram, New York. The complex is underscored by the 1,800 square foot passive house-certified ‘Fox Hall’ home clad in shou-sugi-ban, or charred cedar. BarlisWedlick, which served as both the architect and interior designer on the project, was inspired in part by a 19th-century barn transported to the site from a nearby property. A three-story cedar tower with a sauna is connected to the main house by a bridge, while the second level features porch seating, and the third has a swing that overlooks the surrounding landscape. The historic century barn brought in from a nearby farm features…
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Maximizing a Bright Black Box in Echo Park
Built from the ground up in the neighborhood of Echo Park, in Los Angeles, the 1,560-square-foot home of consultant Melanie Ryan and architect Todd Sussman, cofounders of design studio Open for Humans, is a work of love and dedication. Though it felt like a big challenge, building a house from a design to its full form, the final product has become both their personal refuge and workspace. “Once we began our search for land, we decided on two must-haves,” Todd says: anti-isolation and views. “As the home is situated on an active corner lot, the goal from there was to privatize the street-facing sides of the living spaces and open up…
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Shou Sugi Ban Atelier in an Orchard
The architects of Dutch studio XVW architectuur designed the Atelier in an Orchard, a small building combining contemporary form with the Japanese Shou Sugi Ban technique to create a simple, cosy volume that fits perfectly into the orchard where it stands. Xander Vermeulen Windsant, founder of the Dutch studio XVW architectuur and winner of the 2017 Mies van der Rohe award, loves the element of craftsmanship in his work. This love of craftsmanship in the process of architecture is evident in the Atelier in an Orchard, set among the apple trees of an old orchard. The little building built in 2018 is located behind the Waaldijk, the dam on the Waal River, in…
