COMMENT: Again – the space time continuum rears its head in architecture…
CONTEMPORIST.
Simon Winstanley Architects have completed the Deepstone house in south west Scotland.
Full description after the photos….
The Deepstone House by Simon Winstanley Architects
The house is located on a spectacular site overlooking the Solway Firth in south west Scotland.
The site is a steeply sloping, former quarry in a National Scenic Area which slopes steeply in two directions from the quarry base which forms the only level ground access.
The house is conceived as a stone plinth which echos the exposed quarry face and houses the bedrooms with a garage & entrance under at the level of the quarry base. The principal living accommodation is expressed as a lightweight glazed ‘pavilion’ sitting on the solid plinth. It is set back to form an external terrace facing the sea and to reduce the apparent mass of the house.
The glazed pavilion is constructed with a steel frame and highly insulated timber infill panels clad in cedar and triple glazed windows. The roof, although thick internally to provide very high levels of insulation, is cantilevered on all sides with projecting expressed douglas fir rafters to give a thin, elegant leading edge.
The roof is finished in standing seem pre-fabricated grey zinc. The masonry base is finished in stone from re-cycled quarry waste.
The design uses the most energy efficient construction & technology where possible as part of a sustainable approach to building for the future:
• the external walls, floor and roof are insulated to a high standard and air infiltration is minimised.
• triple glazed windows with warm edge spacer bars, thermally broken frames and inert gas filled to achieve a whole window u-value of 0.7W/m2K.
• heat pump using a borehole as the ground source for the underfloor heating and hot water system with a closed combustion wood burning stove as back up.
• micro generation of renewable electricity using roof mounted Photovoltaic Panels.
• whole house heat recovery ventilation system.
The design met the client’s brief for a contemporary, energy efficient home which fully embraces the view and relates to the surrounding context and landscape.
Visit the website of Simon Winstanley Architects – here.
.
from BLDGBLOG
[Image: Barry Underwood, courtesy of Johansson Projects].
The Johansson Projects gallery over in Oakland is hosting an exhibition of photographs by Barry Underwood, called Earth Engines; the show also includes a series of sound installations by artist Oliver diCicco.
[Image: Barry Underwood, courtesy of Johansson Projects].
On the one hand, Underwood’s photos document an obvious artistic intervention into the landscape, in the form of embedded and highly colorful light sources smuggled into unlikely situations; but, on the other, these images imply that Underwood has, in fact, captured a previously unrecorded natural phenomenon, an unidentified electrical presence in the trees. In other words, like some battery-powered variation on “Pickman’s Model” by H.P. Lovecraft, these earth engines could, under the right circumstances, perhaps even be naturally occurring: glowing piles of uranium, say, or strange new bioluminescent creatures, unknown to science till now.
[Images: Barry Underwood, courtesy of Johansson Projects].
The juxtapositions of spectacular landforms and immersive, forested environments with these subtle networks of lighting effects—and the accompanying idea that there might be a power source shining away somewhere deep within the natural world—even brings to mind Archigram’s design for a deep-woods electrical outlet disguised inside an artificial log.
Of course, I’m also reminded of an old Paul Simon song: These are the days of lasers in the jungle.
[Image: Barry Underwood, courtesy of Johansson Projects].
So is it a Will-o’-the-Wisp or stray camper’s light? A radioactive spill or an art project?
Produce a catalog of these sorts of strange lights seen in the woods, throughout history, and you’ve got a new field of study: electrical folklore.
[Image: Barry Underwood, courtesy of Johansson Projects].
In any case, the show opens up this weekend, on November 21; stop by the gallery’s website for more details.
COMMENT:
- MONEY – SPACE – INSPIRATION -
Work like this makes me wish I had those three things…
It also makes me wish materials where lighter and stronger so the architect could make the structures stretch as effortlessly as the stroke of their pen.
This house took my breath away. Not only are the walls and roof sloped, resembling an enormous skate park, but the entire structure exudes a sense of relaxation. The pool area is even created to resemble white sand beach — who needs a vacation when you can live here all year round?
Photos by Fernando Manosalvas.
http://www.a-cero.com
