urban design – EcoSalon

10 Urban Infills

Mike Sowden — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 19:24:33 +0000

What do we do with ugly, unused land in the hearts of our cities? You could camp there, of course – but the real challenge is to affordably fit new homes into the most awkward of spaces, and do it sustainably. In a world of custom-kit prefab housing, this is no pipe dream. Take a look at these 10 stunning examples of homes fitted beautifully into the tiniest spaces. Is one of these your dream home?

Described by the architect (who is also the owner) as “a real jigsaw puzzle“, this new residence design in Glen Park, San Francisco is dazzling inside and out. It’s deliciously airy inside, thanks in part to the huge front window and an open floorplan that makes use of every inch of the property’s modest dimensions. Lighting, heating, insulation and building materials are all cutting-edge sustainable. Why aren’t more houses like this? That’s the puzzle here.

Squeezed into a densely-packed corner of Osaka’s urban sprawl, this infill seeks to return to the qualities that traditional Japanese architecture excels at – a delicate use of space, a liberal use of light. Angled windows and multiple skylights flood the house with natural light, and are positioned to present the occupants with greenery or blue sky – no parked cars on view here (ironically, as the property is a former car-park).

One thing you can’t call this house in north London is shy. Standing proud in every sense, 76A Newtington Green Road fits into a gap just 4.8 meters (16ft) wide, hiding reclaimed materials behind an unashamedly modern exterior that dares to be different. We can’t help wondering how the neighbors feel about that…

But when it comes to architecturally bewildering the entire street, it’s hard to beat Atelier Tekuto’s “Reflection of Mineral“. Tiny plot on a street corner – and you want a roofed garage? No problem. By cutting away the front of the building an overhang big enough to shelter a car is created. Since this turns the exterior into a crazy-angled polyhedron, why not continue the theme inside? Health warning: this is not a house you should ever be tipsy in.

Finding a gardened inner-city property in London is a problem. Multiply that by a large figure if it’s a brand new residence. The elegant solution is to pinch an idea or two from those clever green roofing people, and drape ivy over the outside walls. If you’re worried those walls look a little too diaphanous for the British climate, the designers promise a sophisticated 3-stage glazing system that will maintain comfort and privacy – and we’ll have to wait until 2012 to see what they have in mind.

Potential infill sites are often deemed useless for development because there’s something in the way – and that was the dilemma facing architect Chris Cobb with this house in Austin, Texas. What to do with that tree? Cobb decided it was part of the design – and shaped the house to tuck under its branches. Wood cladding, primarily Brazilian Redwood, and dark bamboo flooring keep the house in visual harmony with its century-old neighbor.

Sometimes speedy infills are a grave concern. For cities suffering in the wake of natural disasters, architects buildingstudio have devised this template for affordable, easily-constructed and quickly-built infill housing based on the traditional New Orleans “shotgun” style. A single or double housing unit extends out towards the road, three stories high with the ground floor a communal courtyard. Air is kept moving around via louvred shutters and ceiling fans and freshened with vines and trellises, while renewable energy sources provide heating and hot water.

Is it a house? Is it a garage? Is it finished? Yes, this beautiful and wildly unconventional design from Pine Street in Philadelphia is all of the above. Drive your car into the first floor, and it’ll sink down into the hidden garage, the parking space replaced with a patch of lawn and a potted plant. Inside, the house’s 60-foot depth allows for long, spacious rooms including two guest bedrooms, and two stories of wooden solar shades ensure that open frontage doesn’t give passers-by an embarrassing eyeful.

Tackling the problem of a property that fits a curving street end is Carmarthen Place SE1 on Bermondsey Street, London. No need to worry about consulting the rest of the street, because the owners are the rest of the street, choosing a design they feel works in harmony with the existing listed buildings. Since the area has historically relied on timber cladding and shuttering, they form the backbone (or rather the skin) of these 2-bedroomed homes.

For the people at Dwell Development in Seattle, creating gorgeous sustainably-built infills is all in a day’s work – and their mantra is “we build green because it is the right thing to do”. Check out their galleries of gorgeous exteriors and interiors, and let your imagination go nuts. What would your dream urban infill look like?

Images: Inhabitat, Velux, Mother Nature Network, Moto Designshop (via Inhabitat), Chris Cobb Office of Architecture (via The Contemporist), buildingstudio (via EcoFriend), Bermondsey Street Studio (via greenfab), Atelier Tekuto (via Abitare), Studio Seilern Architects (via Inhabitat) and Dwell Development.

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17 Living Roofs: the High Tech Green Future of Architecture

Mike Sowden — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:30:44 +0000

We’ve always thought we had roofs covered. They had to be barren, hostile places the rain and the wildlife slid from before they could do any damage. Nature had no place on our roofs. Except…we couldn’t have been more wrong. A green roof may required a little extra engineering behind the scenes, but it’s far better than its non-living counterparts for regulating house temperature, filtering out pollutants, scrubbing the surrounding air, controlling stormwater run-off, absorbing sound and many more factors that impact our quality of life. A green roof is a healthy roof.

Green design is an enormously popular trend in modern architecture. Take a look at these 17 examples – some in place today, and others still on the drawing board. We may have got it wrong in the past, but we’re certainly making up for lost time…

ACROS Fukuoka, in Fukuoka City, Japan. 35,000 plants, 76 species – and the city’s best view from an office window.

Art and Exhibition Hall roof garden – Bonn, Germany.

Chicago City Hall – the coolest place to be, thanks to this $2.5 million rooftop garden (not open to the public – the 11-storey drop might have something to do with this).

California’s Academy of Sciences (SF) is covered in rolling hills – the perfect place for students to grab their lunch in the sun.

Looking like the ultimate vegan pizza, the Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Green Roof Research is a department that practices what it preaches.

Marriott Hotel, Victoria, BA. Keeping an underground car park cool in the summer, toasty-warm in the winter.

The forwarding link isn’t working, but this rooftop garden (wherever it is) found on This Girl’s Gone Green is an extraordinary achievement – it grows crops!

This design by architect Hoerr Shaudt graces the roof of 900 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago. A haven of natural tranquility, 10 floors up.

After a long, hard day in the School of Art Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), what more cathartic way to unwind than to walk all over it?

This idyllic spot may look terrestrial, but it’s a thing of the air, roofing Toronto’s Mountain Equipment Coop.

The Waldspirale in Darmstadt, Germany, is all about being unique. It doesn’t look like any building you’ve ever seen. Every one of its 1,000+ windows is different – ditto for all the doorhandles. And running along spiraling rooftop is a tree-lined garden (the wald or “wood” in its name).

Turfed roof near Gol, Norway. In days past, this sight would be grounds to condemn your neighbors as the laziest people on the planet. Now they’re obviously the cleverest (although we’re a little worried about that bowing roof).

Vancouver Public Library, Canada. Beautiful, useful, and definitely out of bounds – note the lack of protective barrier around the edge.

And now to more speculative matters. This proposed village for Heden, a sleepy cityblock in Sweden’s Gothenburg, has more than a touch of Hobbiton about it…

…as does this proposal by designer Friedenreich Hundertwasser.

Should green roofs be built to be scaled on foot? The designers of this proposal for the 2007 Fit City 2 conference in New York certainly think so – and there’s a good reason for thinking they’re right.

And finally – this example looks as speculative as they come. But it’s reality: the blueprint for the Vancouver Convention Center, currently expanding rapidly in time to host the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. The 6-acre living roof will house a whopping 400,000 varieties of native plant life – Inhabitat has a closer look here.

More information: Green Roofs (what else?)

Images: hans s / metaefficient / Deutsche Telekom / NREL / California Academy of Sciences / Inhabitat / Treehugger / pnwra / food2gro / trendir / Nanyang Technological University / sookie / Hundertwasser / IGPOTY / Terri Meyer Boake / Kjellengren Kaminsky Architecture / Ecogeek / Archidose / Inhabitat.

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