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This amazing open-air bedroom could only be in the tropics. Full length windows slide all the way back to make sleeping completely open to the air.

The contemporary treehouse in Nigeria is audacious in its embrace of completely open air architecture throughout, with a roof that hovers above the structure itself. So, what does hold the roof up?

The amusing idea of the house is that the roof canopy is supported by the “tree trunks” like the top of a tree — and is entirely unsupported by walls.

In fact, some the interior spaces do have glass clerestory windows, but their generous proportions, and the fact that they continue around the entire house, gives the impression that the open balcony continues throughout.

Both wood and metal are used sparingly, to define a structure that refers to a canopy of trees above.

The kitchen is spacious, but spartan, at the far end of the upper floor which spans from the open balcony at the front, continues through the open stairways to the lower floor, the living space and art gallery, and ends here at the kitchen at the back.

On the middle floor suspended underneath are the bedroom and bathroom, still close to the adjacent jungle.

These afford the opportunity for a bath luxuriating in the open air, yet in complete privacy.

On the ground floor is just the garage, and a cool sliver of a lap pool. The exterior is clad in blue slate tiles and a chalky white limestone cools the feet as you enter the water. Above can be seen the bedroom and bathroom.

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This Jungle Treehouse Apes Trees

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A revolutionary modular housing invention from Mima Architects could change the way we buy houses. The approachable appeal of clean universal design is just one aspect of the genius of their invention; the MIMA House.

Their beautiful prefab – inspired by the traditional Japanese house, the perfect paradigm for lightness, flexibility, comfort and pleasing lines – is very easily re arranged, in any way that you want, to change the layout.

The exterior window panels can be interspersed with solid panels, in any combination.

The restrained order of Japanese standardized building components appealed to MIMA architects. Based on the modular Japanese Tatami mat, Japanese construction is informed by a deeply rooted culture, confirmed over the centuries, that can easily adapt to new requirements.

Mima have come up with something revolutionary. Finally, a house you can practically put together yourself in an afternoon or two. Really. The MIMA House is modular (see the grooves in the floor?) Walls just snap in.

Extraordinarily, the quality of the component parts is superb. Mima was determined to create a flexible, light and cheap yet high quality product, that could be put together quickly.

MIMA starts from the clean sophisticated design and bright open spaces of the IKEA-like sensibility of sensible democratic frugality.

The exterior shape, a simple square, cannot be changed. But the complete flexibility of the internal walls and windows mean that the house can be customized to work in any site.

The idea was to try and launch a house which could cost as little as a mid-range car.

It’s not much bigger than a car either. At just 36 square meters, the dwelling is pretty compact.

But as a result, the MIMA House is a starter home that will not have you in hock to the bank for the rest of your life.

Via Dezeen

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You Just Snap Together the MIMA House

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How to design a luxurious and large vacation home – that only gets use for a few months each year? It needs to be securely locked up when not in use.

The architect, Jose Kos, makes use of one of the most industrial of solutions to zip it up when not in use – the roll up industry-sized garage door. Several huge rollup doors completely seal up the home like a gigantic warehouse.

Sited near the city of Rio de Janeiro, the house sits on a hillside sculpted into flat lawns so the family’s children can play games.

It is a perfect white cube, at 10 meters by 10 meters by 10 meters, perfectly proportioned.

When the house is in use, there is no hint of the stark rollup garage doors.

It is simply a large and elegant architectural home set on a generous rolling flat lawn designed for the games of children.

The transitional space shaded by a concrete pergola expands the dwelling spaces through the huge windows out to a sheltered two story porch area.

Interior fittings are unadorned industrial steel to match the fold up doors.

Similarly, the windows are framed in commercial window casements.

With the three rollup doors up, there is no hint of a garage-like space within. But this entire space is enclosed when they are closed up.

The interiors all are aligned facing the best view, towards the rising sun, making it easy to close up the house till next year.

The entrance is marked by a bright green retaining wall, which links an existing rock to the upper site limit, celebrating the entry, while while separating the house from the rainy winds and the neighbors’ views.

For ten months, between visits, the vacation home is closed up securely.

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White Cube Vacation Home Zips Closed When Not in Use

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You’d think you couldn’t go wrong choosing a selection of beiges to coordinate throughout your home, right?

But then you get those beiges on the wall, and somehow they manage to clash horribly. Or they clash with your beige couch, or your beige carpet.

Why does this happen? In a word, undertones.

Every paint color, even neutrals like whites, beiges and grays have tones. These include mass tones and undertones. Mass tones are the predominant color you see when you look at a color.  So the predominant color you see in a beige might be beige. The predominant color you see in a white might be white. But the undertone is the color that is the hint of another color you may see peeking through that first shade.

In a seafoam green, for example, a mass tone might be the green. The undertone is blue. In an olive green, a mass tone might be green, but the undertone would be yellow.

Can you see the undertones in the gray pictured below?

If we were to take a guess from the picture (undertones can look different depending on the time of day and surrounding colors) we’d say this was a warm gray with yellow/green undertones. That’s why it works so well with the accent colors of ivory and yellow in the room.

Most color schemes work best when the undertone is the same. And when you pair colors in the same family that seem to clash when combined together, what you’ve got is a clash of undertones. That explains why some pinkish beiges just don’t seem to work with yellowish beiges or greenish beiges. It also explains why some warm whites with a hint of yellow look odd when combined with cool whites with a hint of blue. It also explains how you can take a certain gray couch, pair it with a gray wall and feel that the color of each has completely changed. Because when you see different colors in the same family paired together, the undertones tend to come jumping out.

Here’s an example of a room with clashing undertones:

The comforter on the bed is yellow with yellow undertones. The taupe/beige walls have pink undertones. While you’re not likely to go screaming out of the room due to its decor, you may feel that something is “off” if you spend time in the room.

How can you learn to recognize undertones in paints before you make a big mistake?

1) Try spreading paint out very thin on a drop cloth. The undertone becomes more apparent as the color becomes more sheer.
2) Compare the color to other shades. Grab a color chart and compare different reds to each other and to a “true” red. You will quickly see that some reds have undertones of yellow and will appear closer to an orange red, while some reds have undertones of blue and will look more violet.
3) Compare your hue to complementary hues. Complementary hues intensify each other. So a great way to tell if a beige has pinkish, yellowish or greenish undertones is to compare it to other hues, like red, yellow or green. If your beige has pink in it, it will appear brighter next to a green than a red or yellow. If your gray has blue in it, you will see it more clearly when it is compared to an orange.

It may take a little practice, but once you’ve learned how to see undertones in paint you’ll find that you can coordinate fabrics, accents, rugs and paint combinations without fear! One other note about undertones: while maintaining consistent undertones is a great rule of thumb, remember that all rules can be broken at the right time and with the right intention.

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Design Dilemma: Understanding Undertones in Paint Colors

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Curved houses can be at risk of being just a little hokey. But here is one from Sarasota, Florida, that carries it off. There is nothing hobbit-like about this confidently executed structure.

From TOTeMS, this guest-house is sited overlooking a wide river and it offsets a bold, modern curved roof with squared-up structure at the ground level.

There is an element of the “rockabye cradle in the tree tops” here in this mezzanine bedroom, open to the living room behind the bed. What a superb bedroom!

Like an upended boat, the bed appears to be surrounded by water. But the sleeping room is high and dry, way up high in the treetops.

The view of the trees is intimate, up close.

The living room below, on the ground floor, shares the mezzanine bedroom’s view over the river. To get the big curved roof, glue-lam beams were used.

This floor offers a treetop deck as another way to meld with the surrounding.

The bathroom and kitchen are in the forested end at the back of the structure, leaving living and sleeping for the front and the  river view.

So how does this avoid the hippie look of curved houses? I think it is because the house is confidently executed. It is as if the architect is saying, –yes; we humans are part of nature. We embrace curves and randomness like nature.

But we are also sentient beings; it is part of our logical nature to create the linear, straight lines of most architecture. It is natural for us to inhabit both worlds; the natural and the man made.

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Curved-Roof Guest House Avoids the Hobbit Look

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Marwan Al-Sayed Architects designed this interesting, stark and forbidding-looking concrete house in Paradise Valley, Arizona that looks as harsh and uncompromising as the desert landscape that it inhabits.

The house is conceived as an archaic thick mass casting, say the architects. The concrete mass cools the house while cutting off views to the non-descript suburban houses that surround it.

Integral white cast concrete walls create a modern update: a new classic, Mediterranean wall.

The colors reflect the subtle colors of the native planting used throughout. The palette is restricted to a monotone – reflecting the subtle grays, silvers and green casts of the desert landscape.

The architects used a reversed living plan that makes sense in the hot dry desert climate of Arizona. bedrooms and bathrooms are underneath, on the ground level, and are semi sunken into the earth, affording privacy, shade and immediacy to the desert floor which surrounds it – rooms stay cool and intimate.

Cool light blooms deep down into the private interior spaces via deep stairwells lit by skylights above. Thick 20″ walls insulate and cool the house naturally.

Then on the upper floor above the bedrooms, the upper level affords the spectacular views of the surrounding topography, as well as participates in the constant light show of vast sky, clouds and colors that so typifies the urban desert experience.

A large shaded outdoor living room, that is cooled by concrete above and below is open to the natural desert foliage.

For the landscape, only indigenous desert vegetation is used so the demand for water is minimal. The plants are low water use plants.

An anonymous blank wall faces the neighboring houses affording complete privacy for the residents.

Almost like a sand dune baking in the hot sun, the house has an eerie sense of vastness and peace that comes from the use of the earth-derived materials, just concrete and glass, both essentially dry; one from sand, one from rocks.

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Desert Concrete is Forever

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When I saw this image, I immediately recognized the distinctive quality of Mexican architect: Sebastian Mariscal.

We have covered his work on the Southern California Green Solar House as well as his experiments with charcoaling wood to get this interesting silvered blackened wood that you see used here on the exteriors.

He takes the simplest of life’s moments and imbues them with such peace through design.

His extremely restricted palette of colors and the natural richness of darkened wood is a traditional Japanese theme.

The simplicity wakes you up, and forces you to experience life right here, in a traditional Japanese approach to design, rooted in ancient philosophy, that is needed more than ever in today’s frazzled world.

By not grabbing for everything he achieves a distinctive purity of line and serene peace. Much of the view is shut off. This enables a focus on the here and now.

He shows respect for the creators of the world’s most sustainable material, wood, by providing an opening in the wooden fence for the trees to continue to manufacture building material…

He makes the human participant in nature, sleep utterly open to the warmth of sun and sky in Southern California.

But essentially, he designs homes for families to share and experience the beauty and joy of life.

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Sebastian Mariscal: Loving Design for Humans in Nature

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Sometimes the most beautiful houses are ones that have been handcrafted by their owners. Artists’ Handmade Houses, by the NY-based landscape architect Michael Owen Gotkin, is a coffee table book that offers a peek at some early examples of these sorts of homes, built from the late-19th century to the mid-20th century.

The home of Architect Paolo Soleri in Arizona seems stilled by the stifling heat of Arizona, as if setting an example for how to live in such a climate, by barely moving.

Here his cool stone cantilevered table is the connection between the indoors and outdoors, flowing from the kitchen through to the outdoor dining room and work space in the southern courtyard.

Likewise, the wall of the bathroom also connects to the back of the fireplace in the next room and provides radiant heat in the winter. Soleri was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright and a reinterpretation of the master’s organic architecture is clear in the outside dining room and the bathroom, seemingly grown inside a cave for cool summers.

The boulders in the sunken dining room in the house of sculptor, ceramist, and tableware designer Russel Wright are evidence of the design influences imbuing his work as the result of a seminal trip to Japan in the 1950s.

On the land, which Wright dubbed Manitoga, he planted and cultivated native trees and wove stone paths around them, and even diverted a river into an abandoned quarry.

A very Japanese aesthetic informs his kitchen blending into the rocks beyond. Most of the ceramics are the artist’s own work.

American furniture designer George Nakashima embraced construction as a kind of improvisation. He built without plans, and the detailing was developed from the material on hand or that which was available.

Nakashima combined American vernacular influences and Japanese sensibilities, evidenced here in the shoji screen dividing off the kitchen from the dining room.

In all, the book lovingly details thirteen interiors of homes handcrafted by artists and craftsmen in America, at a time in the early years of the twentieth century that saw a resurgence of interest in oriental design.

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The Private Homes of Artists

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No matter how beautifully-appointed your condo or apartment, if your nights and days are filled with loud music, voices and television noise from abutting apartments, your fabulous pad is still likely to feel like a living hell.

Are there design solutions to too much noise? The answer is yes — to a point. A few design changes at home may help ameliorate noise somewhat, but in the end, the most effective strategy may be to invest in earplugs or talk with your neighbors about how they can cut back on the noise level.

Here’s what you can do at home:

• Furnish your home with noise-absorbing upholstery. You may hanker for the sleek minimalist look but a sparely-furnished apartment is more likely to create echoes which can be heard in other units. Also, sparely-furnished units do not provide much opportunity for sounds coming from other units to get absorbed. So lay down carpets and area rugs, put up heavy draperies, add textile wall-hangings, hang lots of paintings on canvas. This won’t solve your noise problem completely, but it can help.
• Install cork flooring or cork covering on walls. Cork is one great sound insulator. And the virtue of cork is that it can be used as a flooring or wall material by itself (see the picture above) or can be used underneath other materials, such as wood, vinyl or tile flooring. It is an ideal material to use because it is water and mold-resistant.
• Caulk wall-floor junctions. Careful caulking of the joint under the baseboard may reduce airborne sound transmission.
• Add wall-to-wall carpets. Again, carpeting is unlikely to totally alleviate noise, but it can help muffle.
• Insulate. You may not be in position to retrofit your ceilings and floors, but if you are, consider glass fiber, mineral wool and cellulose insulation are often in the walls and floors between apartments to dampen noise.
• Add additional layers of drywall or denser floor materials.
• Decouple. Decoupling separates parts of the wall and floor structure so they do not touch, thus eliminating a direct path for sound to follow. Resilient channels are flexible metal strips commonly used to decouple drywall from the wall or floor structure. Resilient channels and drywall should not be installed directly over existing drywall or plaster, because this may create a sealed chamber that amplifies the sound and makes the noise problem worse. If plaster or drywall is attached directly to the wall or ceiling structure, consider removing it and installing one or two layers of new drywall on resilient channels attached to the framing.
• Place gaskets behind electrical outlet cover plates. These will help cover the spaces that noise move through.
• Replace your windows. Double-paned, glazed windows can significantly cut back on noise you hear from cars, leaf and snow-blowers and other assorted street noise.

Unfortunately, there is no perfect design solution to noise problems but a combination of measures is likely to lend you some noise relief, so take heart!

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Design Dilemma: Cultivating The Sound of Silence

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(Obviously, for climates that are hot and or humid and retain high temperatures at night, making use of thermal mass to store and release heat is not a good technique.)

Notice just how thick these walls are. These would block heat transfer on hot days, as well as it would hold in warmth inside on cold ones. This level of passive heating and cooling would qualify this house for PassivHaus certification.

The bathroom has been sensitively modernized with clearcut angles to contrast with the ancient walls.

The house is set in a village on a hillside looking out towards Italy across the Adriatic Sea, yet it is a region that is not fully European.

Once a key trading port of the Ottoman Empire, the region holds that mysterious quality of in between. But somebody, in some century past, built this marvelous example of energy-efficient building that has been so beautifully modernized.

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Ancient Passive Solar Stone House in Croatia

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