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Olson Kundig Live-Work Studio in Spain

Seattle-based Olson Kundig Architects has designed the live-work home of a photographer and his family in the Spanish coastal town of Sitges.

In Studio Sitges, Tom Kundig pursues his macho signature; large scale, raw concrete and rusty Corten steel.

The entrance in rusted Corten steel offers a large — or a normal size — entrance.

A huge door pivots on its center while a smaller door pivots inside it.

The inventive and macho door captures the casual energy of this cosmopolitan beach town thirty minutes from Barcelona, and just three blocks from the Mediterranean sea.

Kundig adopts his industrial bohemian material palette, avoiding the cloying local traditions of stucco and tiled roofs.

But a peek through the giant door reveals a reinterpretation of a more local tradition; windows framed in the small black muntins that represented the technical limitations of glass technology in the fourteenth century.

The difference is that these sweet traditional muntin windows are floor-to ceiling walls of glazing and, like the front door, pivot out on giant hinges.

The master bedroom cantilevers out over the garden patio.

Indoor or outdoor dining is an option in the balmy climate, under a cantilevered guest suite.

Down a concrete driving ramp underground are two huge double-height raw concrete spaces designed for the client’s large scale photography studio.

Each detail shows the tough, no nonsense Olson Kundig design signature.

The house is designed vertically with four floors.

Spare furniture in the double height spaces includes restored teak tables and comfortable and unpretentious leather armchairs.

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A Magnificent Porch Renovation on Fire Island

NYC architecture firm Bromley Caldari Architects razed the original front of a small house facing the beach on Fire Island and rebuilt it as a double-height cube containing an air space with hefty framing timbers.

Inside the big macho rough-framed porch is a more delicate internal porch-like space – its delicate bleached color palette suggesting driftwood and pearly shells.

Beyond that, an open plan great room for cooking, eating, reading, talking and hanging out, is also now completely open to the seascape in front of the house.

At the far end is the kitchen, where a side wall of numerous small windows now establish its casually beachly bona fides.

The magnificent renovation is of an unambitious little vacation house; a small, dark box divided into a front and back by a bearing wall/fireplace, with two bedrooms at each end.

Now it is nearly transparent.

Approaching the original back of the house, you can now see the great room and out through the new porch front to catch a glimpse of the sea.

A short barefoot walk at the back of the house now takes you to a painting studio.

What were dark bedrooms at the back have been clad in warm timber and filled with light from a full height parade of windows behind a big soft white bed.

The back yard is now an invitation to paint in the circular studio or lazily lap in its sweet sun-drenched pool.

The site is a wooded, narrow lot on the Great South Bay in the resort community of Fire Island Pines.

Like vacation homes in many now popular beach resorts, the original cottage didn’t do justice to the glorious scenery.

Now it does.

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When Busy Design Works – Arty House with a Staccato Rhythm

There is a tremendous amount of graphic interest in extensive trellis work in this single family renovation by John Grable Architects.

The busy dappling of a retained old oak tree is repeated in shadows on the pool and in an abundance of little trellis outcroppings.

All the arbors and overhangs have the effect of filtering the light and reducing solar gain.

Building on the clients’ and the architect’s shared love of ecologically informed design, heritage oak trees were protected during construction and entirely preserved.

The house is sustainable; powered by solar roof panels, running LED lighting and harvesting grey water for gardening.

The addition is as naturally cross-ventilated as possible in the humid heat of San Antonio, Texas, with entire walls that can be opened up to the breeze.

The new construction was built completely on existing foundations.

Soaring windows in steel framed glass are placed on a steel truss supported by wood-concrete pillar-walls.

The spare use of these three industrial materials informs the aesthetic of the artistic home, which succeeds in balancing innovative technologies with traditional time-proven structural techniques.

The exciting new space was initiated by the renovation of an existing 1948 ranch style building underneath.

All that remains of the original single storey building is now dedicated to the simple ground floor bedrooms.

The new space is both one and two storeys, creating light-filled open spaces dedicated to the social areas of the house, both indoors and outdoors.

An industrial steel tray becomes an artistic and practical outdoor fire pit.

The master bathroom is part of the original house – beautified with a facade of lovely translucent glass tiles and a translucent sink and carefully selected hanging LED lighting.

With the toilet separated from the shower area by a translucent green glass, the pure zen-like spaces are intriguingly daylit only from above by skylights.

A huge open and artistic fireplace has a glass hearth bringing light down into the small dark existing house (possibly over the bathroom sink?)

Wood from the demolition was extensively recycled and reused.

Not only is the new addition sustainable, but it is an artistically crafted series of naturally beautiful spaces.