Category: Architecture & Interior design

House IJburg

The most wonderful in a room is the light that comes through the window of the room. The sun never knew how great it was before a room was built – Louis Khan

This beautiful quote is mentioned on Rocha Tombal’s website, the architects of this amazing House IJburg, located in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Ana Rocha and Michel Tombal are masters of light, which is something that any house in the rainy Netherlands is craving for, most of the year.

Paradoxical to the closed façade (which I really love, such a bold statement!), the house really embraces natural light.

Through the careful placement of windows and walls, each floor and room has its own light intensity: very light on the ground floor, slightly darker on the first and second floor, and again bathing in light on the top floor.

Almost a shame to add furniture!

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Plus House

High in the Izu-San hills of Japan sits this amazingly simple house called Plus by Mount Fuji Architects Studio.

The brief was to design a house that sat ontop of the landscape, proving a difficult task considering the complex topography of the mountain.

Perched on a peak overlooking the Pacific ocean, these two perpendicular rectangle boxes sure stand out against the green tree tops and the surrounding traditional Japanese architecture.

The inside is just as clean, featuring a white and cool grey interior complimenting a minimalist take on furniture and fittings. The use of large windows emphasizes the weightlessness of this house, whilst recognizing the Japanese design rule of ‘bringing the outside in’.

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Blob VB3

Everyone needs a little extra space in their home and maybe you thought about an outdoor office as a solution. You will already know that most outdoor offices on the market are either badly designed, extremely expensive or both.

Belgian architectural firm dmvA designed Blob VB3, a mobile unit for the office of XfactorAgencies as an extension to the ‘house’.

The blob is mainly made by polyester, and holds all necessary items one could possibly need as bathroom, kitchen, lighting, sleeping space and several niches for storage. Moreover, the nose can be opened automatically and functions as a porch. While being closed, it blends into a complete smooth blob. It easily transportable and can also be used as an office, guestroom or garden house.

It is an impressive creation for mobile unit. You could easily use it as an office, a garden-house or whatever you want. The most exciting thing is that it can be moved to any place. Your outdoor lives will be more convenient and of homey comfort.

Photography by Mick Couwenbergh, Rini van Beek and Frederik Vercruysse.

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House in Komae

What’s up with all the white and natural light? The inconsistency of natural light and its endless shades against a white wall is what makes it so interesting. The House in Komae, Japan, designed by architect Makoto Yamaguchi, is mostly lit by natural light.

The house in Komae received an award of merit in lighting design by the 25th Annual International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) in 2008. The house includes several courtyards, curved walls and a basement. The interior space is almost free of fixtures. The illuminated courtyards and curved walls seem to work as lighting fixtures. They direct the natural light into the interior and deepen the volume of the rooms.

This house can get transformed by the changes in light and the suppression of color. Sometimes I am suspicious of color – but not white. Can white be aggressively white?

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House Bierings

I love basic forms and this House Bierings from Rocha Tombal is a good example. The timber-clad building has different shaped windows protruding from its surfaces, at various angles on all sides.

The form and orientation of the building avoid visual contact with the adjacent houses: at the ground floor the angled ceiling of the kitchen accentuates the intensive contact with the garden. On the first floor, the different shaped openings in the roof and façade offer, like “fingers of light”, varied daylight experiences.

Rocha Tombal Architects was founded in 2006 by Ana Rocha and Michel Tombal, and is based in Amsterdam. The agency is active in architecture, interior design, and urban development.

In the few years of their existence they have done some nice projects. Their Water Tower was the first project to be shown on Minimalissimo and ever since we have been big fans.

Photography: Christian Richters

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Residential church XL

The Dutch architecture agency Zecc loves minimal churches and so do we. We have mentioned their chapel some time ago and again they did a great job with this converted church in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Since a few years this church is used as a showroom for antique furnishing, a conference room and a space for small concerts. Because of these functions a floor was inserted in the church.

In the design of Zecc this inserted level is adjusted to emphasize the spatial qualities and sight lines of the church. Underneath this floor the bed room, study room en bath room are realized.

To keep the façade of the church undamaged, no window frames are added to the façade, but the inside of the enormous church is seen as an exterior space. In this way internal patios in the inserted floors are realized to provide the underlying function with day light.

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John Pawson’s Private Residence

“There are 50 different color shades of white,” says John Pawson. And you could probably only see them in an empty room. For John Pawson, architecture is about reduction.

British architect John Pawson is a master of minimalism. He is recognized for Calvin Klein’s flagship store in Manhattan and a Cistercian monastery in Bohemia. His house in London, a Zen like living space, has been reduced to its essence, as close to perfect as possible. It has false walls to hide things he doesn’t want to display. The natural light and the empty space seem to communicate more than the space that is filled up with something.

The minimalism thing. I can live a life influenced by clean design. I can resist buying things but do I always have to put stuff away? The idea is to not disturb my imagination.  It’s about trying to calm things down a little, isn’t it?

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Kanye West apartment

Being a big-ass rapper doesn’t mean you cannot have an appreciation for minimalism; check out Kanye West’s New York apartment!

West hired minimalist architect Claudio Silvestrin for the interior design of his new Manhattan loft. These renderings show the minimalist space as it was nearly completed back in January 2007.

To Silvestrin, minimalism is much more than a visual style – its’s a way of being:

It’s a reaction against todays’ noise and disorder. It’s the search for purity, cleanliness, the presence of space. It is the timeless quest for perfection.

I guess that’s exactly what Kanye West can use after a hard day of work.

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Atago House

Japansese designer Kenji Tanaka, president of Small House Design Lab, designed Atago House: a single family residence in Naka-ku, Hiroshima, Japan.

Built on just 506 square feet (or 47m2),  the house has a very small footprint. However, thanks to the minimalist interior design, the house has a very spacious feel.

The walls are covered with intelligent storage facilities, making it easy to keep the living space uncluttered.

The best feature in the house must be the long dining table – how bold in such a small space!

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Olympic Tower Residence

Mostly a white palette; polished white quartz floors and a glossy white ceiling. Then there is the clutter – no room for clutter and uncluttered access to views.  Once you are in this ultra minimalist apartment, you leave stuff behind.

Wayne Turett of Turett Collaborative Architects, considered a white quartz stone floor to open up the ceiling space. Christopher Coleman, interior designer, utilized furniture to the bare minimum for the 3,400 square-foot apartment, on the 39th floor of the Olympic Tower, in New York City.

Brilliantly bright white. It’s beautiful! But where to place the ugly stuff? It requires non attachment to clutter and a ‘chilling out’ minimalist approach. You wish stuff becomes invisible and it seems to matter less. That’s a kind of minimalism we can appreciate.

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