INSTAGRAM PRINT GIVEAWAY: Our virtual exhibition at Nearmap NAVIG8 2021 goes live today, so we’re giving away prints from the show’s gallery. Head over to our Instagram, like this post and tag a friend in the comments. You’ll both be entered to win a print of your choice from the five featured here:
Cádiz is an ancient port city surrounded by the sea in southwest Spain. Because the city was constructed upon a spit of land that cannot support high-rises, its skyline has not substantially changed since medieval times. A portion of the “Old City,” an area characterized by narrow winding alleys connecting large plazas and markets, is seen in this Overview.
An amazing array of hills and valleys surrounds the small community of Ridgeway in Winona County, Minnesota. Located in the southeastern corner of the state, Winona County is part of the Driftless Area — a swath of North America that escaped all three phases of the Wisconsonian Glaciation. As a result, the terrain here is much different than the rest of Minnesota, which averages out to be the fifth-flattest state in the USA. Interstate 90 can be seen in this Overview, passing through Ridgeway on its 3,200-mile (5,150-km) route from coast to coast.
Here’s a selection of a few images that will be on display at our virtual exhibition for Nearmap NAVIG8 2021! Which one is your favorite?
Adventuredome, Las Vegas
Boats in Marblehead, Massachusetts
Trucks at Port of Los Angeles
Niagara Falls
Retired planes at Davis Monthan AFB
We’re also excited to announce that our founder Benjamin Grant will be delivering the keynote address at this year’s event on October 20th. Visit https://bit.ly/3vmRHm0 to learn more!
Nurjol Boulevard is a 1.3-mile (2.2-km) long pedestrian zone in the center of Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan. It runs from the Ak Orda Presidential Palace (seen at bottom) to the Khan Shatyr Entertainment Center (top), passing through gardens, fountains, “Lovers Park” and the iconic Baiterek Tower monument. Nur-Sultan, formerly known as Astana, has been Kazakhstan’s capital since 1997 and is home to about 1.1 million people.
Cologne is the fourth most populous city in Germany, with just over a million inhabitants. Situated on the Rhine River, the city is known for its Cologne Cathedral and numerous institutions of higher education, including the University of Cologne — one of Europe’s oldest and largest universities. Green areas cover more than a quarter of Cologne, which equates to roughly 800 square feet (75 square meters) of public green space per inhabitant.
If Diana Wynne Jones’ beloved Howl’s Moving Castle was set in our world, I’d like to think that Sophie Hatter’s house would be very much like this (or transformed into this, if you’ve seen the film adaptation, that is). Like Wynne’s titular Castle, the former hat factory has undergone layers and layers of tumultuous history that included a fire, police invasion and wild social events, before finally settling down to become a family home.
Located on Gadigal Land, New South Wales, the property of the Hat factory, totalling 150 square metres, is gently divided into two apartments with near mirroring plans. With an unforgettable history featured in the Australian Museum of Squatting, as well as becoming somewhat of a western sentinel to Hollis Park, the clients requested the building to be transformed into a home that would accommodate their growing family of four.
Utilising the existing boundaries on all four ends, Welsh + Major removed the romantics of what a warehouse turned residence, and instead opted for a jigsaw-esque approach in which allowed the new dwelling to encapsulate light and volume for independence and identity for the inhabitants.
Both apartments include bedrooms and bathrooms above, workspace below, with kitchen, laundry, living, and dining nestled between. The two key decisions of light and volume allowed for the architects to retain the existing sandstone wall without encroaching on the privacy of their neighbours. At the northern rear is a lightwell formed from a new framework, offsetting an existing one to create a courtyard. The gesture is complimented by the south end street-facing façade made of a perforated steel encasement that thoughtfully blends with the existing stone wall and its entrances.
Overall, The Hat Factory is texturally mended based on the poetic Japanese philosophy of Kintsugi (appreciating or illuminating remnants of history). The ground floor grounded by a concrete floor includes OSB board partitions that enclose another bedroom and bathroom away from the workspace. New industrial notes featured in the mesh staircase and silver balustrades make the exposed wall, peeling paint and graffiti intentional. Sleek and timelessness emboss themselves in chestnut timber veneer and marble joinery to blend seamlessly with external existing walls.
Meanwhile, bathrooms are lifted with a modern feel with micro white tiles glisten from floor to walls, with either a louvre window or a lightwell shower to frame the lush landscapes beyond. Where walls are too fragile to retain, they’re replaced with polycarbonate or additional masonry for soft filtering of the light — removing the all-too-cold feeling that industrial accents normally exudes.
A space that can almost feel like a manifestation of a happy accident, The Hat Factory is not your conventional warehouse turned residential home. Patchworks of old and new, it feels like an opened time-capsule ready to receive new layers of narratives ahead. It reminds me of Rone’s mansion installations in a way, for every nook and cranny offers a new detail in a different light — it’s difficult to tear your eyes away.
INSTAGRAM PRINT GIVEAWAY: Our virtual exhibition at Nearmap NAVIG8 2021 goes live today, so we’re giving away prints from the show’s gallery. Head over to our Instagram, like this post and tag a friend in the comments. You’ll both be entered to win a print of your choice from the five featured here:
In a small village in La Rioja, Spain sits a very special project. Undertaken by Hanghar, a 10 year long architectural exploration by the OWN foundation, this reconfiguration of an old stable in the village of Cameros is unlike any nearby structure typically defined by monumental, five-story tall façades in thick, stone walls and symmetrical openings.
The project consisted of remodelling the space into an area for leisure and living alongside an adjacent garden. To do so, Hanghar proposed a humble but effective intervention, one in which the traces of the old stable coexist with the requirements for contemporary dwelling.
Each floor, which has the same distribution and dimensions, is connected by a spiralling wooden staircase ending in a skylight that brings light in. On the ground floor of the interior, next to the village’s ravine, is a narrow and long space, formerly used for storing cattle and goods.
The cattle’s former drinker, a heavy, stone piece, sits on top of an articulated brick structure, functioning as the space’s washbasin. This contrast is echoed throughout the interior as organic shapes and colourful furniture sit within, a playful juxtaposition to the formal facade.
In the exterior garden, a sinuous coloured-concrete platform snakes alongside the existing vegetation. The slab’s plane is elevated 15cm above the garden’s ground, allowing for a spatial continuity with the stable’s interior and generating an exterior domestic landscape that adapts to the family’s changing needs.
OWN is a Madrid-based non-profit organisation committed to the decommodification of architecture and the built environment through alternative modes of ownership and finance. OWN works towards a post-property tomorrow that rejects social exclusion and promotes financial equity by way of partnerships, exhibitions, writings and other forms of cultural resistance. Being a for-profit subsidiary, Hanghar adheres to the foundation’s values, reporting annually to its board of trustees.