Arquitectura

To achieve a path to homeownership without leaving the city or breaking the bank, three families in the sustainable design industry pooled resources to fashion an arrangement of three solar-powered, net-neutral-energy townhouses in place of a dilapidated 1970s single-family home in Brunswick, Australia.

The three arms of the Apfel House stretch out to catch the best views of Ranco Lake and the Andes Mountains.

In 2018, Pau Munar and Victoria Rodriguez bought a 5,000-square-foot plot near the beach in Son Serra de Marina, a quiet town on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. Pau, who cofounded local architecture practice Munarq, designed a lumi-nous base there for week-end surfing excursions for the couple. The home, dubbed Son Serra, is clad in marés,a local sand-stone, with traditional lime cement grout.

Northcote House by Mitsuori Architects / transition between old and new

The entrance is carved into the hillside and leads down earthen steps, past the reading window of the passage and between the two wings of the home to an entrance hall.

The backyard office looks out on a beautiful cherry tree. “I feel so fortunate that while I’m working I can see this tree and beyond it the home that Becca designed for us,” says Alex.

Floor plan of San Crescente Houses by Cristián Izquierdo

Residents Jorge Browne with his daughter in the communal courtyard that runs along the front of the structure.

“There have been a lot of low-rise, high-density developments in Santiago recently, but they are mainly governed by isolation of the family unit and the importance of the car,” says Izquierdo.

So many neighbors have stopped at the steel-slatted fence to chat about the architecture that a local radio station invited Cristián to discuss the design process on air

Cristián created slots in the rear facade so that each home’s primary bedroom could have three exposures. The voids also allowed him to install skylights that illuminate the ground floor. The detailing of the ribbed exterior was adapted from a large institutional building designed by his father—“really almost a cut and paste,” says Cristián. The overhang at the rear of the building offers partial cover for the private walled patio that each family enjoys.

The house faces the east, so in the evening, sunsets can be enjoyed from the roof terrace but the view of the city below is visible from nearly every room in the house.

The central building, housing the dining room and kitchen on the ground floor and an office and library above, is lit for the evening.

The materials create an ordered and constant geometry as the corridor moves from inside to out and back again.

The couple found terra cotta breeze block that they stained black and installed so that the pattern was randomized. The builder was a bit scandalized that they wanted to cover the view from the living room, but Tom says, "The view is here all the time and it's nice to go from room to room and discover it, then rediscover it."

The library, upstairs in the center volume of the house and lined with built-in bookshelves, offers a different cozy scale than the rest of the house.

Above the dining room and kitchen, the office provides a visually simple space for the architects to work.