facade

Yurika Ninomiya says good morning to busy central Nagoya from her third-floor bedroom while husband Takuya opens up the shop and gallery that they run below.

Designers Christopher Robertson and Vivi Nguyen-Robertson conceived their house as an unfolding sequence of simple geometric forms: a low concrete wall, a concrete cube, and a boxclad in Siberian larch.

The house may appear conventional at a glance, but a closer look shows how Oostenbruggen has pushed the boundaries of the traditional gabled typology. It has an asymmetrical roof, with slate shingles that extend down the eastern side to close it off completely.

“The building was essentially rebuilt from the inside out,” Webster says. Workers gutted the 1,916-square-foot residence down to its brick shell, expanding it downward and outward to reach 3,208 square feet.

"City | Inventory"

In this Facade Focus on brick, Tom Verschueren, of Mechelen, Belgium-based DMVA Architects, created a closed street-side facade with an open backside facing the garden, totally glazed from the ground up to the saddleback roof. On the street side, the only true opening is the door; the seven tall, slim windows are screened by what Verschueren calls “knitted” bricks. “In this part of Belgium, 90 percent of the houses are built with brick,” says Verschueren. “It’s a classic material that we tried to use in House BVA in a totally different way.”

This Victorian-era home in Melbourne, renovated by OOF! Architecture, maintains privacy from the street, but does so in an unusually "friendly" manner—with a giant brick wall that spells out "Hello," a collaboration with local artist Rose Nolan. The residents wanted their house to appeal to passersby, since it sits on a well-trafficked block near a café.