Location
Tyrol, Austria

Use
Residential

Client
Private

Status
Completed 2023

Awards
Austrian Passivhaus Award 2024

Photography
© David Schreyer

The Maximilian House consists of both a renovation and an extension, transforming a single family dwelling into a multi-generation house that follows the passive house standard. Located in the midst of the Tyrolean Alps, the building takes advantage of the stunning surrounding landscape by thoroughly framing the views from within and hence creating smooth transitions from the internal to the external.

Set over multiple stories, the building has been designed to allow for various family constellations and their transformations over time, creating an accessible and inclusive living environment. Due to a flexible layout, the floor plan can be adapted to each individual user and their desired way of inhabitation. The use of local building materials combined with an ecological timber construction, were further factors that informed the overall design approach.

Location
Hamburg , Germany

Use
Residential

Client
Private

Status
Under Construction

Step Terrace is a terraced house extension and front garden landscaping project for a family home in Hamburg. Located across the city’s international airport in the urban quarter Fuhlsbüttel, the intervention responds to the neighbourhood’s typical townscape of green front gardens through a series of stepping planting platforms that maximise rainwater permeability and biodiversity. The extension allows for flexibility and can be transformed into both an addition to the internal living space as well as a covered yard and therefore accommodates individual user requirements that may change over time.

Location
Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia

Use
Residential

Client
Private

Status
Under Construction

The Terasek House has been designed with an emphasis on tropical architecture, drawing strongly from Malaysian vernacular architectural elements to reimagine the terraced house.

The key feature of the house are the two full height internal courtyards with a louvered curtain walling system that encourages natural ventilation and natural light into the deep plan of the terraced house. The louvered curtain walling systems allows for the flexibility of privacy depending on how the rooms are being used.

The design aim is to create a built environment that seamlessly transitions between the raw structural elements that have been intentionally left exposed and the finished architectural elements.

Location
Innsbruck, Austria

Use
Public Realm

Client
Municipality of Innsbruck

Status
Concept Design

QUERFELD is a proposal for the redesign of the Cathedral Square in the old town of Innsbruck revisiting aspects of the everyday life in the city by introducing an accessible, inclusive and ecologically sensible environment. The public realm intervention consists of an urban oasis, which frames the impressive views of the cathedral and the square creating a place to meet and linger for all. Starting with a spacious and accessible area that connects the cathedral and the square, the new public space welcomes visitors with exposed elevated lawns that transition into smaller green islands towards the central fountain.

The diagonal alignments of the surrounding buildings, which divide the Cathedral Square into different yet coherent zones, generate spaces for contemplation, gathering and activities that can be discovered and explored individually by each user. The individual green islands respond to the surrounding existing context and offer areas for both encounter and retreat.

The design aims to improve the urban climate and thus counteracts urban overheating. The deep strips and islands consist of bioretention planters that improve evaporative cooling by absorbing and temporarily storing rainwater before it seeps back into the ground. To achieve successful rainwater management and to introduce biodiversity, a regenerative planting strategy has been integrated into the design proposal.

Location
Tel Aviv Jaffa, Israel

Use
Mixed-use

Client
Tel Aviv Yafo Municipality

Status
Concept Design

The Cinematic Centre of Performing Arts – COPA – sets up a new cultural hub within Tel Aviv. With its Cinema, Performing Arts Centre and Educational Institute, COPA attracts various groups of users across the city, acting as a social incubator within its neighbourhood.

Being accessible from multiple routes, the elevated main entrance transforms into an open, yet sheltered plaza that activates the public square. This becomes the starting point for a remarkable and surprising journey that continuously weaves through the building.

Rising up across multiple connected platforms, the circulation through the building starts to define the programmatic arrangement while staging its occupation and use. This is emphasised by a translucent envelope, exposing the building to its urban context and hence making it accessible to both its users and observers.

Like a crystal in motion with intricate and colourful facets, the façade interacts with each individual by constantly changing its appearance as one moves around. Depending on the time of day as well as the angle of perception the building glistens in different colours, offering a visual spectacle - an experience of its own.

Due to the facades singula quality of shifting colours in reflection and transmission, the building will offer a distinctive experience externally and internally. The latter distinguishes it even further as the materials ability to project colourful reflections starts to animate the building, turning it into a show of light and surprising effects.

Location
Riga, Latvia

Use
Cultural

Client
Riga City Council

Status
Concept Design

The Remembrance Sanctuary has been designed as a memorial ground that aims to preserve the essence of Latvian culture for celebration and mourning. It draws inspiration from the existing urban fabric of Riga with its multiple spires that break its relatively horizontal skyline while also taking advantage of the magical forest setting it is surrounded by.

Consisting of individual pavilions, it allows for the potential of growth and adaptation of niches over time. The intention of individual pavilions encourages a more intimate setting for smaller groups of visitors. Another critical design feature of the columbarium are the lanterns that light the pathways to the pavilions. These lanterns are inspired by the shafts often seen during the fires of Jani creating a mystical, yet comforting atmosphere as it is also known from the Night of Candles.

The construction of the sanctuary considers multiple environmental design factors. All the lighting on top of the shafts utilises special photoluminescent pigments from surrounding light sources to emit a soft ambient glow at night to provide clean energy. Solar panels on the top of the pavilion canopies provides power to light the individual pavilions. The pavilion canopies also allow rainwater to be harvested into an irrigation system for watering the foliage in the sanctuary. The foliage shown outside the site boundary in the design indicates the potential for growth to allow for carbon offsetting caused during the construction process in the hopes of achieving a net zero carbon design.

The remembrance sanctuary offers a new place where visitors can peacefully celebrate the lives of their lost loved ones, recharge and commune with nature in a design that tries to be kind to environment.

Location
Preston, United Kingdom

Use
Public

Client
Private

Status
Competition Entry

Set on top of a prominent site on a slightly elevated hill, the proposed Mosque will form a new landmark for North Preston in Lancashire.

Being not only a landmark to the Muslim community but also to the city of Preston as a whole, Islamic architectural features, mainly through the use of metal screens, have been transformed to modern, yet intricate elements on the external, while they start to reveal more traditionally within the internal.

Multiple steps and green terraces, whose arrangement derives from projections of the Islamic star, connect the elevated site with the street level. These communal spaces continue to step across the multiple external roofs, forming roof top gardens and platforms.

The dialogue between inside and outside becomes most evident in the main prayer hall with the light gradually diffusing along the dome as it penetrates through the oculus.

Framed within the subtle tones of the rendered walls and metal screens sits the mihrab, which accentuates the prayer hall with its colourful and ornamental patterns.

Location
Waghäusel, Germany

Use
Cultural

Client
Church Collective Waghäusel

Status
Concept Design

The renewal of the church and its possibilities of a wider use across the community demand a revised approach and understanding of the internal arrangement and strategic usage of space.

In accordance with Chardin's central concept of "diaphaneity", the present design pursues the goal of not fixing the divine presence to given, static conditions or holding on to them. Rather, it should be perceived as a guided direction towards God. In this respect, the design does not create any structural divisions, but rather a subtle accentuation engraved within the floorplan that manifests the various tasks of church as well as the communal and cultural programmes to be held within the space

Generated from the simple forms of the straight line and the circle, which also dominate the architecture of the existing building, the inlays accommodate different spatial constellations and start to guide the user through the different programmes. The floor plan becomes a manifesto of its own: the patterns of the inlays in the floor indicate the directions and dynamics. When viewed from a distance from above, the interwoven individual lines start to appear as one unity.

Above these perspectives in the floor plan, one will start to see the space for the church's basic functions. The spacious church interior forms a "room for rooms" for multiple purposes: the liturgia, the diakonia and the martyria. The various entrances and pattern arrangements create different journey through the space – a journey in which one can choose its individual path.

Location
Munich, Germany

Use
Leisure

Client
Private

Status
Concept Design

Being located next to the ‘Englischer Garten’, Munich’s largest park, the Beach Volleyball Centre adds to the city’s recreational facilities while also acting as training and competition ground for professional athletes.

Next to multiple outdoor and indoor beach volleyball courts, the centre also features a club house including a restaurant and roof top terrace, a fitness centre, physiotherapy facilities as well as an athlete’s camp.

The structure was designed in timber construction and complies with the passive house standard. The building’s clearly structured wooden façade consisting of vertical battens of varying density is key to the design strategy and acts as integrated sun protection. Thus, the transparency of the envelope changes across the various levels and programs within the building.

For us the park is a collective space to celebrate the transient of the local individual, the community and the sporting visitor. The entrances into the park are translated into 6 themes derived from NHS England’s steps to wellbeing. Each theme is located according to the direct surrounding context and provides a different experience and journey through the park. The visible pavilion celebrates the arrival of each of these routes into 6 differently combined elements. The pavilion is seen not as a whole building, but fragmentary through an array of interstitial indoor and outdoor spaces. Acting as a spine to the body of the park that bleeds into its landscape, folds out its boundaries and encourages changeable activities.

Memories of the park’s history are resurrected. The term “Clitter - Clite” interpreted as “Clay house” is re-highlighted using natural clay in the form of rammed earth construction. The original farmhouse timber structures are reintroduced and reinterpreted to form fragments of the new pavilion. The geometry of a traditional football pitch is playfully deconstructed in a grid informing the spatial organisation and landscaping. The pavilion’s lifecycle is regenerative, not only through the architectural interventions such as rainwater harvesting but also through the notion of communal growth by encouraging local farming of produce and natural wilding. To promote an ever-growing community for Brent Cross.

The pavilion is a collective, a place for all

Being a city shaped by constant migration, Istanbul’s population has been fostered by uprootedness and a constant search for belonging, hence putting forward the question of identity and communality.

The project aims to return to the neighbourhood, what is known as the Mahalle, and to allow for the re-establishment of communities from within. This could be seen as an attempt to slowly deconstruct the institutionally constructed conservative religious class and to allow for a new unified urban form to emerge.

Moving away from the street, it introduces the block as a new urban model to allow for more communal forms of inhabitation. Boundaries are defined by thick walls, introverting the block towards courtyards and the square.