Finnish architect Seppo Mäntylä has designed an undulating wood and glass family home. Suitably titled the ‘Wave House’, the building overlooks a lake beside the town of Mikkeli in the east of Finland.
Lead architect Mäntylä describes the structure as a “log house with a twist”, and twist it does. The shape of the family home is dramatic, its curved wooden roof a masterful piece of engineering executed with aplomb by the architects. Beneath its serpentine ceiling, a large open-plan living area sits at the center of the home. Its light-flooded interior opening out onto a cantilevered deck and views of the lake beyond. True to Finnish tradition, the building also features a sauna with a single glazed wall, offering the opportunity for an indulgence in hot air and steam with a vista to nature.
Finnish architect Seppo Mäntylä has designed an undulating wood and glass family home. Suitably titled the ‘Wave House’, the building overlooks a lake beside the town of Mikkeli in the east of Finland.
Lead architect Mäntylä describes the structure as a “log house with a twist”, and twist it does. The shape of the family home is dramatic, its curved wooden roof a masterful piece of engineering executed with aplomb by the architects. Beneath its serpentine ceiling, a large open-plan living area sits at the center of the home. Its light-flooded interior opening out onto a cantilevered deck and views of the lake beyond. True to Finnish tradition, the building also features a sauna with a single glazed wall, offering the opportunity for an indulgence in hot air and steam with a vista to nature.
Chilean architecture firm Umwelt has constructed a wood house and a black cabin for a young family, on a property overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The project comprises two buildings, titled BL1 and BL2, on a spacious plot with no trees in central Chile. Umwelt designed the residences for a young family who moved from the capital Santiago to the beach town of Cáhuil, seeking a more natural lifestyle.
The main residence, BL1, measures 1,399 square feet (130 square metres) and comprises a two-storey addition to an existing bungalow – forming an L-shaped plan and creating a triangular outdoor patio in between. The older east-west wing blocks the south wind to shelter the terrace, while a pergola shades it from the sun.
he building is sited within a complex urban condition, where a fully operational Light Rail Transit Line crosses the site from above to below ground on a curved half- moon path, dividing Downtown and East Village. In response, the design lifts the main entry over the encapsulated train line. Gently terraced slopes rise up to the heart of the building, allowing for people arriving from every direction to interact with the library.
Organized on a spectrum of ‘Fun’ to ‘Serious,’ the library program locates the livelier public activities on the lower floors, gradually transitioning to quieter study areas on the upper levels as one spirals upwards.
Shangri-la Cabin is the first of a series of elevated mountain cabins designed to populate a tall native woodland. Trees dating various centuries can be found in the plot delimited by a 100-meters vertical basalt face and a stream.
This base is elevated 3 metres above ground where a light prefabricated SIP board system is installed. The system consists of a 212mm polystyrene core, a high level of insulation. In the interior of the cabin the circulation continues upwards with small level differences that categorise each space and nook; the air-lock entrance, the toilet, the room , the kitchenette and finally the sitting room at the end, with a massive glazing facing north just above the canopy.
