Apartments

The former guesthouse « Les Préalpes » is situated in a short distance from the famous sanatorium le Rosaire, in the Gruyère valley. It was originally a boarding house and a dairy factory. It became a place of social gathering when it was transformed into a guesthouse. Thus its social importance, the building with its location, orientation, proportions, and design stands out within the village fabric: set back from the road protected nowadays with trees, facing the alps with crafted ribbons of glazed openings, wooden paneling, and balconies.

London-based AI Studio completes ORDYNKA, a high-end residential project in Central Moscow. ORDYNKA project occupies the site of a famous chocolate factory in the historic heart of Moscow. It consists of seven high-end residential buildings connected by a spacious internal courtyard. The original facades of the factory were renovated to retain their historical appearance.

Zuiderzicht is one of the eight high-rise volumes positioned at diverse spots within the master plan by Studio Associates Secchi-Viganò for Antwerp Nieuw Zuid. The project’s position is strategic: while close to the river and within green public spaces designed by Bas Smets, you are only 3 minutes away from Antwerp’s center. With its bright colour and open appearance, the Zuiderzicht tower fits with Antwerp’s tradition of white, layered, tectonic high-rises such as the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwe Cathedral, the art deco style KBC-tower and the Police tower, and others.

Tenure blind housing to revitalise Tottenham. Apex House, a high-quality regeneration project by John McAslan + Partners, is a cluster of three inter-connected brick-clad buildings rising to a peak of 23-storeys over the junction of Seven Sisters Road and Tottenham High Road in north London. Together, a 23-storey tower, a six- and a four-storey block form a residential landmark centred on a new piazza comprising 163 apartments, sixty per cent for the private rental sector and forty per cent affordable housing. The residential-led project may also incorporate a new Seven Sisters market, reviving a much-loved local institution.

Wafra Living‘s design by AGi architects proposes an innovative housing organization in Kuwait, a new type of multi-family living as a social response to housing needs in the country. The design is guided by the requirements contemporary life while balancing traditional norms, and reintroduces urban life to the building level. Wafra Living is designed as a high-rise building set back from the street, with an L-shaped building defining the street edge. It is conceived to maximize privacy within the community, whilst providing ample natural light and usable indoor and outdoor common spaces. Cuts have been made on the ground floors of the front building to provide better views for the tower apartments.

The composition of the project aims to solve, on the one hand, the program needs of the developer in terms of surface areas and location of different houses and, on the other hand, to give a solution to the different singularities of each project such as the orientation, the implementation of the buildings on the plot, the views or, as in this case, to locate the houses adapting to the strong unevenness of the plot. The buildings are placed on the ground, adapting to the topography so that they do not interfere with each other’s sea views and that some look out over the others, with the roof being flat and landscaped.

Location and structure. The Gradmann Foundation initiated a building ensemble in the best inner-city location in Ostfildern-Ruit. The new building at a central intersection of the district shows itself as a representative prelude to the street front. The existing buildings were dismantled for implementation.