a sexuality line crosses the house      sexuality has too broad of a meaning       it often remains general        it alludes to sex gender reproduction       and so on       no precise contour       makes it easy to elude       not to displace       what is the sexuality of a house       and of this house       do all water connections put together make the sexuality of the building       maybe not       the walls making rooms hiding things have to do with our sexuality inside of the house       does bathing in the morning have to do with sexuality       maybe yes       ask yourself       forgetting it is a good part of it       we do separate eating and shitting       although the second is the end of a process starting with the first        from one to the other       there is a line       invisible       in a house there are rooms without sexuality       is that so       where is my shame in the space       what is the look of sexuality       does it materialize       sexuality is made out of things that are not sexual       how can something that is made by other things be visible for itself       sexuality is crossing the walls in connection to the water line       I draft a line in the middle       there are two gogo showers in the line       to shower and to dance at the same time       to shower and put up a show of yourself       hidden and public and visible with multiple gradients      so many forms of sexuality hold on the line       not in opposition       but by degrees       and by crossing       where will I stand        I feel I am a cursor on this strip       I stop at any place on the line       sexuality is crossing the walls in connection to the water line the              ground floor has the shape of a transparent star       it could have been otherwise the house sits in the valley       outside       I walk       I walk on the nearby hillside       I see the house from above       it is an open floor plan       the second floor is an imprint       a large patio all over       the structure sitting on top is called a greenhouse       because it parts like a plant       it underlines the choice of facing four entries and four corridors and having to chose one      to decide on a room as a destination       a dramatic pick       and again sexuality is crossing the walls in       connection to the water line       vertically matching the line below       it is by chance that one sink rests outside the wall

Makoto Takei and Chie Nabeshima founded the TNA architects’ office in 2004 in Tokyo. Their work is first and foremost known for their individual homes, resulting in a search for lightness and uncompromising perfection. Paradoxically, the most prominent of their constructions occupy isolated and wild places, while the office works in the largest metropolis of the world, Tokyo. One asks the following question: does this constant search for quietness and perfection in architecture rise from a reaction to the city’s turmoil and heterogeneity? “When one reflects on the true meaning of architecture, why it exists, one thinks of the influences emitted by a construction on its context. We named this “The radiation of the building”, this “architectural something” is not something only about the sensitive or the look. An architect does not create solely from his own desires, his architecture is always influenced by external elements. It is in this perspective that we seek a potential in the ability of architecture to undergo the rules of the surrounding environment. If we simplify our architectural thinking, we could summarize it to a Chinese fan. What is remarkable in the Chinese fan is that it contains many other functions than that of fanning or bending. According to different periods, its uses varied. For example, it was used as a game by throwing it in the air or it was used to hit with, etc. While initially the functions of the Chinese fan were restricted to a specific use, other uses came along. I find that very rewarding. We hope to recreate this in our architecture.”.

This house is a composition of twenty three cubes with identical dimensions. The cube is the most basic living space created by the hand of man, a non-existent form in nature. These blocks emerge from the ground, affirming their strong connection to the site and the land itself. In order to impregnate the living blocks, each cube is uniquely carved to create openings but also to modulate, characterize, and differentiate interior spaces, creating spaces specific to each program. Solo House uses a process of differentiation within a repetitive system to create a morphological landscape connected to the wilderness of the site.

Born in 1972 in Mexico City. Lives and works in Mexico City.

Tatiana Bilbao is known as one of the most brilliant architect of her generation. She graduated from Universidad Iberoamericana in 1996 and founded the Tatiana Bilbao SC agency in 2004. Her multidisciplinary agency explores urban and social crisis solutions, both in Mexico and abroad. Tatiana Bilbao’s architecture connects elegance, modernity and craftsmanship such as clay court together with cement for Ajijic’s house in 2010 for instance. In 2009, Tatiana Bilbao received the Architectural League of New York’s emerging Voices Award and in 2012 the Berliner Kunstpreis’ honors and the Berlin Arts Prize. Following in 2014, the architect received the prestigious Global Award for Sustainable Architecture of LOCUS.

The agency’s projects are published in A+U, Domus and the New-York Times. Since 2005, she teaches architecture and urban design in several universities including Andrés Bello University in Santiago, Chili, and Peter Behrens’ School of Architecture in Dusselldorf. In 2015, he joined as a guest lecturer of Luis Kahn’s professorship at Yale University in New-York. She also created the house of the artist Gabriel Orozco in 2008 in Mexico City and her works are part of the Centre Pompidou collection in Paris.

The Geometric Forest

This house can be seen as a geometric forest. Combining a raw wood in its most natural form and an irregular lattice, it produces a loss of reference. The breeze crosses the voids of the structure, the summer sun is filtered by this mesh; between nature and artifice. The space is both delicately protected and completely open. Climbing the structure, you can reach the upper part of the house to the sky terrace, a real place of refuge. Moving around the house is like climbing a tree. Meshes, openings of the structure can become a shelf, a place where to deposit his plants. A dwelling can be revisited in a space of possibilities and tips to explore, a space where the elements, such as wind and sun, invite themselves, orchestrating softness and ease. The Geometric Forest will be a totally new and primitive living space.

Born in 1971 in Hokkaido (Japan). Lives and works in Tokyo.

According to Sou Fujimoto, architecture is not seen as a strict functional space but more as a flexible receptacle, “tolerant” as he says, and about “opportunities, clues, potential”. In fact, the architect confers on spaces only a relative meaning: it is up to the inhabitant of places to attribute to them the function which he deems most appropriate; thus, the architecture is not a finite thing for Fujimoto, it is on the contrary endowed with a “potential of imperfectibility”. The innovative nature of his work does not stem from a search for complex forms. Su Fujimoto starts with simple geometric shapes where the combinations between the parts are important. “Architecture is not a single space. It’s an “in-between” that connects one thing to another”, he explains. The spaces he creates (Center for mentally disturbed children in 2003, houses, library, museum, landscaping) are based on a fluctuation of both spatial and functional space: each project proceeds from a double movement of bursting of parts and their fusion. As a result, floating and ambiguous constructions, not only by the lightness of their structure, but even more, by the fusion of the elements on a territory thought as a vibratory field of potential relationships. The pleasure of architecture then holds in these experiences that the architect did not precisely anticipate. The Future primitive house, a concept that considers housing before walls, ceilings or furniture, comes back to the primordial idea of what Fujimoto thinks of the house, which is a space of relationship and improvisation.

Sou Fujimoto founded his Su Fujimoto Architects agency in Tokyo in 2000, six years after graduation at the University of Tokyo. Independent, he first puts his ideas into action in small habitats; then will follow larger projects (public buildings, landscaping, etc.) for which it will be awarded several times. He notably built the Dormitory for the Mentally-Disabled (2003), the Final Wooden House (2008), the House N (2006-2008), the House Before House (2007-2008); he also designed a set of 1000 sqm House habitats in Ordos in Inner Mongolia (2008-2009), the Library and Museum of Musahiro Art University. Fujimoto won the JIA Prize in 2005 for the best architect of the year in Japan, and was awarded the gold medal in 2006 by the Tokyo Society of Architects and Building Engineers.

Using the shape of terrain to become a driving force in the design has given us a zig-zag shaped building volume consisting of three parts. First the entrance patio with a small circular pool, a sauna and an open fireplace in the middle, with the best view to both directions. Then the kitchen and the living room to the north including an open terrace at the end with a submerged firepit and seating. Finally, on the southern side of the patio, behind the sauna comes the bedroom wing with an outdoor terrace where one can enjoy the early mornings and the view over the mountain range in the south. The resulting geometry breaks the panoramic view into a series of sights with different angles, the one different from the other. As the building is relatively small in terms of overnight capacity, we have proposed an annex building below the lowest terrace for extra visitors if needed.

Founded in 2007, Sami Rintala and Dagur Eggertsson are experimenting all over the world architecture in little scale with installations engaging a dialogue between nature and human presence, sometimes integrating their students in the prototypes’ realization. Its activities focus on furniture design, public art, architecture and urban planning. The agency was nominated in 2008 for the Bauhaus Award and in 2009 for the Mies van der Rohe Prize.

Sami Rintala is an artist and architect who graduated from Helsinki University of Technology. He is a teacher in Trondheim’s NTNU and in Oslo’s AHO. He won in 1999 the Emerging Architecture Award from Architectural Review.

Dagur Eggertsson graduated from Oslo School of Architecture in 1992, then from Helsinki University of Technology in 1996 with a professional master under supervision of teacher Juhani Pallasmaa. He’s currently teaching architecture in Norway, Iceland and Sweden, and follows the Oslo School of Achitecture project.

Located in the heart of an olive grove, this villa consists of four identical volumes in T with green roof terraces. A fifth volume, subtracted from the ground, digs the pool. The interior of the villa offers a wide variety of framing in every nook and cranny of the olive grove, while the rooftop terraces enjoy breathtaking views of the mountains. A falsely sage geometry invaded by vegetation, with a mood of modern ruin removed from the world.

Founded by Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample, MOS is an architecture office engaged in architecture and design according to a methodology of research, expansive collaboration and extensive experimentation. Their work develops from research such as typology, digital production, structure, materials, programs and uses to extended social and cultural networks and environmental considerations. The scope of MOS research is constantly changing and expanding as each individual project engages a unique set of parameters specific to it. This process of “radical inclusion” allows MOS to participate in design on many levels – from industrial design to private residences, cultural institutions and large-scale urban infrastructure. MOS is a flexible organization based on the idea of a broad collaboration led by Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample. Each project involves a network of collaborators: artists, graphic designers, engineers, environmentalists, programmers, cost estimators among others. This framework of research and collaboration makes it possible to put in place the parameters for an inventive design, with which the projects evolve through extensive experimentation and good old-fashioned problem solving. In this collaborative structure is found a basic and physical construction of models and prototypes, both equipped with the latest generation of digital technologies and processes to internalize the various parameters to create a unified architectural expression. Successful work fuses complex structural strategies and dynamic geometries, reconciling modern building with basic buildings types as well as revealing new relationships between architecture and its environment.

One day in Villa Franja

After arriving on the top of the hill, Solo Go was welcoming the family with a sinuous wall, just behind olive trees. Once they entered, they opened all the windows and relaxed in a living space merged with the forest and embraced by the cliff. During the day, they were freely moving though the three niches of the house passing between trees and rocky masses. In the afternoon, they also enjoyed diving and refreshing in the pool filled up within the shapes of the cliff. After dinner, they decided to have a walk along the verdant and peaceful riverside, just beneath Villa Franja.

Born in 1977 in Saitama Prefecture (Japan). Lives and Works in Tokyo.

Go Hasegawa is a Japanese architect based in Tokyo. Hasegawa graduated with a Master of Engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2002, after which he worked at Taira Nishizawa Architects before establishing Go Hasegawa & Associates in 2005.

He has taught as a visiting professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, the Academy of Architecture of Mendrision in Switzerland, Oslo School of Architecture and Design in Norway, and the University of California (Los Angeles) in the United States.

He has received a number of awards, including the 2008 Shinkenchiku Prize and the 2014 AR Design Vanguard. His first monograph “Go Hasewaga Works” was published by TOTO Publishers in 2012 and his most recent publication is “Go Hasewaga Conversations with European Architects”, a collection of interviews with six European architects (LIXIL Publisher, 2015). In 2015, he received his PhD in Engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

At the bottom of the main road, through the woods, a path leads to the entrance of a pavilion. Once inside, a small acropolis appears on the top of a mountain ridge. A soft breeze blows, there is a sense of intimacy and protection. Just a few simple volumes. In the center, visible but distant, the wild landscape. A long, high plinth stretches horizontally between trees on sloping ground. Inside the pavilions, the reflection of water, fire, the brilliance of the sky, the hidden shadows. The evening light enters the high spaces, creating a shelter. The shadows bounce off the ground with chiseled relief, offering a view of the horizon, mountains, fields, woods. You can feel the fresh air while crossing the patio. When night falls, down the house and protected, we enter the cozy spaces of the rooms.

Founded by Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga, Barozzi Veiga is an architect studio dedicated to architecture and urbanism. Barozzi Veiga has won numerous national and international competitions, including the renovation of the Palacio de Santa Clara in Ubeda, the Aguilas auditorium, the headquarters of the D.O. Ribera del Duero in Roa, the Szczecin Philharmonic, the Museum des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne, the extension of the Bundner Kunst Museum in Chur, the Brunico School of Music and the Tanzhaus in Zurich.

Barozzi Veiga’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and has been published in many specialized publications. The architect studio has also received a number of international nominations and awards for their work in design, including the Ajac Prize awarded by the Barcelona College of Architects in 2007, the Barbara Cappochin’s International Architecture Prize in 2011, the Italian Architecture Prize awarded by the National Council of Architects, Planners and Landscape Architects of Italy in 2013. Moreover, Barozzi Veiga has been nominated along ten agencies for the 2014 edition of Design Vanguaurd by the journal Architectural Record. Recently, the architect studio received the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture Prize Mies van der Rohe in 2015.