Articles by Andreas Luco

Drawing inspiration from famed artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s adobe houses and patio paintings, architecture firm The Ranch Mine has designed a modern courtyard home in the American desert southwest on the site of a former parking lot. “Weave” is a new house that stitches together modern conveniences with the southwestern vernacular in a historic district in the heart of uptown Phoenix, Arizona.

A single-family house designed in suburbia of Tokyo. Instead of regarding a suburb as a subordinate of metropolis, this young couple’s suburban life could be truly centered by working more then three days a week from home. This change made us to come up with a new (or non-modern) house-type with the same budget as the neighboring mass-produced houses. It required much more diverse spaces to accommodate their working environment and places for multiple hobbies (indoor-outdoor), without increasing total floor area.

The existing house was a low key queenslander in one of the leafy ‘O’ streets of Yeronga, Brisbane, Australia. There were issues with overland flow (the back garden is effectively a creek during storms). There was some very odd planning which disrupted the flow of the house & had resulted in a very poor use of some spaces (a small room with an 80’s type 45 degree wall on the western side).

This project gutted and re-built a classic split-level house from the early 1980’s. A long angular space was completely opened up, to create an airy sense of volume not possible in Vancouver anymore, since high ceilings heights are not allowed in any new house. Constricted stairs, dropped ceilings and non load-bearing walls between the living areas were removed, but the existing exterior shape of the house was not changed or enlarged. Old window locations were preserved to leave the house’s structure almost completely intact, and then elongated to let more light in. Since the house is on a prominent corner site, corner windows were added to create panoramic views out into the established neighbourhood.

In the citycenter of Roosendaal a beautiful urban villa has recently been completed which reflects in its architecture on the directly surrounding historic buildings. It is not often possible to create a villa of this size within the historic center. The house presents itself in a clear but quirky way in wood, steel and concrete. The width of the plot in relation to the surrounding buildings gave rise to splitting the volume into two. Parking on site has become possible because the living volume has been “lifted”.

A playful rural industrial Aesthetic. The Abercorn Chalet is nestled in the vales of the Eastern Townships, near the Vermont border. The goal was to create a unique living experience through architecture, embodying contrasts of harmony, open spaces and cozy areas. From the road, the house looks like a modest contemporary cottage.

The starting point for this project was a number of ‘givens’ including: small lot (10m frontage) with the long north side  boundary  significantly  overlooked  by  a  two  storey  house;  a  structural  engineer  client  who  had  a  family steel fabrication business; owner-builder; the Small Lot Code: and a partial architectural commission.

The starting point for this project was a number of ‘givens’ including: small lot (10m frontage) with the long north side  boundary  significantly  overlooked  by  a  two  storey  house;  a  structural  engineer  client  who  had  a  family steel fabrication business; owner-builder; the Small Lot Code: and a partial architectural commission.