Articles by Valentina Villa

The residence is situated on a foothill in small distance from the coast on the west side of the Messinian Gulf.

This KPWT residence project offers an example of a modern house in the tropical climate country. In order to build a modern architecture in this particular area, it is not only about a form, less-is-more, clean and clear, box-like building but also, for its longevity, building needs some sun shading devices as well as a roof for the rains. This project offers architecture which is more applicable.

ACME was appointed to design a new town square, a sculptural entrance to the mall (the Shard), a library and civic centre, the David Jones department store, and a Multi-story carpark. The new centre adopts the classical idea of the town square or piazza and rethinks it within a suburban context. An inward-look¬ing 1960’s masterplan has been inverted, creating a series of public spaces to give the entire area an exterior and civic focus.

The brief of the project was to convert the basement of an existing house in Catford to a new kitchen and bicycle workshop with new access to the garden.

The project is located at Marseille Campus Luminy, in the National Park area, and includes the rehabilitation of a building in the late 60s, the creation of an extension, and its landscaping.

The Writer’s Block is a 1,500 square foot live-work loft designed as a creative production nook within a historic warehouse building. The space was purchased by a couple, one a New York Times bestselling author and the other a game designer. The unit was not intended to be their primary place of dwelling, and they approached CHA:COL for it as a compact urban getaway. Their work involved writing, drawing, music and game design within this getaway. They also needed it a place of respite between extensive book tours and travels. The loft was zoned Live-Work in downtown Los Angeles, a use set up specifically to address this kind of dual-use by artists.

The project, for a start-up salad and slow food café in the City of London, has a split personality – it is a space that both accommodates our frenetic work rhythms and invites us to slow down. It is a cafe that serves slow food fast, celebrating its locally sourced ingredients. The architecture therefore has two tasks; to address multiple speeds of engagement, and to provide a neutral framework that foregrounds the various shapes and colors of the vegetables, herbs, fruits, and grains on its menu.

The “South Wing” (Asa Sul) was the first residential zone to be built in Brasília´s original plan. The local commerce typology in that zone is defined by two stories buildings connected to each other side by side along the commercial streets between the “superquadras” (superblocks). They face the street in one side and the residential superblocks on the other side. Lucio Costa´s idea was to connect both sides through the buildings. However, over the years the most of the owners shut themselves away from the residential area, closing their “backsides” with fences or blind walls, turning their facades exclusively to the street. 

All rehabilitation services for people with mental illness are grouped in this building. The center is composed by the repetition of a 6m wide space module. A system of economic and energetically sustainable constructions, plus the domestic scale and the warmth of the interior spaces added to the relationship between building and nature, makes this a HEALTHY BUILDING.

This house is located in La Tallada, a small typical village of the Empordà in Spain. The volume to be rehabilitated had undergone changes and extensions that gave a peculiar aspect to the whole project. The purpose of this intervention seeks to strengthen the vertical character of the house which the architects found extremely attractive in the environment.