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Tinder’s new headquarters in West Hollywood, California designed by Rapt Studio could be imagined as a thoughtful response to the transformative changes that have affected the corporate workplace dynamics the last few years. The seven-story, 77,000-square-foot project, handled by the same creative consultancy responsible for developing other creative spaces for the likes of Google, Dropbox, and Vans, is imagined to reestablish the pandemic-frayed ties that bind individuals into creative collaborative teams – and by extension, between the app users they seek to support – designing a multi-level headquarters layered with a multitude of opportunities for collaboration and connection.
Rapt Studio began the project by researching existing public space typologies, from the town square to the speakeasy, that empower a progressive deepening of ties that bind workers with their work in an organic manner.
Modeled after a town square, The Commons is the largest and most expansive of the spaces, and also the entry point into Tinder’s new headquarters. The airy environment is intended to encourage casual interactions and large enough to accommodate for company-wide gatherings.
The café — or “Boost Bar” — sits on the second floor, giving employees access to the skills of an in-house barista, and in turn providing an informal space to work away from the desk.
The IT help desk is fashioned after the nostalgic memories of the neighborhood arcade.
Diffuse lighting, custom modular furniture on wheels, and walls clad in top-to-bottom whiteboards all inhabit La Galleria, a room drawing its atmosphere from the workshops and displays of an artist studio.
A custom hot-pink central table with cutouts along the edges offers a surprisingly idiosyncratic hue to the space’s otherwise muted purpose.
Floor six is dedicated to quieter activities and appropriately demarcated as The Stacks, a tranquil communal space fashioned after a library.
Deep blue hues across plush fabrics, with curvilinear walls and curtains framing windows overlooking the LA skyline give the pinnacle seventh floor a nightclub vibe. Seating arrangements are situated to encourage engagement within intimate groups – a “secret” employee getaway of sorts.
“Connection is at the heart of the Tinder brand,” says Rapt Studio CEO and Chief Creative Officer David Galullo. “To design a space that deepens connection within Tinder, we looked to the places where we typically build relationships and then mapped them onto a floor plan. The end project emphasizes how design itself can be a force of connection.”
Tinder’s new HQ shares some similarities to Rapt Studio’s previous project, The Schoolhouse, a creative office for The Google School for Leaders. Each share the goal to spur informal engagements between team members by carving out both shared and intimate spaces, and furnished to empower employees to adapt those spaces to their needs on an as-needed basis.
A Brutalist-inspired apartment in the suburbs of Rome in Tor de’ Cenci recently received a complete renovation by STUDIOTAMAT. Designed for a lawyer couple, the project consisted of renovating the 120-square-meter apartment, along with a coveted 40-square-meter terrace. The Casa Rude residence overlooks the Castelporziano Nature Reserve offering both wooded and sea views, an ideal locale after years of living in small apartments in the heart of the city. Now, their space is filled with natural light, original character, and modern conveniences.
“What guided us in the design was the desire to enhance the distinctive features of the unique terraced building, dating back to the 1980s, which houses the apartment. We wanted to restore fluidity to the spaces, encourage the opening, and the discovery of pre-existing materials and details, on which to set a new vision,” says STUDIOTAMAT co-founder Tommaso Amato.
The main living area is designed much like a open plan loft with unfinished walls and the support structure’s exposed concrete visually connecting the spaces.
Paired with the original Brutalist details are a variety of tones, textures, and materials that add up to a visually enticing space. The roughness of the terracotta tiles on the oval island and concrete pillars are juxtaposed with the smooth Patagonia marble countertops that connect the two.
A custom dining table with a Shou sugi treated wood top rests on a black base and a glossy red ceramic leg for a sleek look.
A large, multifunctional birch wood cube is built to hide the pantry, hold coats, provide storage, and house a TV.
A wall of perforated bricks separates the living room and home office allowing natural light to pass through. A custom desk extends out from the built-in shelves and is held up by a circular red wheel, complementing the dining table’s leg a few feet away. The wheel allows the desk to roll along on a track to a new position.
A pivoting door visually separates the public areas from the sleeping area, which houses a main bedroom with ensuite bathroom, and a guest room.
In the primary bedroom, sliding ribbed glass doors offer privacy to those in the bathroom while allowing light in.
The large terrace features an outdoor kitchen, seating areas, dining space, and outdoor shower, all of which benefit from sunset views.
STUDIOTAMAT \\\ Photo: Flavia Rossi
Photography by Serena Eller Vainicher.
In Rome, one doesn’t have to look terribly hard to find ancient buildings. But even in the Eternal City, not all ancient buildings have come down to us in equally good shape, and practically none of them have held up as well as the Pantheon. Once a Roman temple and now a Catholic church (as well as a formidable tourist attraction), it gives its visitors the clearest and most direct sense possible of the majesty of antiquity. But how has it managed to remain intact for nineteen centuries and counting when so much else in ancient Rome’s built environment has been lost? Ancient-history Youtuber Garrett Ryan explains that in the video above.
“Any answer has to begin with concrete,” Ryan says, the Roman variety of which “cured incredibly hard, even underwater. Sea water, in fact, made it stronger.” Its strength “enabled the creation of vaults and domes that revolutionized architecture,” not least the still-sublime dome of the Pantheon itself.
Another important factor is the Roman bricks, “more like thick tiles than modern rectangular bricks,” used to construct the arches in its walls. These “helped to direct the gargantuan weight of the rotunda toward the masonry ‘piers’ between the recesses. And since the arches, made almost entirely of brick, set much more quickly than the concrete fill in which they were embedded, they stiffened the structure as it rose.”
This hasn’t kept the Pantheon’s floor from sinking, cracks from opening in its walls, but such comparatively minor defects could hardly distract from the spectacle of the dome (a feat not equaled until Filippo Brunelleschi came along about 1300 years later). “The architect of the Pantheon managed horizontal thrust — that is, prevented the dome from spreading or pushing out the building beneath it – by making the wall of the rotunda extremely thick and embedding the lower third of the dome in their mass.” Even the oculus at the very top strengthens it, “both by obviating the need for a structurally dangerous crown and through its masonry rim, which functioned like the keystone of an arch.” We may no longer pay tribute to the gods or emperors to whom it was first dedicated, but as an object of architectural worship, the Pantheon will surely outlast many generations to come.
Related content:
The Beauty & Ingenuity of the Pantheon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Preserved Monument: An Introduction
How to Make Roman Concrete, One of Human Civilization’s Longest-Lasting Building Materials
A Street Musician Plays Pink Floyd’s “Time” in Front of the 1,900-Year-Old Pantheon in Rome
How the World’s Biggest Dome Was Built: The Story of Filippo Brunelleschi and the Duomo in Florence
The Mystery Finally Solved: Why Has Roman Concrete Been So Durable?
Building The Colosseum: The Icon of Rome
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.
To reimagine a dated, 1970s ranch in Pleasanton, California, Destination Eichler partnered with Eyerly Architecture to bring this split-level house into today’s times. While the young family appreciated the 70s character of the home, they desired a fresh spin with added functionality seen in today’s builds. The updated abode now features modern details, mid-century furnishings, and a plethora of beautiful tile from Fireclay Tile.
A glass wall opens out from a multipurpose room offering views of Mount Diablo. The room’s other focal point is a double-sided fireplace that was updated with vertical wood slats and tile in a large, circular pattern.
The kitchen is renovated with light wood cabinets and a mosaic wall made with hexagonal tiles that complement the blue range.
The main living room features an angled wood ceiling and the other side of the double-sided fireplace. Clad in matte black tile, the fireplace has a minimalist aesthetic that is perfectly juxtaposed with the white walls and beams.
In the basement, which the original architect named “Rumpus Room,” a new kitchenette and bar is there to entertain guests.
Photos by John Shum.
The effects of climate change paired with the mounting accumulation of global plastic waste will undoubtedly change the landscape and scope of architecture in the decades ahead. Structures, including housing, will need to be adaptive not only in their intended form, but also in the manufacturing and material sourcing process. Noting these challenges, a 3D-printed prototype pavilion designed by architecture studio Hassell, in partnership with 3D-printing studio Nagami and creative collective to.org, propose utilizing a material that isn’t dwindling, but mounting in availability with every passing day.
Inspired by Qarmaq, a type of inter-seasonal, single-room family dwelling long used by the Central Inuit of Northern Canada, this concept interprets the indigenous architecture into a 3D-printed pavilion constructed with recycled plastic. Engineered for inclement weather and harsh local climates around the globe – in heat or in extreme cold – the small habitat combines traditional indigenous solutions with technological adaptations to permit modifications as required in response to the structure’s site.
In its most extreme iteration the pavilion will be hermetically sealed with its gently grooved exterior designed to collect snow to create natural insulation similar to the traditional igloo.
From overhead, the pavilion’s ridged design with a center skylight resembles a Danish vanilla ring butter cookie, but something more like a marine bivalve mollusk from ground level.
The shell-like design utilizes plastic refuse as a resource for construction, an idea born from conversations between Hassell’s head of design, Xavier De Kestelier, and Manuel Jimenez Garcia, the founder of Nagami, a 3D-additive manufacturing studio.
In warmer climates where insulation from overbearing heat is a concern, the Pavilion 1 can be adapted to use its overlapping fin design for passive cooling and cross ventilation, as well as water harvesting.
“The implications of 3D printing at this scale are huge for architecture and we hope we can apply this aspect of adaptability across projects,” notes De Kestelier, “We wanted a pavilion that will be able to exist completely off the grid and adapt to local climatic challenges and conditions to create as low as possible embodied and operational carbon footprint.”
Additionally, Nachson Mimran, co-founder & creative executive officer of to.org notes the project’s aim to reuse already processed petroleum-based material as “an inexhaustible resource” is vital in the realization of a “circular economy [to] reduce pollution and reverse the effects of climate change.”
Pavilion 1 is 3D printed at full-scale, using minimum energy with the main structure comprising 24 separate pieces easily transported and assembled on-site.
The Pavilion 1 in its varied imagined applications is currently only in a proof of concept state, with to.org currently seeking partners to invest in its future production and work toward reproducible scalability.
Manuel Jimenez Garcia, founder of Nagami hopes the project note only radicalizes the construction industry, but also inspires future generations of architects to invest and explore eco-innovation as a plausible element of designing the habitats of the future.
With 26 lines and 472 stations, the New York City subway system is practically a living organism, and way too big a topic to tackle in a short video.
Architect Michael Wyetzner may not have time to touch on rats, crime track fires, flooding, night and weekend service disruptions, or the adults-in-a-Peanuts-special sound quality of the announcements in the above episode of Architectural Digest’s Blueprints web series, but he gives an excellent overview of its evolving design, from the stations themselves to sidewalk entrances to the platform signage.
First stop, the old City Hall station, whose chandeliers, skylights, and Guastavino tile arching in an alternating colors herringbone pattern made it the star attraction of the just-opened system in 1904.
(It’s been closed since 1945, but savvy transit buffs know that they can catch a glimpse by ignoring the conductor’s announcement to exit the downtown 6 train at its last stop, then looking out the window as it makes a U-turn, passing through the abandoned station to begin its trip back uptown. The New York Transit Museum also hosts popular thrice yearly tours.)
Express tracks have been a feature of New York’s subway system since the beginning, when Interborough Rapid Transit Company enhanced its existing elevated line with an underground route capable of carrying passengers from City Hall to Harlem for a nickel fare.
Wyetzner efficiently sketches the open excavation design of the early IRT stations – “cut and cover” trenches less than 20’ deep, with room for four tracks, platforms, and no frills support columns that are nearly as ubiquitous white subway tiles.
For the most part, New Yorkers take the subway for granted, and are always prepared to beef about the fare to service ration, but this was not the case on New Year’s Day, 2017, when riders went out of their way to take the Q train.
Following years of delays, aggravating construction noise and traffic congestion, everyone wanted to be among the first to inspect Phase 1 of the Second Avenue Subway project, which extended the line by three impressively modern, airy column-free stations.
(The massive drills used to create tunnels and stations at a far greater depth than the IRT line, were left where they wound up, in preparation for Phase 2, which is slated to push the line up to 125th St by 2029. (Don’t hold your breath…)
The designers of the subway placed a premium on aesthetics, as evidenced by the domed Art Nouveau IRT entrance kiosks and beautiful permanent platform signs.
From the original mosaics to Beaux Arts bas relief plaques like the ones paying tribute to the fortune John Jacob Astor amassed in the fur trade, there’s lots of history hiding in plain sight.
The mid-80s initiative to bring public art underground has filled stations and passageways with work by some marquee names, like Vik Muniz, Chuck Close, William Wegman, Nick Cave, Tom Otterness, Roy Lichtenstein and Yoko Ono.
Wyetzner also name checks graphic designer Massimo Vignelli who was brought aboard in 1966 to standardize the informational signage.
The white-on-black sans serif font directing us to our desired connections and exits now seems like part of the subway’s DNA.
Perhaps 21st-century innovations like countdown clocks and digital screens listing real-time service changes and alternative routes will too, one of these days.
If Wyetzner is open to filming the follow-up viewers are clamoring for in the comments, perhaps he’ll weigh in on the new A-train cars that debuted last week, which boast security cameras, flip-up seating to accommodate riders with disabilities, and wider door openings to promote quicker boarding.
(Yes, they’re still the quickest way to get to Harlem…)
Related Content
A Subway Ride Through New York City: Watch Vintage Footage from 1905
Designer Massimo Vignelli Revisits and Defends His Iconic 1972 New York City Subway Map
– Ayun Halliday is the Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine and author, most recently, of Creative, Not Famous: The Small Potato Manifesto and Creative, Not Famous Activity Book. Follow her @AyunHalliday.
When an adjacent property went up for sale next to a young family of five, they bought it in order to create their dream Hideaway House. They hired Cera Stribley who utilized the excavated lot to design an underground living space that could house everything an adult could dream of, including an indoor pool, bar and lounge, gold room, and gym. The original home’s basement has been converted into a new guest suite and connects the house to the new underground space.
In order to maintain privacy in the subterranean space while bringing in natural light, a tall wall is spaced far enough away to allow light to filter down through the windows. A planter box adds nature to help soften surrounding hard surfaces. Whether lounging by the pool or swimming laps, the greenery makes one feel connected to nature.
Behind another wall of glass windows is a sitting area and bar, both of which benefit from the plants and natural light.
A glass-fronted wine cellar lives behind the massive marble bar. Blue leather bar stools complement the blue Cassina chairs and rug featured in the seating area.
In addition to the original basement’s transformation, the ground floor of the Hideaway House has been reconfigured to seamlessly join the backyard, which includes a tennis court.
Paola Navone brass pendants hang above the dining table, which is rounded out with Mies van der Rohe’s cantilevered chairs.
The design purposefully disguises all TVs in order to minimize the family’s screen time.
Architecture & Interior Design by Cera Stribley.
Landscape Design by Eckersley Garden Architecture.
Styling by Jess Kneebone.
Photography by Timothy Kaye.
I’m going to kick off this round of five favorites with an ultimately satisfying highlight reel of lettering artist Rachel Joy filling in the lines of her optimistic message in near perfect detail. I think I’ve watched the clip 10x already now, rewarded with each and every view of her skills applying acrylic markers onto canvas. Extra points for a favorite Chaka Khan track accompanying her flow.
I’ve always been enamored how our brains can perceive the illusion of three dimensional shapes and spaces from certain arrangements of two dimensional forms. Understanding what our eyes see and how it is interpreted by our brain is a wondrous reminder the world we deem to perceive isn’t necessarily the world as it really exists. In similar spirit designer Luiza Guidi’s illuminated sculptures offer the framework of space, light, shadow, and movement – the epitome of a mood light, by way of inspiration from the works of architects Luis Barragán and Tadao Ando.
Sure, I glance at my iPhone or Apple Watch while out on-the-go when I need to figure whether I’ve got a minute to spare. But at home I’ve strewn several wall and table clocks throughout to keep abreast of the time. The last thing I need is yet another screen. My personal preference is for analog time pieces. With their soothing seconds to minute metronome, the operate as a sort of a subtle heartbeat of the home.
The Punkt AC02’s Bauhaus-inspired design is subtly satisfying in form (love the sliver of light blue across one of the hands) and is designed to be a bedside alarm clock, and near impossible to tip over unlike plastic counterparts. In my case the AC02 is sitting in front of me as a desk-side companion, always there to remind me it’s time to eat lunch or finally log-off with nary a notification sound.
While perusing House of Spoils collection of photographic art prints – a selection strongly emphasizes people, automobiles, and the natural landscape – it was the vacant architectural patterns captured by photographer and professor of design Danny Franzreb that stopped me in mid-scroll. From several cropped perspectives, the balconies adorning the verticalities of the Spanish city of Benidorm – the city claiming the highest density of high-rise buildings per capita in the world – take on a surreal pattern representative of pandemic times within the context of an urbanist landscape. I imagine all three photos displayed as a triptych would really heighten the hauntingly desolate feeling.
Designer David Umemoto’s LEGO plans are derived/inspired by Danish polymath Piet Hein’s puzzling Soma cube, but there’s more than a tinge of Ricardo Bofill and Escher-esque architecture (or for the younger gaming set, the feeling of the impossible architecture of the puzzle game, Monument Valley) instilled into these puzzling plans. It’s like a grown-up architecture nerd’s version of a Rubik’s Cube.
Welcome Home is a recently completed project by No Architects, who designed a modern apartment for a family with small children. The Prague apartment received a reconfigured layout that includes a new multipurpose room that works as a study, playroom, and guest room. Sliding doors can close to hide the room from the living room when it’s not in use or for privacy when someone is visiting or needing to work. Even with the doors closed, the open kitchen, dining room, and living room provide ample space for the family to enjoy.
The unique kitchen boasts an oval, angled island with two bases in different finishes. The larger white base rests upon an elevated floor decked out in a patterned tile, while the wood column base sits on the main herringbone floor. The cabinets include a row of wood fronted uppers with light blue cabinets surrounding them.
The blue cabinets curve at one end, complementing the curves of the island and raised tile floor.
A double-sided, navy blue leather sofa floats in the center of the living room surrounded by built-in storage and display cabinets. One side of the sofa faces the television, while the other looks towards the windows with views of Prague.
The combo room just off the living room houses an elevated, built-in bed with storage under and behind it. On the opposite side, a light blue desk setup lives beside a large wooden storage cabinet with red legs.
The all-white hallway gets a boost from a cobalt blue console table that rests against the wall.
A seating nook with storage is built into the hallway near the front door, offering a good place to drop belongings after entering the apartment.
More wooden storage cabinets with red legs outfit the entryway.
A child’s room features a modern bunkbed that’s complete with storage, stairs, hidden lighting, and a privacy screen.
No Architects
Photos by Studio Flusser.
While we normally do not post design concepts, we couldn’t pass up the latest project from Marc Thorpe Design. Thorpe designed the Crystal Lake Pavilion as a concept proposed to reside in the West Catskills in New York on a 32-acre man-made lake. With the surrounding 497-acre Crystal Lake Wild Forest, the area offers seeps, streams, wetlands, a beaver pond, and rolling hills, all home to countless types of indigenous species of plants, trees, and flowers, as well as wildlife and insects.
The pavilion’s tranquil location, which is reached by boat, provides the perfect backdrop for its designed purpose – meditation, yoga classes, and group therapy. The glass enclosure ensures nature views from all angles for optimum relaxation.
The Crystal Lake Pavilion is made with a traditional King Post construction method resulting in a timber frame structure with light steel connections, a standing seam steel roof, and a glass skin. The volume utilizes heavy pieces of timber with lap joints and pegged mortise and tenon joints.
To elevate the design, both literally and figuratively, a solid concrete pier is set into the bed of the lake with a center post that cantilevers out to form the base. With just the single pier, the pavilion looks as if it’s hovering above the water, which creates an optical illusion that makes it appear weightless.
Architecture by Marc Thorpe Design.
Visualization by Truetopia.
There are those people that love their car… and then those that really, really love their car. The latter is the case for the owner of this vacation house in Chiba, Japan, designed by Hitoshi Saruta of CUBO design architect. The 24-sided volume resembles a circus tent, making its name – The Circus – right on point. In lieu of a typical, built-in garage, the architect opted to unite both people and cars in a unique, relaxed environment. Now, they can “spend time with cars” and appreciate them while doing so.
The dome-like space allows for all types of layouts that can easily be changed. An elevated, round table lives in the center to create the second floor, while forming a circular bar situation below.
The roof and frame give the feeling of looking up into the inside of a paper umbrella, a nod to Japanese design.
No support posts were required due to the slanted outer walls that maintain the tension.
The main floor acts as a garage and living space with all functionally lining the perimeter and central core. A staircase leads to the open, second story which houses the owner’s bedroom with a jacuzzi and waterfall shower.
Photos by Koji Fujii / TOREAL.
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I recently re-read Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture, in the third edition of 1880. Ruskin had originally published the book in 1849, when he was 30 years old, and though it had proved quite popular, later in life Ruskin was reluctant to authorize a new edition. His reason? He hated the book.
He finally gave in, but insisted to the publisher that he be given the opportunity to annotate it. The resulting ongoing ill-tempered commentary is very entertaining.
Even when he liked what he had written, he could be cynical. For instance, he approved of the glorious and justly famous passage in which he repudiates the tearing down of old buildings:
Of more wanton or ignorant ravage it is vain to speak; my words will not reach those who commit them, and yet, be it heard or not, I must not leave the truth unstated, that it is again no question of expediency or feeling whether we shall preserve the buildings of past times or not. We have no right whatever to touch them. They are not ours. They belong partly to those who built them, and partly to all the generations of mankind who are to follow us. The dead have still their right in them: that which they laboured for, the praise of achievement or the expression of religious feeling, or whatsoever else it might be which in those buildings they intended to be permanent, we have no right to obliterate. What we have ourselves built, we are at liberty to throw down; but what other men gave their strength and wealth and life to accomplish, their right over does not pass away with their death; still less is the right to the use of what they have left vested in us only. It belongs to all their successors. It may hereafter be a subject of sorrow, or a cause of injury, to millions, that we have consulted our present convenience by casting down such buildings as we choose to dispense with. That sorrow, that loss, we have no right to inflict.
On the phrase “my words will not reach those who commit them” the older Ruskin wrote, “No, indeed! — any more wasted words than mine throughout life, or bread cast on more bitter waters, I never heard of. This closing paragraph of the sixth chapter is the best, I think, in the book, — and the vainest.”
But he is rarely as kind to himself. Of a passage on the Gothic architecture of Venice he noted, “I have written many passages that are one-sided or incomplete; and which therefore are misleading if read without their contexts or development. But I know of no other paragraph in any of my books so definitely false as this.” And one of the funniest moments comes in response to a passage about neo-Gothic architecture, which was just getting started in 1849:
The stirring which has taken place in our architectural aims and interests within these few years, is thought by many to be full of promise: I trust it is, but it has a sickly look to me.
Ruskin’s comment in 1880:
I am glad to see I had so much sense, thus early; — if only I had had just a little more, and stopped talking, how much life — of the vividest — I might have saved from expending itself in useless sputter, and kept for careful pencil work! I might have had every bit of St. Mark’s and Ravenna drawn by this time. What good this wretched rant of a book can do still, since people ask for it, let them make of it; but I don’t see what it’s to be.
This wretched rant of a book — why didn’t I practice drawing instead?
Dagmar Štěpánová of Formafatal recently completed the first rammed earth structures in Costa Rica that can be yours to rent for your next vacation. Achioté is a pair of minimalist villas in Playa Hermosa that look as if they’re levitating above an overgrown cliff by the Pacific Ocean. The homes are situated in a jungle-like environment with lush greenery all around for ultimate privacy. Throughout the design and building process, Formafatal paid careful attention to sustainability and protecting the wild locale.
Each villa’s design is based on the energies felt in their locations by Štěpánová before construction even began. The vibrations led to two opposing designs – the Jaspis Villa (jaspis = jasper, bright villa) reflecting a yin energy connected to the sky and ocean with shades of sand being the standout color, while the Nefrit Villa (nefrit = jade, dark villa) reflects the yang energy with connection to the ground and the surrounding jungle and featuring a red-terracotta color.
Cantilevered roofs extend out like the floors to provide protection from the sun and weather conditions.
All of the outer walls are built using the clay soil they excavated during the construction process, thereby reducing materials that needed to be imported in for the build. New tropical plants were added once the villas were complete.
The layers of the rammed earth walls stand out, adding texture while telling the home’s story one layer at a time.
The 90-square-meter (approx. 969 square feet) villas are identical in size, layout, and orientation, while each structure utilizes its own choice of materials and color scheme.
The center of each design is the bed, which can be sectioned off with sliding curtains for privacy and mosquito protection. The endless views can be enjoyed from the bed through the frameless glass walls. There’s another bed on the terrace if one wanted to relax in nature.
Just off to the side of the villas are built-in pools which will make you feel like you’re swimming right in the jungle.
To make the rammed earth walls happen, Formafatal enlisted Brazilian specialist, Daniel Mantovani of Terra Compacta, to help train local craftsmen to complete the work.
Behind the beds, the kitchens and bathrooms live with no doors separating the spaces.
The bathroom sinks, shelves, kitchen counters, and beside tables are all custom made from concrete.
The Nefrit Villa features a much darker and moodier color palette, despite the villas being identical.
Dagmar Štěpánová of Formafatal \\\ Photo: Eva Wong
To book the villas, visit achioteproject.com.
Photos by BoysPlayNice.
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