Designing Flag Home was a welcome problem for Studio MK27. The São Paulo-based apply is famend for its well-honed, modern tackle Brazilian modernism and the tropical villa typology – most of its work to-date has been in sizzling climes. To design a house within the frosty pure expanses of Whistler, the resort city two hours north of Vancouver, was actually a departure from its norm. Founder Marcio Kogan has an anecdote to spotlight simply how a lot so. ‘We arrived on website and it was all white with the final snow of the season,’ he recollects of his and his crew’s first website go to, in 2012. ‘We began climbing the plot’s steep angle, by means of the snow, and we have been warned by our hosts to comply with of their footsteps. Unexpectedly, my colleagues realised I had utterly disappeared. I had wandered off and fallen in a gap, which was lined up within the thick snow! I had no concept this might occur.’ Fortunately, no one was damage and the story is recounted fondly and lightheartedly, nevertheless it comes to indicate, Kogan explains, simply how inexperienced they have been with the local weather and its circumstances.
The mission is a trip residence for a personal shopper, who spends most of their time in Vancouver, and was after a retreat – each for escaping the town with their household of 4, and for internet hosting visitors and entertaining. The shopper selected Kogan and his crew, having seen among the studio’s spectacular residential work in Brazil – Casa Azul is among the many most up-to-date. The architect’s intuition for creating houses that really feel at one with their atmosphere is a stand-out recurring function within the apply’s portfolio – and regardless of his unfamiliarity with Whistler’s temperatures, Kogan knew this was one thing he might ship right here too. ‘I needed to create the identical connection between indoor and outside right here, as I do in hotter climates,’ he says. ‘Whatever the geographic location, the design course of is identical.’
The environment are distinguished at each flip in Flag Home
(Picture credit score: Fernando Guerra)
Flag Home by studio MK27
Impressed by the climate at Whistler (‘It modifications each 5 minutes!’ says architect Suzana Glogowski, who co-led the constructing design with Kogan, ‘and the panorama modifications with it.’), the crew determined to work with an enormous glass field. This fashion, they might open up the interiors to the encircling nature and invite the surface in. On the identical time, the home’s quantity would seem weightless, as if floating above the bottom,’ says Kogan. The construction was positioned in its angled plot in order to take advantage of the views, and was designed throughout three ranges; a semi-sunken decrease floor, which incorporates the storage and a cellar; a primary ground containing a visitor bed room and the pedestrian entrance, together with a pool deck; and a grand piano nobile, which is wrapped in swathes of glass and turns into the first residing house.
As a result of its intelligent design and embedding into the hill, Flag Home looks like a single storey residence – however it’s in truth an enormous cantilever. The environment are continually mirrored on its façade, bringing a layer of nature into the indoors at each flip. Timber cladding inside helps to that impact. ‘It was additionally vital to us for the constructing to really feel at residence as an alternative,’ says Kogan. ‘There’s a mixture of modernism with a contemporary log cabin feeling, so it feels very Whistler.’ To stress additional the connection between constructing and land, the crew labored with pure supplies similar to Dinesen oak, and native Ocean Pearl Flagstone, which clad giant elements of the house, together with its concrete base and metallic higher body.
The cantilevered home’s lengthy metallic higher body sits on a strong concrete base
(Picture credit score: Fernando Guerra)
The interiors have been additionally designed by the studio, headed by Diana Radomysler and Pedro Ribeiro, who sorted each bespoke furnishings and fittings, and the constellation of furnishings, which is predominantly a mixture of modernist and modern items, painstakingly collected from shops and auctions over a two-year interval. The studio’s personal designs, similar to an Agape bathtub, additionally seem inside. The house is strategically minimalist, furnished for consolation and to work with its function as a vessel for having fun with the panorama. Radomysler describes it as ‘a body for nature’.
The indoor pool, which is heated utilizing groundsource geothermal vitality
(Picture credit score: Fernando Guerra)
One of many mission’s unsung heroes is its contractor, Linden Tasks founder (and native ice hockey celeb) Jamie Linden, an in depth buddy of the shopper who project-managed and delivered the constructing to the very best specs. The MK27 crew unanimously agrees that although a lot of Flag Home was constructed from a distance (they labored with native architects Evoke Worldwide Design on the bottom), the extent of element is extraordinarily excessive and it felt like a a lot smoother course of than lots of their native initiatives. ‘He was merely improbable,’ says Glogowski, ‘and an actual knowledgeable in constructing within the area’s local weather. The flag stone on the flooring is often hand minimize, however right here they minimize it in laser and it’s the right puzzle, each bit is exclusive and numbered, no two items are the identical.’ Because of this, the house is completely in sync with its environment, and well-thought-out on all ranges – from development methods and engineering techniques, similar to insulation and waterproofing, to performance and magnificence. ‘The household can go away and return to the home on skis, and slide straight in,’ Glogowski says. ‘The home is completely ready for something, linked to actions near nature.’ And judging by the bear the shopper has reported frequenting the poolside terrace, it appears nature has embraced it again.
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The winners of the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2023 are revealed within the February 2023 concern, accessible in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple Information +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* at this time (opens in new tab)
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