Articles by Bianca Valentina Roșescu

Dasht-e-chehel villa  is an experience to reach an external-internal life in a cold climate. It is about how to stay out of the building and experience snow and rain but still remain in a safe zone. And how to be inside without losing sensory, visual and psychological connection with the outside. And also how to blur the boundary line between inside and outside to reach a greater freedom.

The detached house was designed near Poznań in a quiet area surrounded by a forest. The main design aim was to create a simple longitudinal body that would separate household members from the street and open onto the garden, ensuring privacy. From the garden, there is a view of the beautiful surrounding greenery from the 22-meter string of windows. A large amount of windows also poses a challenge, which is an overheating of the building. However, in the case of this house, the deciduous trees solve this problem. In the summertime, they form a barrier to the sunlight and during winter, after losing leaves, they allow free access.

The original single storey Edwardian cottage was dark and lacked connection to the outside.  We used 10 folds in the roof to draw in light along the skinny, long house and site.  The folds minimise bulk to the eastern neighbour and rise up to the large two-storey contemporary western neighbour. The house humbly addresses the street with a contemporary tweak to the Edwardian cottage and the two storey part of the house sits further back from the street hiding the bedroom volume behind it.

Located in Halifax’s long-established West-End, a bold dark gable emerges within a quiet residential neighbourhood. The Armcrescent Residence represents an architectural investigation towards increasing urban density on the Halifax Peninsula, a growing need and topic of discussion in the city over the past few years. Though the city respects history and culture, there’s an excitement and desire for more progressive work.

The Client for this project is a professional couple with their children.  Sitting at the junction of 2 roads, the peculiar sprawling fan-shaped site spanning approximately 10,649 square feet is a multi-tiered site that slopes up from the front of the house to the rear. While the site is surrounded by mature trees, much of the view is directed to the front which is west facing.