mincasa – a minimal blog for minimal houses

Credits: Juhani Pallasmaa - http://www.pallasmaa.fi/

“We need an ascetic, concentrative and contemplative architecture, an architecture of silence.”

The Tea Pavillion / Gazebo Kuusi, Mäntyharju, Finland, 2002
Juhani Pallasmaa, Architect SAFA, Professor

The gazebo is located on the crest of a steep rock overlooking Lake Kallavesi, in eastern Finland. The view with its rock faces covered by lichen, immense boulders moved about by glacier, pine forests and the gleaming lake below brings to mind the landscape paintings of the Finnish masters of the period of National Romanticism in the end of the 19th century.

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Credits: http://www.planob.com/

House in Arruda Dos Vinhos

This projects deals with the reconstruction of a small building in ruins in an area classified as green belt. The project uses the same materials of the ruined building (stone, earth and wood) but re-ordered: a wood structure filled with local earth (wattle and daub); the stone coming from the demolition will be used in the foundations and surrounding area. Otherwise, the architects associated natural materials (wood, earth and cork panels) with industrial ones (concrete, metal, glass and polycarbonate).

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Credit: http://www.ajarch.ch/Bibliothek/Projekte/defaultP.htm

Das 60 m2 kleine Haus (Innenfläche netto) in einem Sukkulentengarten mit der Ruine eines Vorgängerbaus liegt in Real de Catorce, im Norden Mexikos. Die geringe Grösse wird durch die Offenheit des Grundrisses kompensiert. Durch die richtige Platzierung reicht  der Wohnraum optisch bis zum Sonnenuntergang in der Wüste. Der temporäre Aufenthalt im Haus wird zu einem Wohnen in der Landschaft.

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