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Bamboo House

Kuma's design for the Bamboo House borrows its low horizontal profile from the Great Wall itself. But while the wall symbolizes permanence, solidity, and exclusion, Kuma's bamboo wall is meant to suggest the easy transfer of light and breezes from one side of the house to the other, as well as a certain lightweight, unfinished, and even fragile quality. Of bamboo, Kuma says he finds "charm in the material's weakness."

The heart of the plan is a delicate tea house that floats on a square pool just outside the living room and is surrounded by what Kuma calls a "scaffold" of bamboo that offers privacy as well as views of a mountainside that is dense and green even in winter.

The house is also designed to mimic the way the Great Wall, as Kuma puts it, "runs almost endlessly along the undulating ridge line without being isolated from the surrounding environment." Kuma wanted to keep the house long and low rather than have it stand out as an object, with a single story at grade above a basement. That shape helps the house look smaller than it is.

Kuma has done much to dramatize the design possibilities of bamboo, just as he did with plastic in the Tokyo house. Who knew, after all, that bamboo could be sculptural, or cast such a variety of shadows, or add rhythm to a facade so effectively?

If Kuma thus inspires other architects to trade mahogany or some other endangered hardwood for this most environmentally friendly of materials — especially in China, where there is rising demand for American-style residential excess and no green design movement to speak of — his decision to accept the developers' invitation to take part in this early stab at Chinese luxury housing will be justified.

Kuma has also shown how luxurious sustainability can appear when put in the right architectural hands. In the end, the house may wind up functioning as a kind of architectural Trojan horse, helping to sneak green-design ideas behind the lines drawn by zealous developers.

Casuarina Beach House

The firm of Lahz Nimmo Architects was selected in a competition to come up with the perfect spec home for a piece of oceanfront property on the Pacific near Kingscliff, in the blustery tropics of northern New South Wales. Organized by Australian developer Consolidated Properties, the "Ultimate Beach House" contest proved to be an efficient way for the company to both develop and promote its new project at Casaurina Beach.

Lahz Nimmo's handsome, horizontally clad house was one of three winning designs and the first to be built on the site, a rejuvenated former sand mine. Self-sufficient and smartly stylish, it set the standard for quality design in the new development and served as a prototype for testing the marketability of "sustainable house packages" there.

Set back about 350 feet (110 meters) behind the dunes, the house cuts a long, linear profile. Two rectangular volumes connected by a double-height breezeway make up the interior space. The open-plan living pavilion on the east side of the site extends out toward the sand and sea with a retractable glass wall on one side and floor-to-ceiling windows on the other. Floating over the landscape on steel struts, it contains kitchen, dining, and lounge areas under a soaring, single-pitch roof.

The two-story timber "sleeping box," which contains three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a garage, and a "rumpus room," is, by contrast, firmly anchored to the ground and more shielded from the elements by a series of glass louvers and wood battens.

In the spaces between and around the two buildings, the architects found room for a private garden courtyard, an extensive lawn, a covered veranda, a vast open-air deck, and a compact plunge pool. "The winds can be pretty full-on sometimes and they tend to change direction depending on the season," says principal Andrew Nimmo, so the different types and locations of outdoor spaces were designed to "ensure that at any time of the year or day, there will always be one perfect place to be comfortable outside the house."

Throughout the property, Nimmo and his partner Annabel Lahz used materials that would stand up to the wind and salt without impinging on the environment. They chose blue gum, a native hardwood, salvaged from an old railway bridge, for the battens and cladding. It was more expensive than new timber, but "because builders tended to use mature trees back then, the color and grain are much more stable than what you can find now," Nimmo explains. The wood is treated only with oil, which preserves its rich color and protects against ultraviolet rays.   >>>

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SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE The Bamboo House by architect Kengo Kuma, at the Commune by the Great Wall, near Beijing, China. Photo: Satoshi Asakawa An open-air tea house seems to float above a shallow reflecting pool. Photo: Satoshi Asakawa Both kitchen and dining room have a bamboo-clad ceiling. Photo: Satoshi Asakawa Bamboo House floor plans. Image: Kengo Kuma Extra Large Image Bamboo House sections. Image: Kengo Kuma Extra Large Image The Casuarina Beach House by Lahz Nimmo Architects. Photo: Brett Boardman Slatted wood cladding and louvered windows help keep breezes flowing through the "sleeping box." Photo: Brett Boardman Open and covered decks, patios, and verandas fan out in every direction, allowing for outdoor activities regardless of season and wind direction. Photo: Brett Boardman   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.