Articles by Andreas Luco

The dream of preserving what was first, and what it now, as an act of respect and good augury towards and with Mother Nature by Pablo, its owner, is the background that initiates the assingnment. A few kilometers from the central village in the “El Calvario” community, Pastaza province – Ecuador, the family decides to embark on a project capable of offering a recreational experience intended as a place for rest, relaxation, and direct connection with an Amazonian natural environment.

This 1-acre landscape project for a luxury bungalow was designed to seamlessly integrate nature and architecture, offering residents an inviting outdoor experience for relaxation, entertainment, and everyday living. The client’s primary brief was to create a serene environment that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing. This resulted in a design that balances multiple outdoor zones with a cohesive flow, utilizing an earthy material palette to enhance the connection between the built spaces and nature. At the heart of the design is the goal of blending modern living with natural tranquility. Key concepts focus on crafting distinct spaces that serve multiple purposes while maintaining visual harmony across the landscape. The entrance features a striking feature wall with a sculptural element, designed to set a welcoming tone and serve as a focal point for visitors. This bold statement piece anchors the design.

Our clients, who are avid hikers and explorers, chose this piece of land in Belgium’s rolling forests to build a vacation home for their extended family use.   Mormont is a quiet village surrounded by hills and valleys, farmland, pastures and countless hiking paths.  One particular hiking path – a convenient 45minute loop – has access from both ends of the extended property.  Our motivation from very early in the design process was to make this home “close the loop” on to their property and have the building act as a culminating moment along the path.

In a seaside condominium, the rectangular and flat lot of 520 sq m is surrounded by conventional two-story houses with attic. Countless windows and openings brought a big privacy issue for this 490 sq m residence. Therefore, the planned program was placed between two windowless and aerial walls, with travertine cladding, supported by columns, and positioned within the legal boundaries of the property. These aerial walls configure the side facades of the building, ensuring the privacy of the internal spaces from the nearest neighbors. The exception is the double-height ceiling that serves the daily dining room. On the opposite side, an open-air courtyard, also with double-height ceiling, protects the more glassed facades and illuminates the main areas of the house. The front and rear facades are enveloped by movable wooden mashrabiya to increase privacy and comfort in high temperatures.

The clients, an elderly couple with decades of memories in Wieringerwerf, approached Atlas with the request to transform their current home into a living environment where they could comfortably age in place. The deep-rooted love for their village prevented them from moving elsewhere. Therefore, it was only natural for them to expand and transform their current residence so that they could carry out all their daily activities on a single level. Located in the rural area north of Amsterdam, Wieringerwerf, the current house had already undergone two extensions in the past, which distorted its original shape. By enlarging the house with yet another

Located in the heart of a sparsely populated urban area in the town of Corbeil-Essonnes, the building, constructed in 1971, is positioned in the center of the plot. This “Pailleron-type” structure – owing to its similarities with the modularconstruction process – is composed of metal posts and beams clad in glazed facadepanels, and an exterior steel assembly supporting fixed horizontal sunshades. The straightforward geometry of a rectangular parallelepiped is determined by theprocess of construction. The regular facades are marked by a horizontal grid signalingthe three levels of the building, and a vertical grid formed by the modules of identicalwindow units. The building consists of a basement housing technical areas and a car park, a groundfloor with a public reception desk in an area of the lobby, and related functions(lunchroom, a caretaker’s apartment), offices and archives, and finally another flooralso containing offices and archives.