Grounded in the historic subconscious of the site, project Têtê à Têtê refers to the Seefeld Schoolhouse’s original urban aspirations, dating back to 1853. The project is resolved via dual axial symmetry. The first line of symmetry being the reintroduction of the historic Plantanen Alle and the second being the symmetrical North-South axis. This creates a space that speaks to the classical language of the site origins as well as an ease of orientation for users of all ages. Via the strategic program stack, a “slim fit” new volume sustains the existing classroom views and reinforces generous distances to the immediate neighbors. As the Sports halls and their ancillary programs are optimized partially below ground, the ground floor passage becomes a hinge point between the Sports program elements and the Afterschool facilities in the above ground volume. The first level of the Allee stack holds a generous, elevated plateau designed for play that houses a readily accessible All-Weather Pitch to the North and a Landscaped Park to the South. Designed as a sustainable hybrid construction of wood and reinforced concrete, the structure consists of simple, highly prefabricated elements that aim for an optimal balance between ecological and economic sustainability.

The new extension does not intend to imitate the existing school building, but to fit selectively into the landscape and frame the historic school building. Working with performative materials the building envelopes are specially adapted to their orientation and use. The timber construction is revealed as an X-ray image - through the curtain wall facade - in a play of transparency, reflection, and opacity. On each floor from the elevated plateau onwards, a continuous opaque parapet area surrounds the volume which doubles in function as a continuous work cornice. Operable windows are placed on this parapet band, enabling natural cross-ventilation. Finally, a sun protection at the outermost comfort layer, reinforces the performative effect of the project. The south facade is equipped with modular BIPV panels, which simultaneously allow light to pass through while serving as an energy source for the immediate surroundings.

Architect: Vantieghem Talebi
Visualizations: Analog 1
Structural Engineer: Schnetzker Puskas
Landscape Architect: Erik Dhont Landscape Architects
HVAC Engineer: Waldhauser + Hermann
Fire Engineer: BIQS Brandschutzplanung

In Texas it is said that if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.

Texas House 3 is designed as a micro-climate using simple building principles in response to rapidly changing extremes of Texas weather, from strong sun to flash floods and cold winters. Born in tandem from a close reading of municipal code, an alternative to the de facto suburban front yard/back yard was unlocked.

Maximum top plate height and front yard roof limits gave way to a continuous roofline design of solid timber construction. A shou sugi ban board-and-batten facade incorporates gradients of privacy expressed through the frequency of battens; solid wall shifts to ventilated yard screen to bathroom window privacy screen. From the street, these variations read as a complete volumetric expression. Entry begins through the 16-foot-tall, slatted screen into the inner yard, where greenery is enclosed by a bel étage of living spaces arranged in a “U” configuration. The screen acts as both entry threshold and facade, completing the continuous roofline street elevation while filtering sunlight and allowing for natural ventilation. A direct path then leads to the main entry at the center of the living salon.

Rather than tacking on “green” devices, architectural elements work together to holistically design a micro-climate using orientation, screens, overhangs, and moving water in a carefully integrated landscape. The inner yard performance helps temper the outdoor living spaces year-round. Summer shade and a cooler micro breeze from generous overhangs transition to warmth in the winter via the heated spa.

Four raw material choices omit additional finishes; the exposed solid timber structure, shou sugi ban board/batten facades and screens, and exposed in-situ concrete continue the idea of a house that provides a respite from the harsh exposures of Texas climate. Greenery itself is thought of as the fourth material.

Architectural Designer: Vantieghem Talebi
Custom Millwork Designer: Vantieghem Talebi
Interior Designer & Furnishings: Swoon the Studio
Structural Engineer: Structural Studio
Lighting Designer: Studio e Lighting
General Contractors: Herman Darden
Landscape: Bonick Landscaping
Project Photographer: Maris Mezulis

Here skin, structure, and space are formed simultaneously.

Built from structural and zoning constraints, a new construction is placed on top of existing foundations and is limited to the maximum allowable height. As such, the design grew out of the original coastal dune house foundation—an asymmetrical cruciform geometry where each structural bay of the cruciform created a “house of cards.”
Each triangular bay was unique in geometry and prefabricated from CLT (cross laminated timber) panels. Over the course of three days, the CLT panels were brought on site, delivered onto the sand itself, hoisted up as four discrete chapels, and bridged together via an off-center geometry. The result is a primary level free of structure, with each chapel as an expressed room.

The project envelope considers the larger impression of the house as an abstract volumetry and is built as a timber rainscreen of chemically seasoned Douglas-fir battens. The roof, considered a façade element due to the steep pitch, uses the same timber batten construction technique as vertical surfaces. Assemblies and details carry forth the abstraction holistically: timber battens were prefabricated to avoid visible screws or nails and streamline construction on-site, while gutters and drainage elements are concealed behind the rainscreen with minimal impact on the exterior surface.

The project’s fusing of structure and volume is expressed explicitly; the CLT serves directly as interior finish. In the primary level living area, four CLT floor panels express the structural bays in the ceiling. On the upper level, the CLT panels remain exposed in the pitched chapels of bedrooms and the central hall, demonstrating the full extent of the triangular structural bays. Interior elements continue to highlight the opportunity that the column-free prefabricated CLT structure allows; a central staircase floats in the space, suspended within a wood floor grid spanning between the CLT bays. Within the house is a Type D central ventilation system with heat recovery and rainwater collection and re-use.
The geometry of the house is reminiscent of historical beach house architecture in the area characterized by steep roof angles. The dune landscape was restored, with discrete concrete retaining walls carving obliquely for pedestrian and car access to the house’s subterranean level. This site context, and the restrictions of the existing foundation, steered both the structural and architectural logic of the project.

The geometry of the house is reminiscent of historical beach house architecture in the area characterized by steep roof angles. The dune landscape was restored, with discrete concrete retaining walls carving obliquely for pedestrian and car access to the house’s subterranean level. This site context, and the restrictions of the existing foundation, steered both the structural and architectural logic of the project.

Visualizations by: Analog 1 & Vantieghem Talebi

This is not another anonymous glass tower but rather a reprogramming of suburban living in the city.
An existing tilt up concrete warehouse is reused as an amenities base where residents can discreetly enter through, setting the stage for the stacked lofts and urban villas above where every unit holds panoramic views to Downtown Dallas and the Trinity River Valley floodplain. The glazed lofts that house the straightforward chevron truss mimic the scale of exising industrial lofts in the district, often used as studios or gallery spaces. With 360-degree gardens, the urban villas are an unique urban typology - providing the comforts of what is traditonally defined as a “home” within a tower. Together the two stacked spatial types create just enough variation where a resident on the street can point to their own “home” up high.

Urban research yeielding a masterplan and architectural landmarks; including a renewal of the river, infrastructure, sports halls as well as a hotel project.
Visualizations by: Analog 1

The new VCF building safeguards future development while preventing industrial sprawl by vertically stacking both headquarters and factory programs via an exposed structural exoskeleton. The project reads as an object of curiosity along the E17 highway where programs suspend and shift within a three-dimensional structural matrix, revealing elevated landscapes and expressing external circulation.

From the highway, the uppermost level is revealed as an administrative program volume, suspended above an elevated natural habitat, this elevated landscape level represents a zone of cross-pollination where employees and the community assemble with manufacturing facilities being housed in the two levels below. The stacked program strategy, coupled with the modular structural framework creates a building with flexible ambitions; one that prioritizes the company’s needs but can repurposed or adapted for future demands that can accommodate at least two future generations of use. The building extends to 157 m in length, 55 m in width, and reaches a height of 28 m from grade, based on an 8.5m x 8.5 m structural grid. A total of 21,000 m2 of built area with an additional 6,700m2 of integrated landscape sits within this stacked footprint.

Text By Katya Tylevich

Die Plek is pleased to present 50 Photographs*, created in close partnership with the artist, Graciela Iturbide, who personally selected fifty black-and-white photographs from her decades-long oeuvre for this exhibition. Showcasing portraits, scenes of ritual, abstract visions, and landscapes, this portfolio is both token and testimony of daily life in Iturbide’s native Mexico throughout changing times. The exhibition regards the photographs as a single artwork, to be experienced as a cohesive whole, and through the strength and distinctiveness of each individual image. The artist’s own hand in choosing these works validates them as the core of her opus.

The exhibition design by studio Vantieghem Talebi inspires the audience to experience 50 Photographs in exactly this way: as one piece composed of distinct visions. For this purpose, Vantieghem Talebi created a custom vitrine to house the photographs; the distinct object measures just over 18 metres long, with 26 dark drawers that viewers can open and close themselves. Depending on the actions of previous viewers, it is possible to come upon this vault completely shut—having to discover the photographs by pulling its drawers open, one by one. The tactile and intimate relationship to the photographs reminds one of the light-tight drawers of amateur darkrooms and home photography.

The bureau design moves viewers from the passivity of seeing a display, to the action of discovering an artwork and all it conceals, as if developing the photograph and seeing the image appear on paper for the first time. In a nod to the blend of ceremonies seen in the photographs, the vitrine also evokes the stations of the cross, becoming a kind of pilgrimage for the viewer across the world created by Iturbide. The object’s carmine red color refers to the vibrancy of Mexico’s streets and festivals. It is likewise a purposeful allusion to 13th-century Chinese cabinets, used for storing precious possessions.

This exhibition is tucked into an artist’s studio in Ghent, Belgium. Arriving at the private studio and finding the exhibition in one of its halls is yet another act of discovery. For the first time, Die Plek has developed and designed an imaginary home for its photographs—a physical embodiment of the philosophy that every work finds its own time and place.

• 50 Photographs is a collaboration with Rose Gallery, a photography gallery founded in 1992 by Rose Shoshana in Santa Monica, California.

Easy breezy nice and easy.

Rather than building in the style of the existing 1920s bungalow and 1980s Frederick Fisher atelier, the new addition bridges the two distinct structures. Completing this artist compound.

The lightweight structural concept of a timber framed upper level above a new ground floor pavilion touches down with minimal site impact. This allows for the existing bungalow to open up to a generous garden pavilion under an enfilade of sleeping, bathing, deck, and courtyard spaces above that continue the soft edge between inside and outside.

Currently under design for a Structural Engineer with a hobby for working on cars. The generous height of the car workshop is born from the scissor car lift requirement, creating a “jump cut“ connection between the two functions of the home; 1. private dwelling & 2. polyvalent car workshop. The house is a spatial collage of disparate functions. The three studies are projections of three different structural directions forward; consider them mise-en-scene projections of construction still images. A cinematic take on design process images. 1 of 3; Concrete frame + redundant steel column structure which allows for slender member sizes. 2 of 3; Concrete frame + cross laminated timber panel structure for ease of construction and internal finish. 3 of 3; Concrete slab + steel chevron truss to allow maximum internal flexibility.

The House for David is a project that celebrates tension.
The existing convex site geometry established the first drawn line of the project; a concave boundary along the easternmost site boundary.
Under tension, these two lines together created “space” between each other, while introducing softness to the designed volume. The sense of duality continues in the material choices for the project, the soft form was built up of materials originally intended for industrial use; such as undulated-perforated metal, fiber cement board and burnished concrete.

Forest bed in Flanders, Belgium

The design is born from a requirement to continue the local vernacular architecture in both volume and materiality, therefore designed from the inside out.
Intersecting geometries in plan and section were physically modeled, arcs and lines inscribed, poché carved out. Two elliptical volumes carve out space under the roof valley, giving movement to dedicated circulation spaces and open up to all the ground floor programs. These soft poché spaces hold various functions such as a fireplace, a wood burning stove, bathrooms, techincal space and built-in millwork.
The timber facades pinch inwards under the cantilevered roof while the roof maintains the required historic volume periphery, creating large covered spaces underneath the North and South overhangs. The envelope is comprised of vernacular brick wherever it aligns with the historic volume periphery.

Tilt-Up Construction

A pile of aggregate in the city

“A concrete house for a concrete plant.”
The Interbeton project is an architectural answer to a complex technical and urban question.
Cities continue to develop as do their needs. Urban morphology adjusts to housing and density needs but there are particular industrial fabrication facilities that require a central position in the city. Concrete factories are one such actor in the city; as they need to deliver to the immediate surroundings. Interbeton is a prime example of a “productive city” concept which was the starting point for this invited competition.
As a reaction to the rapid emergence of housing and commercial projects in its vicinity, the city of Brussels called for a reduction of dust at the concrete factory site. The design was consolidated into 2 houses; the storage house and the corner house. These houses were conceived as a phased approach, allowing for operations to continue during various construction phases.
The storage house is a structure dedicated to the storage of raw material; granulate and sand. Driven by the natural, micro-formation of sand and gravel’s angle of repose; the geometry directly reflects this principle as well as the pitched industrial harbour buildings along the Vergote Basin. The storage house roof also extends to contain the noise of continuously running concrete trucks.
The immediate availability of concrete as well as the cost-efficient method of a gliding cast drove the choice of cast in place concrete for the forms. By using the particular concrete mixture that is available at the day of each pouring phase, the design expresses the subtle gradient of the daily mixture – a celebration of granulates.
An unused strip of land, bridging the corner of the site was dedicated to the future office space for Interbeton, the corner house. The same construction principles were applied for this Phase II project element.
The site reorganization around two houses allows for the factory footprint to significantly reduce, therefore liberating a substantial canal-side urban “balcony” to be developed as well as semi-public access to the boardwalk running along the Canal.

The design was born from the question of how to build in a suburban neighborhood without fences while maintaining a sense of escape by framing the tree canopy view. Typical ground floor spaces are elevated to the upper level, bridging over the entry and driveway that carve out a path between the elevated lap pool and stacked home.

A Kitchen

A1960s apartment renovation as a study in detailed interventions; approached as a large piece of furniture. The material palette is “native” to the apartment building, revisiting new elements in terrazo, oak and massive stainless steel.

Casting bricks