When BAAD Studios - helmed by husband and wife Ar. Benjee Mendoza and Ar. An Bermejo-Mendoza - designed the DL House, they wanted a structure that not only took into account their client's personality but they wanted one that had an affordance to the environment where it sits.
Situated by a busy thoroughfare that can get quite loud, plant walls were erected to muffle the noise and provide privacy. With many typhoons hitting the Philippines yearly - with strong winds that can go as fast as 200 kph - BAAD Studios looked to the Orama window system. The Orama window system has a sleek and minimal frame and track system that blurs the line between outdoors and indoors.
Reflecting the client's love for the outdoors and natural materials, the DL House has an impressive use of textured stone for its walls and tanguile wood for its ceiling. Air pockets and light wells by way of courtyards bring in natural ventilation and light throughout the home. Benjee mentions that there is only so many strategies an architect can put in place for a more sustainable home and underscores the importance of a sustainable family as the biggest factor for a home to be sustainable.
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Good design is something that resonates with the client's vision,
how they see themselves in a space for the next decade or two or three,
which should always work within a tropical climate and should reflect the context of where it belongs.
Hello, my name is Ann Bermejo Mendoza. I'm a co-founder of BAD Studio.
And I'm Benji Mendoza, also co-founder of BAD Studio.
And we are at the DL House.
We believe that successful design here, especially in the Philippines,
should always be ultimately climate responsive. So that means that the building
has an affordance to its future users, especially it's a new space, and especially also to the
environment where it sits. So it should be balanced and well-connected to each other.
Climate responsiveness, it's not an option. We've always known and experienced that great
architecture, doesn't matter when it was built, where it was built, always resonates within its
place, reacts towards its conditions, and really performs under weather, especially harsh weather,
such as in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. So I think it's hand in hand that you cannot
take off functionality from design. We have so much typhoons yearly in the Philippines.
So these gusts of wind reaches more than 200 kilometers per hour. So this is very,
very important in terms of structural load. There's no question about that.
The key rule of using windows is to keep the unwanted elements outside of the house.
The air quality inside can be maintained. The noise can be maintained.
Clarity of the relationship of what is inside and outside is not disrupted.
When we planned the space, we made sure that the delineation between what's inside and outside
can easily disappear. Therefore, it leads us to a space planning that creates light waves,
air pockets, transition spaces, which are kind of blurred so that you wouldn't know where
an outline ends, and enclosure that can disappear.
Basically, the layout of the house was primarily driven by the environmental factors. So
like that what you hear, it's a busy avenue at the back. So that is why we really work on through
working on voids and courtyards. It's especially to penetrate the light from top to down to the
basement, and then create internal views. Because basically, we are very in close proximity with
two neighbors on both sides, and then really nothing to really see by the avenue or the
main street, which you would want to keep yourself private.
Not all of our clients can maintain natural wood. Specifically, this project, from the very onset,
reflects the client's love for outdoors and natural things, natural stone, natural wood,
and natural aspects like natural air, natural light. And of course, as architects,
we always consider the aesthetic value of the window system. The client really appreciated
and how the seamless system flooring from the inside to the outdoors, which the client
specifically requested from us to have no level changes. So I think Orama was able to answer that
which in turn creates a space that is more sustainable. There's only a limit to an architect's
strategy to create a simple, sustainable house, but it requires greatly a sustainable family
to use it sustainably as well. So the user factor is very important if they resonate
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