Architects: Itay Friedman Architects
Project: Bouncing Coin House
Team: Michal Morzy
Building area: 400 m2
Location: Ramat Hachial, Tel-Aviv, Israel
Photography: Itay Friedman Architects
Israeli studio Itay Friedman Architects have recently designed Bouncing Coin House, a single-family house located in Ramat Hachial, Tel-Aviv, Israel. Creating spaces that you care about and where you want to spend your time was the paramount wish of the clients. The clients wanted to build a home that combines an airy and spacious feeling on a small plot of land.
The neighborhood typology consists of mostly one story bungalow type homes, but with current building regulations a basement and second floor are now permitted. This allowed the design to retain a large outdoor space within a very small plot of land while at the same time to house the needs of the client, a growing family. The brief was simple: “we want a home that can house all the things we love to do combined with the modern and antique styles we both care for so much” .
As we engaged in the design process and while playing with general volumes and shapes on the plot, we found ourselves drawn to the sloped angle of the plot. We became fascinated with the possibility of how to use it as an advantage rather then what would usually be considered as a disadvantage or obstacle. That was when the “bouncing coin” theme was born, by positioning a solid volume against the sloped angle and repeating that action for each next volume. By doing so we managed to manipulate the split levels within the rings of the falling bouncing coin, which in turn creates the illusion of a floating structure that has only two stories but in fact houses four.
The Bouncing Coin House slowly took shape as we spent the next months figuring out the connection between each level, their circulation, how light would enter and, most importantly, how to retain a sense of privacy within a corner plot. The house seems to not only mimic the plots outline shape on which it sits, but engulfs its surroundings while dividing the plot into three strips that transition between private, semi private and public spaces.
The corner site has a view that opens to a public garden. However, this view is partially blocked by a local supermarket. That made it important to use the view point and at the same time to retain the maximum feeling of privacy that the clients valued and asked to retain. As a result, the main (living) floor of the home is higher then the entrance level. Also, the orientation was rotated so that the view opens diagonally to the garden space through the two rows of houses along the street. The kitchen space was positioned a split level lower by which protecting the family within their private times and shielding them from the view of the supplier trucks of the supermarket.
The bedrooms were located on the upper level and as well and were divided into two levels, one for the children and one for the parents. By doing so we created maximum privacy for the parents while retaining easy access to the children’s area.
The last level consists of a roof terrace that on first glance seem to be a flat area, but actually due to the split level design of the house, allowed us to insert a pool, thus creating an extra usable outdoor space within a climate that promotes outside living. The bouncing coin ring shapes allowed us to create viewpoints that are both inspiring and exciting for the inhabitants of the house and at the same time retain privacy and enhance the penetration of lights and feeling of lightness to the structure.
