Ayana

A compact apartment building that turns its structure into identity — a deep brick portal framing a crisp white volume.

On a tight residential plot the brief asked for efficient flats that still read as one considered object on the street. The response is a bold band of exposed brick wrapped around a white rendered volume: the brick carries the corner and the parapet, the render holds the windows and their shading fins, and the two materials trade places as the building turns. What could have been an ordinary stack of floors becomes a piece of architecture you recognise from down the road.

The framing gesture

The brick band does the work of the elevation — wrapping the corner and parapet so the white volume reads as something held, not just stacked.

Architectural Detail

The slope

Our site fell 25 feet from the road going down. This got us thinking — how to take advantage of the geography and turn it into a benefit?

The sub-structure

So we tucked in an upper basement with ramp access for parking, and a well-lit lower basement for the recreation of the occupants of the apartments above.

Capitalised

This, along with the sump tank planned intelligently in the upper reaches, and we had successfully mitigated the great 70-degree slope.

A section drawn over the site itself — the ground falls across the plot, so two basement levels sit below the entrance floor and the flats stack above it to the terrace.

The framing gesture

The slope

The sub-structure

Capitalised

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