Architecture
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Plum Island House celebrates the vernacular, the voluptuous, and the volumetric. Rising from the dunes of a New England barrier island, the house appears as a found object. Cedar shingles generate new form while responding to existing conditions: patterning a gradient over the façade that both invites and receives weathering; mediating seamlessly as three curvilinear volumes peel back from their orthogonal base.
Carr House gathers the geology of Johnstown, Ohio, into an above-ground shelter. Rubble discarded from local limestone quarries is collaged into liquid concrete; when cured, the composite assembly is tilted vertically. Exterior corners slip past right angles, exposing volumes that are both rugged and smooth. Carr House reappraises the value of debris, utilizing riprap as a finish material.
Serriframe keeps a low profile as it tiptoes through Boston’s neighborhoods. The system borrows brick to knowingly subvert it, rendering a reverse bond pattern in weathered steel. Serriframe is conspicuous camouflage: rigidly versatile, materially transparent. Experienced in motion, Serriframe becomes a flicker in the urban scene.
Tesuque Studio is a concrete tilt-up structure that hovers between earthbound and ethereal. Five walls are poured directly on the ground, taking its texture with them into the vertical plane. Flat formwork translates to a five-sided volume as curved edges collude in three cylindrical roof slopes. The resulting building, a ceramic workshop and gallery in Tesuque, New Mexico, all but dissolves into its desert site.
Halo is part-salon, part-school, and part-clinic, designed for women and girls coping with cancer. Multiple compounding textures present the idea of “cosmetic” as generating both ornament and figure. Perimeter walls emulate the sensibilities of their surface material: playful, dreamy, and cloud-like.
Somewhere between puffy shingles (a New England staple), an heirloom quilt, and the loose fit of a favorite pair of jeans, the pavilion speaks to the familiarity and nostalgia of our collective favorite things. 56 quilted panels are stuffed with recycled denim turned into building insulation and supplemented with fabric waste from the garment industry. The result is a chromatic speckling and indigo hue. Casually draped over the frame, each puffy panel invites us to walk, bump, hug, and lounge freely between the pillow-like walls.
Botanical Court inverts an outer perimeter inward. Housing McMaster University’s Palm collection, the greenhouse becomes vertically attenuated in section and dimensionally thin in plan, wrapping around a central public courtyard that enjoys 360 degree views of the palms, without compromising the integrity of the greenhouse ecosystem.
Library offers a continuous experience – a labyrinthian loop of bookshelves, crenelated to produce individualized spaces. The sinuous organizational form is revealed surrounding a central garden.
Dimple Chair combines traditional handcraft with digital fabrication. Timeless woodworking techniques shape the chair’s figure, while the pre-programmed CNC machine carves sundry impressions into the grain of the seat.
Tilt-Up Pavilion brings a playful approach to generic construction techniques. Five concrete walls are poured on-site and hoisted into place, their exposed edges revealing – layer after layer – the time it took to make them. Cold joints, pick points, and structural embeds become central actors, as the construction process reveals its theatrical leanings.
Phantom Fictions asks if mirage can be material. Situated in the Straits of Messina, this proto-architecture measures atmospheric gradations while visually indexing them, perpetuating the fiction of Fata Morgana with air as both material and performer.
Kaffeology is a cafe composed of curves surfaced in plaster.