2006 Notable Projects: Houses
Vol.01 No.02

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Architypes’ Notable Projects
Architype finds inspiration in projects that somehow redefine our understanding of a certain typology.  Through good design, these architects created smart and forward thinking solutions to the particular constraints or challenges presented by each project.  Grouped together by type, they provide a survey of innovation taking place at several different scales, promoted by both large and small firms. Presented here in the words and images of their own creative team, the following projects also offer an index of ideas and solutions as well as creative people and products within the industry.

The Planar House, Paradise Valley, Arizona
Steven Holl Architect

Bill Timmerman Photographer

Sited in Paradise Valley with a direct vista to Camelback Mountain, this house is to be a part of, and vessel for, a large contemporary art collection.  Great 20th century works by Bruce Nauman, Robert Ryman and Jannis Kounellis are part of the collection which includes important video artworks.
Constructed of tilt-up concrete walls, the nature of the walls merges with the simple orthogonal requirements of the interiors for art. 
Shape extensions and light and air chimneys connected to cooling pools articulate the planar geometry.  From a courtyard experienced at the entry of sequence, a ramp leads to a rooftop sculpture garden – a place of silence and reflection.

Owner
Withheld

Architect
Steven Holl Architects
www.stevenholl.com
Principal in charge:
Steven Holl
Project Architect:
Martin Cox
Project Architect (SD):
Tim Bade
Project Team:
Robert Edmunds, Annette Goderbauer, Hideki Hirahara, Clark Manning

Engineer(s)
Structural:
Rudow & Berry
Mechanical:
Roy Otterbein
Civil:
Fleet Fisher
Electrical:
Associated Engineering

Consultant(s)
Landscape:
Steve Martino & Associates
www.stevemartino.net

Contractor(s)
The Construction Zone

Photography
Bill Timmerman
Timmerman Photography Inc.

Solar Umbrella, Venice, California
Pugh + Scarpa Architect

Marvin Rand Photographer

Nestled amidst a neighborhood of single story bungalows in Venice, California, the Solar Umbrella Residence boldly establishes a precedent for the next generation of California modernist architecture. Located on a 41’ wide x 100’-0” long through lot, the Solar Umbrella addition transforms the architects’ existing 650 square foot bungalow into a 1900 square foot residence equipped for responsible living in the twenty-first century.
Inspired by Paul Rudolph’s Umbrella House of 1953, the Solar Umbrella provides a contemporary reinvention of the solar canopy—a strategy that provides thermal protection in climates with intense exposures. Taking advantage of the unusual through lot site condition, the addition shifts the residence 180 degrees from its original orientation. What was formerly the front and main entry at the north becomes the back as the new design reorganizes the residence towards the south.  This move allows the architects to create a more gracious introduction to their residence and optimizes exposure to energy rich southern sunlight.  A bold display of solar panels wrapping around the south elevation and roof becomes the defining formal expression of the residence.  Conceived as a solar canopy, these panels protect the body of the building from thermal heat gain by screening large portions of the structure from direct exposure to the intense southern California sun.  Rather than deflecting sunlight, this state of the art solar skin absorbs and transforms this rich resource into usable energy, providing the residence with 100% of its electricity. Like many design features at the Solar Umbrella, the solar canopy is multivalent and rich with meaning—performing several roles for both functional, formal and experiential effect.
In establishing the program for their residence, the architects integrated into the design principles of sustainability that they strive to achieve in their own practice. By removing only one wall at the south, the architects maintain the primary layout of the existing residence.  The original bungalow, which was tightly packed with program (kitchen, dining, living, two bedrooms and a bath) is joined by a sizable addition to the south which includes a new entry, living area, master suite accommodations, and utility room for laundry and storage. They carefully considered the entire site, taking advantage of as many opportunities for sustainable living as possible. The structure sits lightly upon the land. In combination with the signature solar canopy, additional passive and active design strategies render the residence 100% energy neutral. Recycled, renewable, and high performance materials and products are specified throughout. Throughout the residence, the architects resourcefully take materials and contextually reposition them as design elements Hardscape and landscape treatments are considered both for their aesthetic and actual impact on the land. The Solar Umbrella Residence elegantly crafts each of these strategies and materials, exploiting the potential for performance and sensibility while achieving a rich and interesting sensory and aesthetic experience.

Owner
Lawrence Scarpa and Angela Brooks

Architect
Pugh + Scarpa Architects
www.pugh-scarpa.com
Principals-in-Charge:
Angela Brooks, AIA + Lawrence Scarpa, AIA
Project Architect:
Ching Luk
Project Team:
Peter Borrego, Angela Brooks, Anne Burke, Michael Hannah, Vanessa Hardy, Anne Marie Kaufman Brunner, Fredrik Niilsen, Tim Peterson, Gwynne Pugh, Bill Sarnecky, Lawrence Scarpa

Engineer(s)
Gwynne Pugh of PUGH + SCARPA

Consultant(s)
Landscape:
SQLA, Inc.; Samuel Kim
Energy Efficiency and Alternative Energy consultant:
Dr. John Ingersoll, Ph.D.

Contractor(s)
Above Board Construction

Photography
Marvin Rand Photographer

Taghkanic House, Hudson, New York
Thomas Phifer and Partners LLP

© Scott Frances /Esto

This private residence is sited high on a knoll at the edge of a forest in Columbia County New York.  At the end of a winding approach along a private road through the forest, the house emerges as a simple pavilion of glass and steel nestled in the trees. To the south, the site opens to an undulating meadow, while to the west the house commands spectacular views across the Hudson River valley to the distant mountains. Organized to take advantage of the natural topography of the land, the bedrooms and private spaces are set into the hillside, forming a base for the public functions in the pavilion above.
The solid materiality of the lower level contrasts with the light-filled pavilion above. The bedrooms, study and guest suite are arranged along a single sky-lit corridor and open directly to the western view, while the kitchen, indoor pool and service spaces face the east garden. These intimately-scaled private spaces allow for views of the exterior at a more personal scale.
The pavilion is a finely-detailed steel and glass structure that allows for 360-degree views of the landscape. An open porch on three sides acts a transition space, mediating between exposure and enclosure, direct and filtered light, and the natural world and the built environment.
A system of operable exterior sunshades, supported by the thin members of the steel structure controls sunlight and modulates the shading of the pavilion. Designed in consideration of the angles of the sun, the panels not only filter the light, but also allow the structure to breathe and transform. The addition of this simple variable (open or closed) adds complexity to the design and registers the constantly changing natural environment. At dawn and dusk, the shades absorb and reflect the dramatic light of the sky, infusing the entire pavilion with color. At night, illuminated from within, the screens transform the building into a beacon on its site.

Owner
Withheld

Architect
Thomas Phifer and Partners LLP
www.tphifer.com
Partner:
Thomas Phifer
Project Architect:
Greg Reaves
Project Team:
Yoon Choi, Stephen Dayton, Victor Druga, Tom Graul, David Herron, Patrick Keane, Rayme Kuniyuki, Len Lopate, Aaron Whelton

Consultant(s)
Lanscape:
Office of Dan Kiley
Lighting:
Fisher Marantz Stone

Engineer(s)
Structural:
Gilsanz Murray Steficek
Mechanical:
Altieri Sebor Wieber

Contractor(s)
Hoysradt Builders

Photography
Scott Frances, ESTO Photographics
© Scott Frances /Esto
www.esto.com

Nazareth House, Nazareth, Pennsylvania
LTL Architects

Images Provided by LTL Architects

This design for a 5000 square ft. house for a retired couple in a typical developer subdivision is driven by two contradictory forces: the conventions of the standard suburban home and the adjustment to the peculiarities of the steeply sloping site.  Displaced from its sanctioned location along the street, the house rotates ninety degrees to the public edge and realigns itself with the contours of the site, optimized solar orientation and desirable views.  Rather than an object placed on the site, the house partially imbeds itself within the landscape to form a more protected rear terrace and a maximized southern exposure.  Situated between two parallel retaining walls of local stone, views within the house alternate between the more contained landscape of the courtyard to the North and extended views over the neighboring houses to the distant mountains in the South. The stone walls are manipulated to produce varying degrees of aperture and access to light.
Appearing on the public face only as a garage door,  the house extends from west to east, transforming as it moves away from the street;  from introverted to extroverted, from volume to surface, from iconic pitched roof to a planar inverted roof open to the landscape.  Employing the logics of camouflage and deception, the design distorts or inverts convention to produce a new condition from within the familiar.

Owner
Dr. Toshi and Diana Tsurumaki

Architect
Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis
www.ltlarchitects.com
Project Team:
Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki, David Lewis, Lucas Cascardo, Michael Tyre, Monica Suberville

Carus Residence, Peru, IL
Brininstool + Lynch

Hedrich-Blessing Photographer

Positioned on a large, flat site in north central Illinois, this house evokes the horizontal influence of agricultural buildings historically built in the Midwest. The house incorporates a characteristic program for a family of five. However, visual and tactile elements interconnect and resolve each room's function in a way that gives the project an uncommon sensibility. Cement board panels and varied sizes and applications of redwood siding are wrapped over a steel frame to create the exterior skin.
To maximize privacy, the house is L shaped and oriented towards the perimeter of the lot. Facing the street to the north, the house acts as a privacy screen by protecting views into the pool area and yard. To create additional private outdoor space, a screened porch uses only the batten of a board and batten pattern of siding found on adjacent exterior walls.
The living/dining area, with floor to ceiling glazing, faces south to benefit from passive solar energy. Its windows, as well as those in the two story wing, all offer articulated views across the landscaped yard to open vistas.

Owner
Paul and Tammi Carus

Architect
Brininstool + Lynch
www.brininstool-lynch.com
Design Principal:
Brad Lynch
Project Architect:
Kevin Southard
Project Team:
Joanna Dabek

Engineer(s)
Structural:
Sheffee Lulkin & Associates

Contractor(s)
American Bilco

Photography
Christopher Barrett
Hedrich-Blessing
www.hedrichblessing.com

Khyber Ridge House,Whistler B.C.
Studio (n-1)

Ari Marcopoulos Photographer & Frank Jones

The house is located in Whistler B.C. It is a 5-minute drive from the slopes of Whistler and Blackcomb. The client is ex-professional snowboarder Marc Morisset. The house is built on a steep and rocky site in a sub-division with extremely stringent design guidelines. The development is the result of a public/private partnership between the Municipality of Whistler and Intrawest, a company that has developed numerous ski resorts around Canada and the United States. The design guidelines were developed by Intrawest and had an incessant Pacific Northwest resort theme, that if followed would result in a finely tuned McMansion type wood log structure…one that the client did not want.
The design of the house deviated dramatically from these guidelines on numerous points. These deviations were only accepted after relentless debates in defense of the logic and efficiency of innovative building techniques and awkward discussions about our inability to introduce “faux Styrofoam log columns” into the project. We perceived the suggestion of using faux columns as being unexpectedly radical, however we simply did not manage to come up with a design in which we could legitimately incorporate them. We also attempted to incorporate a pitched roof within the range of pitch angles described in the guidelines. But after extensive research and lengthy deliberations with building climate and structural engineers, the flat roof offered more efficiencies in indoor climate maintenance, structural simplicity, drainage, prevention of destructive snow shedding and usability as an outdoor space.
The house design is about inhabiting the slope. There are five levels distributed along the mountain side, and each level is qualitatively very different -- shaped by the way it engages the landscape at different points. The bedroom level is a straight extrusion of a contour line on the slope. Each bedroom is angled in such a way as to maximize its view to the exterior. The living level is a cantilevered volume, departing from the slope's surface, and is suspended by 1 ¼” stainless steel rods hooked into sixty feet long roof beams. Those beams are anchored straight into the rock face. The guesthouse and garage are literally carved into the rock, and covered with a green roof.
These five levels or plateaus are linked by circulation crevasses -- moving between levels, the inhabitant is always experiencing a line in continuous variation – a condition similar to the snowboarder engaging a line on a mountain. At every turn one engages the slope, to achieve what the client asked for…to make a space “where just sitting there feels like you are actually doing something”.

Owner
Marc Morisset

Architect
Studio (n-1)
www.nminusone.com
Project Team:
Carol Moukheiber, Christos Marcopoulos

Engineer(s)
Yu Strandberg Engineering
Canada Engineer:
C.A. Boom Engineering LTD.

Contractor(s)
General Contractor:
Michael McGillion
Glazing Contractor:
Atlas Meridian Glass Works Inc.
Steel Contractor:
Protek Industries

Photography
Ari Marcopoulos Photographer
Frank Jones

A Beach Residence, Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina
Huff + Gooden Architects LLC

Robert Starling Photographer

In an insufferable climate such as often affects the Lowcountry, reprieve from the rigors of heat, humidity and wind is a natural inclination that is most often mitigated by mechanical buffers. This results in a body removal from the landscape and a cultural distancing which begs the question: where are we – here or there?
The beach house is a replacement for the original Jim Walter® home destroyed by Hurricane Hugo. Located on a well populated barrier island, the design breaks from prevailing beach house typologies and finds its grounding in other ways. Formerly a military reservation, the site is directly in front of two earthen bunkers built during WWII. These sentinels have presided over the island for years. The house continues this protective posture by drawing cover over itself to shroud the house from the vagaries of the coastal clime and resides near the edge of the beach providing both a reprieve from and connection to the water beyond.
Diagrammatically, the house consist of three parts: an ambiguous zone defined by a diaphanous screen, the communal space idealized as a cube, and a linear bedroom / core element. The arrangement mimics the bunkers in the background where a concrete retaining wall is punctuated with a circular gun emplacement. The bunkers have long since been converted to residences.
The <porch> as a cultural condition has traditionally provided an occupiable yet ambiguous zone between inside and out – neither one or the other. The blurring of these two realms intensifies that otherness that one experiences on a humid summer afternoon in the South. A latticed <scrim> shrouds the principal communal space and provides sanctuary and reprieve. One enters the house from the ground floor and moves between the scrim and house. The remainder of the latticed enclosure is used as a screened porch. The scrim is placed on exposed grade beam pads which <grounds> the scrim wall whereas the house itself is <floated> on exposed pilings. This inverse relationship permits the house to substantiate itself relative to the site yet minimizes the risks associated with storm surges and the like as only the screen extends to the ground plane.
The stair tower is a vented plume vacating hot air from the house through heat siphoning. The scrim is constructed of wood framing with farmed-redwood lattice and a standing seam metal roof. The living portion of the house utilizes fiber cement panels with wood battens. The interior finishes are white birch throughout and oak floors. The roof framing at the porch area is exposed and painted a soft blue to ward off evil influences in the spirit of sea island domesticity.

Owner
Withheld

Architect
Huff + Gooden Architects LLC
www.huffgooden.com
Ray Huff

Engineer(s)
Structural:
Shoolbred Engineers Inc.
Mechanical/Electrical:
Bill Anderson

Contractor(s)
Trudeau-Wolfe Construction Company, Inc.

Photography
Robert Starling 
Starling Productions
www.starling.com

Sun Valley Residence, Sun Valley, Idaho
Allied Works Architecture

Hèléne Binet Photographer

This 4000 s.f. residence is located at the base of Ketchum's eastern hills, at the edge of an uninterrupted expanse of sagebrush and aspen trees.  The four-bedroom, two-story house is situated to take advantage of the site's gentle slope and stunning views of Mt. Baldy and surrounding mountain ranges.  The public spaces and bedroom suites are organized into discrete zones so that the house may be used comfortably for both personal stays and long visits with extended family.  Although the residence is conceived as an intimate retreat, its most public rooms are lofty and full of natural light for display of a private collection of important modern art.
The architectural scheme consists primarily of a poured-in-place concrete wall that meanders through the site to create carefully proportioned spaces for both interior rooms and exterior terraces.  The perfectly smooth wall, although singular in its scale and detailing, is articulated to create offsets and monumental voids, for movement through and views out to the natural surroundings.  In places the wall extends out over the surrounding sagebrush meadows to create cantilevered native-landscape enclosures.  Horizontal roof planes of wood and plaster float within the site-scaled concrete elements, while the house's floor planes terrace into the slope of the site.  The second story is a transparent pavilion of glass and wood that emerges above the top of the primary walls.
The residence is complemented by its outdoor spaces: a living room terrace with extensive sheets of glass and a cantilevered eave to the south, and an intimate dining terrace with a seamless transition to the landscape to the east.

Owner                                   
Withheld

Architect
Allied Works Architecture  
www.alliedworks.com
Project Team:
Brad Cloepfil, Doug Skidmore, Dan Koch, Chelsea Grassinger

Engineer(s)
KPFF Consulting Engineers

Consultant(s)
Landscape:
Lutsko Associates
www.lutskoassociates.com
Concrete:
Architectural Concrete Associates

Contractor(s)
Dembergh Construction

Photography
Hèléne Binet Photographer

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