ofhouses: Dear friends, for the next three weeks OfHouses will...

ofhouses:

Dear friends, for the next three weeks OfHouses will be guest curated by Jeff Kaplon, the author of the Subtilitas blog.
Jeff Kaplon is an architect and curator based in Los Angeles. He is the founder and sole curator of Subtilitas, a blog tracing a connected lineage of architecture and design projects that emphasize the craft, detail, precision, and tactility of contemporary works. Jeff started Subtilitas on Nov. 24th 2009 with a picture of Olgiati’s Atelier Bardill and has continued to regularly publish amazing photographs of recent architecture ever since, garnering international attention from both professionals and casual readers.
He is also a partner of Help.ltd, a multi-disciplinary design company that operates through a combination of client-based and self funded and instigated projects. The company’s first completion, the Cactus Store in Los Angeles, not only serves as a retail display of widely sourced obscure, ancient and sometimes grotesque plants situated on 10,000lbs of sand colored concrete blocks, but also doubles as an event space that hosts poetry readings, musicians, and the occasional illicit dance party. Current projects by the company include a line of fertilizer, a documentary film, a botanical novel, an open source website and a new typology of desert habitations. Jeff received his BArch and MArch from Tulane University in New Orleans and studied abroad in Basel, Vienna and Prague. He has worked in New Orleans, New York, and Los Angeles for a number of firms and participated in the design of affordable housing prototypes, dense multi-family residential projects and millwork fabrication.
Subtilitas has remained remarkably consistent and true to its self description: “SUBTĪLITĀS (latin; noun f., 3rd): fineness of texture, logic, detail; slenderness, exactness, acuteness; sharpness : precision.” Its coherence and the overall exceptional quality of the published content made Subtilitas one of the best architecture blogs in the world.
OfHouses is very proud to join forces with Subtilitas for an impressive selection of residential projects for which Jeff Kaplon wrote this insightful introduction:

“This selection of houses is fairly random and without any premeditated theme. Long time favorites were corralled without much consideration of continuity, context or consistency, and condensed to the following seven. What drew me to each may sound rather broad and extremely obvious (especially when discussing any architectural project with a considered backing), but it is the idea behind them. Not an idea that results in merely a stylistic or formal resolution of program, but an idea that is so lucid and poignant that the house displays the tension inherent in the architect’s pursuit to realize it. With that said, I found that the houses could be loosely categorized into a few groups based on the following principles: the cycle of habitation, the relevance of structure, and interpretation of context.

The idea of an evolving relationship to landscape in a daily cycle.
In Galfetti’s Casa Rotalinti, the occupant’s 24 hour cycle of habitation dictates the carving of the brutalist concrete cube perched atop a Bellinzona valley, its massing perhaps referencing the nearby Castello di Sasso Corbaro. One enters the roof from a bridge that connects to a parking space, and descends downward via an organic spiral stair to the picturesque, sunset-capturing glazed area of the “day zone” in which one’s relationship to the surroundings is distant and abstracted. As the day wanes, one continues to descend to the lower portions of the “night zone”, ultimately and literally grounded on the forest floor, where the interaction with the landscape becomes much more intimate.

The idea of live vs. work.
Similarly to Casa Rotalinti, the idea of the 24 hour habitation cycle is the guiding methodology behind Yamamoto’s Fujii’s house, but here the architect focuses on the relationship of living and working within the same space. The client’s dental practice sits firmly on the ground floor, monolithically treated with thickened concrete walls and exaggerated, cavernous entries. The living quarters above rest on this fortified base and are treated as conversely as possible. A simple lightweight post and beam timber construction with large glazed apertures follow a path around the roof that forms outdoor courtyards. Windows butt-up directly against structural members to eliminate frames and avoid additional visual clutter, reinforcing Yamamoto’s desire to dramatically diverge the comfort of living from the activities below.

The idea of structure mimicking nature.
Pierre Zoelly’s house for the sculptor Peter Hächler is one of several projects designed by the architect referencing naturally occurring forms. A concrete “tree” sits at the core of the house, the branches extending outward to define interior partitions and support the exterior enclosure. By the architect’s own admission, the house was conceptually finalized after the construction of this core, the innocuous envelope a pragmatic necessity to enclose the home. The sculptor’s studio is situated across a rock garden from the house, creating a short but meditative separation between practice and living.

The idea of tectonics in rural setting.
While Zoelly’s house relies on an internalized structural concept, Bétrix & Consolascio’s design utilizes an external structural system to define the spaces within. Interesting here is the paradoxical treatment of this tectonic system; massive concrete planes slide past each other, creating large openings, outdoor verandas, and appear to almost force the gabled roof to its pitch, supported by a single exposed beam. These planes are painted red on one side, at first glance masking the materiality and harmonizing the house with the rural historic village. However, what lies beneath the mask is quickly revealed, as the concrete is exposed on its ends, and points of load transference and planar overlap are greatly exaggerated with the insertion of large granite blocks.

The idea of addition.
Lampens’ House De La Ruelle is a unique project dealing with the constraints of a confined lot and an existing building, two elements not typically found in the majority of the architect’s work. A rectangular prefabricated timber structure lifted above the ground is now linked to a triangular, fortified, and partially submerged bunker of an addition. The precision inherent in the prefabricated house is countered by the module of the concrete block, which is left uncut and unaltered, overlapping at its corners and extending far beyond its footprint to enclose new patios. Painted white, it starkly contrasts the dark timber home; serving as a counterpoint to the original. A signature Lampens rainspout projects from the top corner, expressing the materiality of the concrete roof as the block around it peels away.

The idea of traditions (pt 1).
Like the Lampens’ house, Mirko Baum’s residence in Roetgen is indicative of a confrontation with an existing context. However, in this case the constraint was imposed by the municipality, who consistently rejected the architect’s plans for not adhering to the traditional charm of the German village. As a result of this experience, Baum’s design embodies an extremely subversive relationship to its prescribed archetype, with recognizable elements abstracted in proportion, detail, and material. More provocative still is the design of the interior, which in a Semper-esque strategy counters the weighted exterior and anticipated “look” of a house with industrial metal catwalks, narrow hallways filled with doors void of any hierarchy or indication of function, and odd loft-like spaces reminiscent of submarine interiors.

The idea of traditions (pt 2)
Similar to Baum’s residence, Olgiati’s Kucher house highlights a similar strained dialog with the adjacent 19th century homes of Rottenburg am Neckar. A series of traditional elements including tall exaggerated dormers, repetitive juliet balconies, and a steep gabled roof harken the formalism of the residential archetype. However, the house is at conflict with the overabundance of referential tropes; the facade at the base literally bulging if filled to capacity. The complex construction required to resolve the intersection of these seemingly basic elements necessitated prefabrication in order to have a degree of precision of less than 3mm over the span of the entire house.”
(Text: Jeff Kaplon. Cover image: Valerio Olgiati /// Atelier Bardill /// Scharans, Switzerland /// 2007. Photo source: The Olgiati Private Collection of Pictures, © olgiati.net.) 

All - For the next three weeks, I will be guest curating @ofhouses, a phenomenal magazine and website cataloging old, forgotten, or overlooked houses prior to 1995. Please give a look.