Awards
American Institute of Architects, CT | 1999
Award for Design Excellence
Modern House
Growing out of memories shared with the architect of various places they had lived or admired, this 4,500 square foot, 5 bedroom house was designed as a weekend home for a family from New York City – embodying influences ranging from a 50’s Modernist house in Houston, the utilitarian buildings of the Texas plains, and the architecture of Louis Barragan.
The site is located in a new subdivision of ill-proportioned, 6,000 square foot pseudo-colonials. Our contextual response to this suburban “slum” was to create a separate architectural reality within a walled 2-acre compound composed of the house and 18’ x 36; pool and a 900 square foot pool house. Hiding the house from the street, a dark green 8’ tall perimeter wall serves as a means of defining the simple, flat lawn on which the house sits.
The planning of the house is organized on a 4’ grid that reveals itself in the scoring pattern of the floors and in the placement of window mullions throughout the house and pool house. Color was used as an architectural element as well, used to define massing and planes on the interior and to recall the spirit of the Southwest. Corrugated, galvanized metal was used on the exterior walls and roofs of the “privacy” wings, and was a strong reference to the clients’ love of light industrial structures.