Lebbeus Woods – Real live drawings

This from Lebbeus Woods’ Blog – reposted here mostly because I can’t believe I almost forgot how beautiful this drawing style is, and was reminded again today as I was researching.

The full link here:

http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/high-houses/

The High Houses are proposed as part of the reconstruction of Sarajevo after the siege of the city that lasted from 1992 though late 1995. Their site is the badly damaged “old tobacco factory” in the Marijn dvor section near the city center.

The concept of the project is simple. The houses rise up high into the airspace once occupied by falling mortar and artillery shells fired by the city’s besiegers in the surrounding mountains. By occupying the airspace, the High Houses reclaim it for the people of the city. Balancing on scavenged steel beams welded end-to-end, they are spaces of a new beginning for Sarajevo, one that challenges—in physical terms—the city’s past and present, aiming at a future uniquely Sarajevan. Stabilized by steel cables anchored to the site, the houses, poised like catapults, fulfill the paradoxical desire to fly and at the same time be rooted in their place of origin.

These houses are not for everyone. Indeed, probably only a few could master their challenges. Yet each mastery would manifest a spirit of courage and inventive skill in the name of all who must reinvent a city transformed by destruction.

Finding the New in the Old.

I found this project as I was doing some design image research for a rural green community in Arizona. I liked it so much, I thought I’d post it. Combining the new with the old has always been an expected architectural talking point, but one really takes notice when the new form honestly arises from the actual real old construction. Very beautiful.

http://www.mrva.net/index.html

Australian Architecture Awards – 2009

Here are some incredible examples of the award-winning work coming out of Australia right now. These are really confident pieces, and perhaps that is the reason I am drawn to them as the design industry here in Arizona is the probably the furthest thing from “confident” that I have seen in some time.

Here is the full link:

http://www.bustler.net/index.php/article/australian_institute_of_architects_2009_national_architecture_awards/

Award for Small Project Architecture: Polygreen House by Bellemo & Cat (Photo: Peter Hyatt)

Award for Residential Architecture – Houses: Freshwater House by Chenchow Little Architects (Photo: John Gollings)

Award for Urban Design: Armory Wharf Precinct at Sydney Olympic Park by Hargreaves Associates, Lahz Nimmo Architects and Lacoste + Stevenson Architects (Photo: Brett Boardman)

Re:Vision Salon: Link to blog

Here is a link to a posting on Michelle Kaufmann’s blog with images from David Baker + Partners, Architects that I really like.

http://blog.michellekaufmann.com/?p=2408

http://www.dbarchitect.com/

“Revolution, baby.”

As I am working up a plan to try and salvage a large-scale residential project by taking a more in-depth look at the pro-forma (no small feat considering how land and housing prices have changed), I am reminded of the design successes we had on a similar project in Tempe in 2006. That project, too, was about more efficiently utilizing the land and doing it in a more appropriate way. It was also about playing directly to the specific location (a group of properties adjacent to Arizona State), so the product offering was very dependent on place – focusing mostly on student housing and working within the existing zoning requirements. Unfortunately, that developer also could not weather the coming economic storm, but the lessons learned there apply to the work we are doing now to understand just how exactly new projects are supposed to get built in the new economy.

The good news: The days of “build it and they will come” are over, at least for the near future.

The bad news: The inverse that seems to be in play, “perfect build” let’s call it, is much deeper water than we architects are used to. The product needs to be spot-on. Exactly the right price. Exactly the right style. Exactly the right size. Exactly the right location. And while the design is humming without hitch, it needs to be equally matched with an over-performing financial analysis that the banks will take notice of so developers even have a shot of  getting a construction loan.

At least in the metropolitan Phoenix area, I can’t really complain about this “new rules” condition. I have watched almost an entire generation build mostly shoddy homes in areas that should not have been built on anyway in further expanding concentric rings away from center city. In addition to being over-priced, the obnoxiously bad home and development designs were outdone only by the shockingly bad workmanship (and that fulfills my sweeping generalization quota for this paragraph). My industry, the building industry, has certainly “made our bed”.

So, what’s next then?

As the rock band Silversun Pickups would sing…”revolution, baby.”

Exterior Rendering

Section 1

Section 2

Floor Plan

New Reset Studios blog

Welcome to the new blog of Reset Studios – a modern architectural design practice based in Phoenix, Arizona. Of course we have a website (www.resetstudios.com) that outlines the basics about the practice (projects, info, references), but it is admittedly “static”. This blog is intended to be the complement to that website – “active” and “inclusive.”

I care deeply about the current state of the architectural profession, and I’d like to use this blog as a way to share current project successes and failures, push the envelope of future practice, and eventually prove that the resultant architecture will be “accessible” in the truest sense of the word.