Location: Beauvoisin, France
Client: Private
Year: 2020
A young couple wanted to build a home for their growing family in the outskirts of the village of Beauvoisin, in the south of France . The requirements were to provide a single-story home which would have a master bedroom suite, 2 bedrooms with a shared bathroom, a large living & dining area, a separate kitchen, laundry & technical room, pantry, guest water closet, a home office, and a swimming pool.
The property is long and narrow and the local building regulations require a home to either abut the property line or provide a 4 meter setback. In order to optimize the narrow site and provide plenty of exterior space with southern exposure the house was pushed against the northern property line providing a nice sized rear yard for playing and enjoying the pool.
The home office, mudroom, guest water closet, laundry / technical room, pantry and kitchen were placed along the north side of the home while the living, dining, and bedrooms were located on the south side of the home separated by the entry corridor.
The living areas are southwest facing with direct access to the terrace overlooking the swimming pool while the bedrooms are located at the southeast corner of the house. This separation between public and private areas of the home provides for greater privacy and allows the couple to entertain without fear of waking up the younger members of the family.
The fenestration is composed of black anodized aluminum framed glass sliding/swinging windows and doors to contrast the minimal white painted stucco exterior.
Location: Princeton, NJ USA
Client: Private
Year: 2017
A modest 1950s ranch-style house situated on a lot of just under an acre, located 8 minutes from Princeton University, was completely gut renovated.
The existing home had 3 bedrooms, 1 small bathroom, separate living & dining rooms, an awkwardly laid out kitchen connecting to a laundry room that accessed the garage and was directly in front of the home’s small main entry foyer. Apart from the 3 existing bedrooms, the home’s interior was completely reconfigured.
The old centrally located brick chimney, adjacent mechanical room, and interior walls separating the living, dining & kitchen areas were demolished to create a single large modern living area centered around a new open kitchen. The home’s single bathroom was converted to an ensuite for the master bedroom, accessed through a new walk-in closet, while a second bathroom was added where the old kitchen had been located. A smaller laundry and mechanical room were created adjacent to the bedrooms.
The masonry stoop at the front of the house was demolished and replaced by a wood deck. The original entry door was replaced by a pair of patio doors with another pair immediately across the foyer accessing the new deck at the rear of the house. This opened up the foyer and the living space, allowing greater connectivity to the rear garden and also more daylight into the living area.
A new connection to the city’s water system was added and the existing well was maintained for irrigation. The home’s plumbing, sanitary, and gas lines were all replaced. The existing electrical service was only 40 amps but in order to meet modern day usage requirements it was upgraded to 200 amps with all new electrical wiring throughout the house, including receptacles, switches and light fixtures.
The existing white oak floors were patched, sanded, stained and refinished. All of the existing interior doors were refinished and rehung with new blackened hardware. The kitchen cabinets and island are white to contrast with the black countertop and backsplash.
During the demolition of the interior walls severe termite damage was uncovered on the eastern exterior walls which had to be reframed. The existing wood windows were all replaced with new black aluminum insulated glazed windows. The existing exterior shake siding which had years of paint pealing off was replaced with vertical cedar board rainscreen siding.
The fire pit in the backyard was made using slate and other stones found on site during the digging of the two trenches for the new electrical and plumbing connections from the house to the stree
Location: Miami, FL USA
Client: Art Market Productions - Miami Project
Year: 2012
One of the premier fairs of Miami Art and Design Week. The VIP Lounge was designed as a hang-out space for VIP guests and private members consisting of a paper amorphous pavilion with bean bag chairs with side tables, and a custom made carbon fiber and fiberglass bar.
The pavilion was designed as a play between advanced computational design techniques and low-tech fabrication methods of assembly. The geometry was generated using rhino scripting as an assembly of similar but non-repetitive unique folded components, laser-cut entirely out of 2-ply museum board and assembled using elmer's glue, double-sided tape, and zip-ties.
The art bar is designed as an amorphous curvelinear piece and is fabricated out of fiber-glass and recycled carbon fiber composites, and functions as a serving station for private functions and daily lounge operations. It was considered by Interior Design Magazine as one of the top 100 Big Ideas.
Location: Jersey City, NJ USA
Client: Little Milestones for Small Discoveries
Year: In Progress
The client wanted to convert an existing ground floor retail space into a children’s sensory gym to promote active sensory play. The concept for the design was to provide a calm yet warm environment. The existing white box is broken into individual functional areas by walls painted with black chalk paint, providing both a space for signage and information display as well as a canvas for revolving artwork produced by the children, parents, & staff. A warm wood plank floor runs the length of the space. All thresholds between spaces are wood doors & frames.
Location: New York City, USA
Client: Blumenfeld Development Group
Year: 2020
Designed with Bjarke Ingels Group, The Smile, located on East 126th Street in East Harlem, is a luxury 11-story residential building with 233 apartments ranging from studios to 2-bedrooms, 20% of which were affordable housing units. The building was designed to rise up from E126th Street and bridge over an existing adjacent 3-story commercial building overlooking E125th Street. The ground & second floors are reserved for retail & office space with a ground floor connection to the existing commercial building to benefit from two street frontages.
The project includes a generous collection of amenities ranging from a fitness room, spa, media room, social lounge, chef’s kitchen, and co-working spaces on the 3rd and 4th floors, along with a roof deck, outdoor screening area, green roof, spa pools and a swimming pool.
The form of the building with its top leaning inward away from the street is in response to the zoning setback requirements and height restrictions. The facade is a checker-patterned aluminum frame curtain wall with blackened stainless steel rainscreen panels.
Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Client: Al Ra'idah Investment Company
Year: TBD
Designed with FXFOWLE Architects, The Museum of the Built Environment is located within the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD), a new mixed-use sustainable urban community near the center of the city of Riyadh. The museum will be home to permanent and temporary exhibitions showcasing the development of art and architecture within the Arabian Peninsula.
The building form references the natural landscapes, land formations, and early architecture of the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Madain Saleh and At-Turaif. The formal expression of a raised solid crystalline form, opaque housing the galleries, with a chiseled transparent base highlighting the public areas.
The building also houses a monorail station which serves as a public transport hub for the immediate neighborhood. MoBE is connected to adjoining parcels through a network of skybridges.
Location: Maryland, USA
Client: Private
Design: 2014
Proposal for a ten story residential building with retail space on the ground level and four levels of parking below grade.
In order to maximize the allowable buildable gross area while achieving the maximum building height, the building was pushed outward to the setback lines while balconies and outdoor spaces where carved out creating a faceted exterior massing.
Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Client: Al Ri'yadah Investment Company
Year: 2016
Designed with FXFOWLE Architects, Parcel 5.05 is a mixed-use development containing an office tower, residential tower, a retail podium and below-grade parking. Located near the center of the King Abdullah Financial District development in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The building’s design responds to the shape of the site, outdoor terraces incorporate landscaping throughout.
The office building is clad on the south elevation with a saw-tooth facade composed of glass laminated marble slabs which block views towards the residential units and reduce heat gain into the office floors.
Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Client: Private
Design: 2012
Concept design for a mixed-use project located on two separate city blocks housing a two-story retail base, an office podium and tower, and a residential tower above. The planning developed from a courtyard massing strategy, pushing program to the perimeter to allow for an open central courtyard. The office components are expressed by defining towers on the primary outer corners and placing the residential towers towards the middle of the site, away from the busy street while optimizing views.
Fracturing the perimeter allowed pedestrian access to the courtyard from the street. The angular geometry was a direct response to zoning regulations and setback requirements. Dealing with the duality of public vs private, street-front vs courtyard, the outer perimeter was treated with a more solid materiality while the inner courtyard facing facades where transparent.
Location: Manama, Bahrain
Client: Four Seasons Hotel
Design: 2008
Designed with SOM, a 5-star hotel resort & spa, with private residences on a purpose-built private island, the center of the new masterplan of Bahrain Bay. The hotel contains a number of destination restaurants and amenity spaces. The guest rooms range from standard king rooms to luxurious royal suites, with private residences above the hotel and serviced by Four Seasons, taking advantage of unobstructed views of the Arabian Gulf.
The main entry lobby is defined by a golden prismatic undulating ceiling, created from lacquer painted stainless steel panels that are CNC cut, folded, and welded together. The ceiling mimics the central staircase below which connects guests between the main lobby and the lower lobby which provides access to the resort.
Location: Zaragoza, Spain
Client: Zaragoza Expo 2008
Year: 2008
Designed with Zaha Hadid Architects, the Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion is composed of four pods that perform both as structural elements and as spatial enclosures. The bridge design stems from the detailed examination and research into the potential of a diamond shaped section, which offers both structural and programming properties. As in the case of space-frame structures, a diamond section represents a rational way of distributing forces along a surface.
The bridge has two levels, the lower level provides pdestrian access across the bridge with entrances to the adjoining pods while the upper level serves as a belvedere, accessible from both ends.
Location: New York City, NY USA
Client: Animal's Alliance NYC
Year: 2011
The cat shelter serves as a kitty ‘pod hotel’ containing 3 fully insulated pods varying in length to be used primarily in the colder winter months and 2 non insulated pods for the summer with the interstitial space and plywood frame serving as a kitty jungle gym. Each pod contains a pair of hinged doors to allow entry from either end, as well as to provide two means of egress in case of a threat. The pods are easily removable from the plywood frame for maintenance and repair, and can be retrofitted or swapped out to accommodate growing colonies or different seasons.
Using the concept of a vacuum flask (thermos), each insulated pod was fabricated by placing a tube within a larger tube and filling the void between the two with insulation. A 10” PVC tube wrapped with recycled plastic insulation was placed into a 12” PVC tube and the two ends were filled with expanding foam insulation and capped with a laser cut white acrylic ring onto which the cat doors were fixed. All joints and seams were filled with silicone sealant to make the pods water resistant. Each non insulated pod was produced using a 10” PVC tube wrapped in ½” sisal rope and capped at each end with cat doors. The sisal rope provides a scratch surface for sharpening claws and a textured surface for cats to climb and lounge on.
The frame was painted using a polyurethane based wood stain to seal the plywood and give it rich walnut color. Each of the vertical ribs and horizontal struts were fastened together using brad nails and flat-head screws.
Location: Kuwait
Client: Private
Design: 2009
Design studies for a restaurant using pixelated screens to define individual dining zones while functioning as long communal tables. The concept was to break the monotony of a flat surface by pixelizing the wall into modular boxes along an undulating surface, bringing an abstracted representation of the garden inside.
Location: Dubai, UAE
Client: Private
Design: 2009
The 80m long bridge functioned as a direct pedestrian crossing between a hotel and a financial center over a busy roadway.
The bridge needed to be wide enough for a golf cart and two people on either side of the cart, a maximum of 4.5m clear inside between railings. The formal solution of the design provided solar shading and wind mitigation. The bridge required lighting and signage, having direct access form the public way to both sides of the road via an elevator and stair. Its curvalinear plan was developed responding to the orientation and location of the contact points with the connecting buildings.
Location: Washington D.C., USA
Client: Czech Republic
Design: 2009
A competition to redesign the Czech Embassy on it’s existing location in Washington D.C.. The site was designed referencing the organic midieval city plan of Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. This cellular arrangement of spaces was used to define three zones: the public street front, the embassy proper, and the private garden used by embassy employees for events. The embassy building swoops around a drop-off and rises towards the street front creating a visual marker as you approach the site from the road.
Location: Private
Client: Private
Design: 2007
The cellular house was a study in creating a modular residential unit, based on a cellular planar composition defining individual living spaces, that could be aggregated in numerous ways to create different residential typologies: single family detached homes, horizontal blocks of row/town houses, or stacked vertically to create a high-rise residential tower.
The individual living cells are expressed on the exterior, some pulling inward and others pushing outwards to create terraces while providing self-shading to reduce solar heat gain. The modular homes can be interchanged and alternated to create rhythmic formal patterns.
Location: London, UK
Client: Architectural Association
Design: 2007
A competition for a pavilion to be built in front of the AA School of Architecture, celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Design Research Lab post-graduate program.
The proposal was a bio-morphic formal expression of the DRL’s growth, reflecting the foundation of the graduate programme to its current world-wide recognition and prestige. The aim of this proposal is to test the structural capabilities of fibre-c as a suitable material for non-standard forms.
The panels have been designed based on the structural principle of corrugation, folding a flat sheet of material to increase its structural properties. The edges of the panels are folded to create rigid modules. The modules are stacked and bolted together with steel plate connections to form ribs, and each rib is fastened together to create an overall rigid tubular system. The folded edges of the modules transfer vertical forces to the laminated timber support structure. The infill surface of the module serves for lateral bracing and can be milled with a pattern to reduce material weight in areas of larger spans, creating a play between solid and transparency.
The challenge was to create repetition in the modules while trying to follow the complex curvature of the pavilion’s form. By breaking apart the overall form into typical zones, five moulds can be used to fold the wet fibre-c sheets. Each mould can create between four and six variations resulting in a total of 22 unique panel types.
Using variation in flat panel sizes and applying apertures in specific locations created a pixelization of the pavilion’s surface and was enhanced by using five shades of grey standard to the fibre-c collection.
A concept for a stool inspired by a flower’s petals that become both the structural and the seating elements. All the petals of a flower are called a corolla, a perianth is when the petals vary in size and/or color. The perianth stool is composed of two unique elements that are then mirrored along the longitudinal axis making the corolla bilaterally symmetrical. The perianth can be adjusted to provide a large surface to accomodate 2-4 people and can alternatively serve as a table.
