| Washington Park Residence by Sullivan Conard Architects Posted: 29 Sep 2011 05:00 PM PDT Sullivan Conard Architects have completed the Washington Park Residence in Seattle, Washington. 
. Description from the architects: The Washington Park Residence sits on a bluff overlooking Lake Washington and the Cascades. The design takes advantage of the site by capturing broad, unobstructed views while preserving privacy. The design explores the contrast between mass and transparency with thick, thermally insulated concrete walls forming the major portions of the street facade. The walls are layered and modulated to provide carefully framed views from west facing rooms, add depth and shadow to the facade, and orchestrate the entry sequence through the courtyard to the front door. Upon entry the transparency of the east side of the house is revealed. The reflecting pool at the east edge of the terrace eliminates the need for a railing and merges visually with the waters of Lake Washington 80' below. Floor to ceiling steel framed windows and doors form the east walls, while cast in place concrete chimneys anchor the ends of the major rooms. The building's massing reflects its program with a main volume housing the primary living areas of Great Room, Kitchen, and Library. The sleeping wing, separated by a glass walled bridge, is oriented east-west on the south edge of the site. The garage, with apartment above, extends west along the north edge to form the entry courts. Concrete, steel, wood, and stone comprise the restrained material palette. The green roof mitigates storm water runoff while the geothermal heating system reduces fossil fuel consumption.           Visit the Sullivan Conard Architects website – here. . .  |
| Floating House by MOS Architects Posted: 29 Sep 2011 04:50 AM PDT MOS Architects designed the Floating House on Lake Huron in Ontario, Canada. 
. Description from the architects: The Floating House is the intersection of a vernacular house typology with the shifting site-specific conditions of this unique place: an island on Lake Huron. The location on the Great Lakes imposed complexities to the house’s fabrication and construction, as well as its relationship to site. Annual cyclical change related to the change of seasons, compounded with escalating global environmental trends , cause Lake Huron’s water levels to vary drastically from month-to-month, year-to-year. To adapt to this constant, dynamic change, the house floats atop a structure of steel pontoons, allowing it to fluctuate along with the lake. Locating the house on a remote island posed another set of constraints. Using traditional construction processes would have been prohibitively expensive; the majority of costs would have been applied toward transporting building materials to the remote island. Instead, we worked with the contractor to devise a prefabrication and construction process that maximized the use of the unique character of the site: Lake Huron as a waterway. Construction materials were instead delivered to the contractor’s fabrication shop, located on the lake shore. The steel platform structure with incorporated pontoons was built first and towed to the lake outside the workshop. On the frozen lake, near the shore, the fabricators constructed the house. The structure was then towed to the site and anchored. In total, between the various construction stages, the house traveled a total distance of approximately 80 km on the lake. The formal envelope of the house experiments with the cedar siding of the vernacular home. This familiar form not only encloses the interior living space, but also enclosed exterior space as well as open voids for direct engagement with the lake. A “rainscreen” envelope of cedar strips condense to shelter interior space and expand to either filter light entering interior spaces or screen and enclose exterior spaces giving a modulated yet singular character to the house, while performing pragmatically in reducing wind load and heat gain.                     Visit the MOS Architects website – here. Photography by Florian Holzherr .  |
