Topics+of+Interest

=A Modern House Steeped in Mexican Tradition =

by Cathi and Steven House, House + House Architects

We have just experienced one of our greatest joys as architects: designing and building a second home for ourselves in Mexico. Our goal was to create a house that would be strong, embracing yet transparent, and layered in color, form, and emotion: completely modern yet saturated with Mexican traditions. Construction has been recently completed on this 2,000-square-foot house that is filled with gardens and light. At the lower floor the entry, living room, dining room, and kitchen open onto a plant-filled patio. The master bedroom at the rear is set slightly above the patio with its own private garden, and the master bath wraps around an ancient pomegranate tree. Materials are local, as are the techniques of construction, but the forms are a product of organic geometries designed to align with the sun, wind, and views to the many church towers. We discovered the beautiful 450-year-old colonial city of San Miguel de Allende by chance in 1989 while searching for a quarry for a Mexican stone that we use frequently in our American practice. This city is Mexico at its best, frozen in time, yet alive in every way. Indians dance their holy rituals across from contemporary art hanging in a gallery wrapped around an ancient colonnaded courtyard. Luminous skies, crystalline at the 6,300-foot altitude, give an almost magical glow to the deep colors washed onto and fading from the ancient walls. Bougainvillea cascades, aromas waft, music and laughter fill the air. San Miguel de Allende has become our home away from home, a retreat where we nourish our creative souls and recover our senses. We acquired our ramshackle ruin on a 25 by 60-foot lot on a quiet street just four blocks from the center of town. There was little salvageable structure surrounding an 80- to 100-year-old pomegranate tree. We took the ruin down brick by brick and reused them in our new house. We also reused every rock and bit of broken mortar in preparing the foundation sub-base.

More about this article in @http://www.architectureweek.com/2000/0719/design_3-2.html

= Classic Home = 

This house on Bruny Island near Tasmania, Australia was designed as a vacation house on a secluded coastal site, with views back toward Tasmania. The two long wings of the house are separated by a central corridor which serves as a buffer between the bedrooms to the south and the active areas in the larger northern wing.  Emphasis was placed on minimizing the ecological footprint of this house, in both its construction and long-term use. Thus, the house sits on an elevated steel frame to preserve existing site drainage patterns. In all respects, the house is off the local grid and relies instead on on-site rainwater collection and waste management and independent power generation using photovoltaic panels and a supplementary gas generator.  Energy demand is tuned closely to supply thanks to some essential design decisions. Heating and cooling needs are limited through careful room placement and reliance on high-performance insulation and operable glazing. Generous window placement together with a curved roof take advantage of the available natural light, further reducing energy demands.

 http://www.architectureweek.com/2006/0830/classic_home.html