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 Design Architect: Renzo Piano Building Workshop
Architect of Record: Davis Brody Bond LLP
Structural Engineer: WSP/Parsons Brinckerhoff
Photograph: Frank Oudeman

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CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR, Peter Coe

PRESENTATION DRAWINGS

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Sarah Amelar, Fred A. Bernstein, Robert Campbell, faia,

Blair Kamin, Jayne Merkel, Clifford A. Pearson,
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SPECIAL INTERNATIONAL Naomi R. Pollock, faia

CORRESPONDENT
INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENTS David Cohn, Tracy Metz, Aric Chen, Chris Foges

Shaking CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Iwan Baan, Roland Halbe

Bad
In New York, passing subways can shake entire buildings,
but that wasn’t an option for Columbia University’s new
Jerome L. Greene Science Center. Home to sensitive
laboratory and imaging equipment requiring exceptional
stability, the design by Renzo Piano Building Workshop relies
on a steel structure to reduce floor vibrations to a miniscule
2,000 mips. Even as the elevated No. 1 train roars past,
this helps ensure that nothing distracts from the scientific
advances being made within the center’s unshakable walls.
Read more about it in Metals in Construction online.
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04 2019
NEWS 61 PRODUCTS: WALLS & CEILINGS By Kelly Beamon 100 AGAHNIA HOUSE, CALIFORNIA SEBASTIAN
MARISCAL STUDIO By Suzanne Stephens
67 PRODUCTS: CLADDING By Kelly Beamon
19 ARATA ISOZAKI WINS 2019 PRITZKER
PRIZE By Miriam Sitz BOOKS 106 GALLERY HOUSE, CHICAGO JOHN RONAN
ARCHITECTS By Linda C. Lentz
22 SIDEWALK LABS POISED TO ACCELERATE 42 TWO CALIFORNIA BOOKS Reviewed by
DEVELOPMENT IN TORONTO 112 RIVERBEND RESIDENCE, WYOMING CARNEY
Deane Madsen
By James S. Russell, FAIA LOGAN BURKE ARCHITECTS By Beth Broome
44 OFF THE GRID: HOUSES FOR ESCAPE, BY DOMINIC
24 KATERRA INTRODUCES NEW PRODUCTS & BRADBURY Reviewed by Anthony Paletta
BUILDING PLATFORMS
By Deborah Snoonian Glenn
TECHNOLOGY
121 FACE VALUE ARCHITECTS REFINE THE ART AND
26 NEWSMAKER: THOMAS WOLTZ By Miriam Sitz BUILDING TYPE STUDY 1,005 SCIENCE OF FACADE DESIGN By Michael Cockram
RECORD HOUSES
DEPARTMENTS 71 INTRODUCTION 147 DATES & EVENTS
16 EDITOR’S LETTER: A MODEST PROPOSAL 72 MEADOW LANE RESIDENCE, NEW YORK TOD 152 SNAPSHOT: THE PAINTED HALL AT LONDON’S OLD
WILLIAMS BILLIE TSIEN ARCHITECTS | PARTNERS
31 TRIBUTE: KEVIN ROCHE, 1922–2019 ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE By Justin Chan
By Josephine Minutillo
By Fred A. Bernstein
78 CASA TERRENO, MEXICO FERNANDA CANALES
33 LANDSCAPE: WATER-TREATMENT FACILITY IN
MUTTENZ, SWITZERLAND By Andrew Ayers
By Joann Gonchar, FAIA
35 IN FOCUS: THOMAS HEATHERWICK’S VESSEL AT 84 WUEHRER HOUSE, NEW YORK JEROME
ENGELKING By Alex K limoski THIS PAGE: CASA TERRENO, MEXICO, BY FERNANDA CANALES.
HUDSON YARDS By Jerry Adler
PHOTO BY RAFAEL GAMO.
41 GUESS THE ARCHITECT 88 PATH, TOKYO ARTECHNIC ARCHITECTS
COVER: MEADOW LANE RESIDENCE, BY TOD WILLIAMS BILLIE
49 COMMENTARY: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE HOUSE? By Naomi R. Pollock, FAIA TSIEN ARCHITECTS | PARTNERS. PHOTO BY REED MCKENDREE.
By Lance Hosey 94 BAYHOUSE, NORTHEAST U.S. STUDIO RICK JOY
54 FIRST LOOK: A LITTLE KNOWN HOUSE IN ILLINOIS By Pilar Viladas See expanded coverage of Projects and Building Type Studies as well as
BY FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT By Sarah Amelar Web-only features at architecturalrecord.com.
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14 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019

for the RECORD

Beyond the printed page: highlights from our website, live events, and other happenings.

I M AG E S (C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P, L E F T ) : C O U R T E S Y P E D R O & J UA N A ; © A R C H I T EC T U R A L R EC O R D ( 2) ; S E B A S T I A N M A R I S C A L ; O M A ; B I L L B A M B E R G E R
YOUNG ARCHITECTS PROGRAM AT MOMA PS1
Hórama Rama, by Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo and Mecky Reuss, of Mexico City–
based firm Pedro & Juana, will be the 20th annual YAP installation. Visit our
website to learn more about the immersive junglescape, which opens in June.

HOOPS AT THE NATIONAL BUILDING MUSEUM

In a new exhibit running through January 5, 2020, photographer Bill Bamberger
surveys basketball courts around the world. Find our review on the Web.

OMA IN
BROOKLYN
The New York office
of OMA has unveiled
its design for a pair of
residential towers
along the Brooklyn
waterfront, called
Greenpoint Landing.
Read more about the
project online.
GOING THE DISTANCE
Managing editor Beth Broome toured the Riverbend Residence (page
112) in Jackson, Wyoming, on cross-country skis with Carney Logan
Burke Architects’ Jennifer Mei and Eric Logan (top).
Products editor Kelly Beamon caught up with London-based
architectural designer John Pawson in late February at the annual
Design Indaba festival in Cape Town (middle).
Deputy editor Suzanne Stephens, who oversees the Record Houses
issue each year, chatted with the owners of the Agahnia House (page
100) in La Jolla, California, designed by Sebastian Mariscal (bottom).

Follow us on Twitter @ArchRecord Join our group and follow our company page on LinkedIn
Like us on Facebook.com/ArchitecturalRecord Follow us on Instagram @ArchRecordMag
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16 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
editor’s letter

A Modest Proposal
The Pritzker Prize for Architecture is 40 years old.
How could it adapt to a changing world?
When 87-year-old Arata Isozaki was named winner of the 2019
Pritzker Prize last month, there was some head-scratching. “Didn’t he
already win it?” asked one architect I know. Another said dismissively,
“It’s just a lifetime-achievement award.”
Which is not to say that Isozaki does not deserve recognition under
the criteria that have dominated the annual prize since its inception 40
years ago. The career of this elegant architect, who came of age in war-
scarred Japan, has spanned from his early days in Kenzo Tange’s office to
the establishment of a global practice in which his eclectic architecture
has had brushes with Brutalism, Postmodernism, and other harder-to-
label isms. “I could not dwell upon a single style,” he said.
The Pritzker’s celebration of a famous, senior, male architect has been
part of its DNA since Philip Johnson, 72 years old and both a star and a
star-maker, won the first award in 1979. At that time, hotel tycoon Jay
Pritzker, whose corporate foundation finances the award, described
the intention of the prize in The New York Times as honoring “a living
architect or group of architects.” Unfortunately, the group thing hasn’t
happened, though the prize has been twice awarded to two—and once to
three—partners. And in a 1999 book devoted to the first 20 years of the
Pritzker, J. Carter Brown, the first jury chairman, recalled that the early But there has been only one Muslim and never a laureate from the entire
panel worried “we might run out of superstars” as the prize went on. continent of Africa. Is it because—as in the case of most women archi-
Clearly, the agenda was set. tects—they are just not famous enough?
But in the same book, Martha Thorne, then a curator and now the In the 1999 book, Thorne called for future Pritzker juries to “be bold
Prize’s executive director, wrote that “the true test of the Pritzker enough to make the prize even more one of recognition of a career in
Prize . . . is yet to come,” calling for a broader field of candidates and for progress, not a stamp of approval in retrospect.”
the jury to “continue to step beyond what is famous in favor of quality. Isn’t it time to pay serious attention to those words and change the
No woman has as yet won the Pritzker, a disturbing fact that reveals Pritzker Prize? While some critics call the prize irrelevant and believe it
much about the traditional structure of the profession and the deficien- should just end, I disagree. It is a powerful spotlight, but one that could
cies of reward systems.” shine more broadly.
Eventually, the Pritzker did honor one woman—Zaha Hadid, in 2004— The Pritzker has been called architecture’s Nobel. Though the Nobel
and later Kazuyo Sejima, but as one-half of the partnership SANAA, in gives a single prize in literature, it often awards multiple prizes in chem-
2010—and Carme Pigem as one-third of the firm RCR Arquitectes, in istry, physics, or economics. As architecture is both an art and a science,
2017 (the fractions are getting smaller). Yet despite an ongoing flap over why couldn’t there be more than one annual Pritzker? An actual
Denise Scott Brown’s exclusion from her partner Robert Venturi’s 1991 lifetime-achievement award would honor the field’s giants—and giant-
award, the jury failed to include Wang Shu’s partner and wife, Lu esses—before they die. But there also could be an Architect or Architects
Wenyu, in the 2012 prize. In 2013, an online petition to retroactively of the Year, for those creating extraordinary contemporary examples of
include Brown in Venturi’s award garnered more than 20,000 signatures, design. A third prize could acknowledge architects for excellence in
including at least one Pritzker laureate’s. No action was taken, and it design with a vital humanitarian purpose—commitment to the remedia-
damaged the reputation of the prize. tion of climate change, say, or to improving the urban realm. The
Occasionally, the Pritzker jury does seem to respond to the winds of $100,000 prize money that was awarded in 1979 is still given today,
contemporary politics and culture: Shigeru Ban was honored in 2014, though, if reflecting inflation, it would amount to about $350,000 in
largely for his innovative designs for disaster relief; and Alejandro 2019 dollars. In consideration of that, perhaps there could be enough for P H O T O G R A P H Y: © M I C H E L A R N AU D

Aravena in 2016 for his designs of low-cost housing in Chile. an expanded program.
But, mostly, the prize doesn’t reflect how architecture and the world This would hardly dilute the significance of the Pritzker Prize but
have continued to evolve. Arguably, an initial goal of the Prize to elevate buoy up the prestigious honor for a long future, by reflecting the con-
the importance of architecture in the public mind has been met—with cerns, diversity, plurality, and vibrancy of the field of architecture today.
far wider knowledge and appreciation of design than 40 years ago,
thanks in no small part to the Internet, where sites like ArchDaily draw
millions of visitors.
The prize has had, admirably, a global reach, recognizing not only Cathleen McGuigan, Editor in Chief
prominent Western architects but those from Asia and Latin America.
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 perspective
ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
news 19

D A I LY U P D AT E S
architecturalrecord.com/news
twitter.com/archrecord

We should start to think about asking people to declare if they have closed their pay gap,
the same way we declare the 2030 Challenge.
—Architect Jeanne Gang, speaking to Dezeen about pay inequality between women and men in the profession.

Arata Isozaki Wins 2019 Pritzker Architecture Prize

BY MIRIAM SITZ
For ArAtA isozAki, winner of the 2019
Pritzker Prize, inspiration for shaping the
physical starts with the intangible. “The most
interesting thing in architecture to me is
receiving something invisible by the senses,”
says the Japanese architect. “As art, and as
urban design, I always looked for new ideas to
assemble.”
Isozaki’s six-decade (and counting) career
has been characterized by work that promotes
dialogue between East and West—“not
through mimicry or as a collage, but through
P H O T O G R A P H Y (C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P ) : © H I S AO S U Z U K I ; YA S U H I R O I S H I M O T O ; C O U R T E S Y P R I T Z K E R A R C H I T E C T U R E P R I Z E

the forging of new paths,” notes the Pritzker

jury in its citation. Born in 1931 in Ōita, on
the island of Kyushu, Isozaki was 12 years old
when the United States bombed Hiroshima,
just across the water from where he lived.
“When I was old enough to begin an under-
standing of the world, my hometown was
burned down,” he said. “I grew up on ground
zero. It was in complete ruins, and there was
no architecture, no buildings, and not even a
city. Only barracks and shelters surrounded
me. So my first experience of architecture
was the void of architecture, and I began to
Arata Isozaki (bottom) is the eighth Pritzker
Prize laureate from Japan. His first project
outside of his home country was the MOCA
Angeles (right), completed in 1986. The Palau
Sant Jordi in Barcelona (above) opened in
1990, then hosted the 1992 Olympic Games.
consider how people might rebuild
their homes and cities.” This pre-
occupation with new concepts of
urbanism continues to permeate the
architect’s work. (Watch the video
on record’s website for an explana-
tion of his ongoing project The Exper-
imental City “X.”)
Isozaki studied architecture at the
University of Tokyo, graduating in
1954, and went on to apprentice
under Kenzo Tange, the 1987 Pritzker
laureate. He traveled the world exten-
sively as a young man, going overseas “at least 1996). Elsewhere in Japan, his significant proj-
10 times before I turned 30. I wanted to feel ects include Expo ’70 Festival Plaza (1966–70,
the life of people in different places,” he said. Osaka), the Museum of Modern Art, Gunma
“Through this, I kept questioning, ‘What is (1971–74), and Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of
architecture?’ ” Art (1972–74, Fukuoka).
In 1963, the architect established his firm, In the 1980s, his work expanded across the
Arata Isozaki & Associates, after the Allied globe and showed a thoughtful commingling
occupation of Japan ended and the country was of Japanese, European, and American design
beginning to rebuild. In his hometown, he sensibilities. The Museum of Contemporary
designed the Ōita Medical Hall (1959–60) and Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) (1981–86)—a contro-
Annex (1970–72), as well as the Ōita Prefectural versial Postmodern building rendered in red
Library (1962–66, renamed Ōita Art Plaza in Indian sandstone—was the architect’s first

Visit our online section, architecturalrecord.com/news.

20 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
international commission. “Isozaki was one of
the first Japanese architects to build outside
of Japan during a time when western civiliza­
tions traditionally influenced the East,” says
Tom Pritzker, chairman of the Hyatt Foun­
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dation, which established the prize. “His
architecture—which was distinctively influ­
enced by his global citizenry—[was] truly
international.”
Isozaki has designed more than 100 built
Isozaki designed Nara Centennial Hall (left) in the
mid-1990s. The building contains two auditoriums and a
smaller multipurpose space. Located in the south-central
region of Japan’s main island, it opened in 1999 as part of
celebrations for the municipality’s 100th anniversary.
projects, including cultural facilities such as
Palau Sant Jordi (1983–90, Barcelona), for the
1992 Summer Olympic Games; Team Disney
Orlando Building (1987–90); Shenzhen Cultural
Center (1998­2007, China); the ice hockey sta­
dium Pala Alpitour (2002–05, Turin, Italy), for
the 2006 Winter Olympic Games; Central
Academy of Fine Arts, Art Museum (2003–08,
Beijing); Allianz Tower (2003–14, Milan); Qatar
National Convention Center (2004–11, Doha);
Shanghai Symphony Hall (2008–14); and
Hunan Provincial Museum (2011–17, Changsha,
China).
“[His work] is a testimony to his ability to
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © H I S AO S U Z U K I
understand the context in all its complexity
and to create a remarkable, well­crafted and
inspiring building that is successful from city
scale to the interior spaces,” reads the Pritzker
jury’s citation.
The 2019 Pritzker Prize ceremony will take
place on May 24 at the Château de Versailles
in France, accompanied by a public lecture
in Paris. n
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22 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
Sidewalk Labs Poised to Accelerate Development in Toronto
BY JAMES S. RUSSELL, FAIA
Snøhetta’S new york office, along with
London’s Heatherwick Studio, have released a
series of renderings that show how mass-timber
construction could be deployed in the proposed
redevelopment of the 12-acre waterfront district
Quayside, east of downtown Toronto. Though
the designs are conceptual, they show off the
material’s potential versatility. Sidewalk Labs,
the New York–based company that accelerates
urban innovation, hired the two design firms
as it refined its 2017 competition-winning
proposal for the site. The scheme infuses the
project with tech innovation and pioneers job
development, advanced construction tech-
niques, and financing strategies that disrupt
the hidebound urban-development process.
Called Sidewalk Toronto, the project proposes
3 million square feet of mixed-use development
on a brownfield site, including 3,000 apart-
ments and a public plaza that wraps an inlet. A
2 million-square-foot Google headquarters
sweetens the deal (Sidewalk Labs is a subsidiary
of Alphabet, the company that owns Google).
As Sidewalk Labs has refined the project,
controversy has only grown. Skeptics question
whether the benefits of the technologies, eco-
nomic-development tactics, and financing tools
are fair, transparent, and realistic. To address
the pervasive mistrust of the way Sidewalk and
Google would use data collected from users’ and
residents’ devices, Sidewalk has now proposed a
Civic Data Trust that establishes an independent
entity to manage data and rules for its use. “We
know that building trust in the months and
years ahead will be critical,” wrote Sidewalk
chairman and CEO Daniel Doctoroff in a Toronto
Star editorial in February. Recently, critics ob-
jected to a Sidewalk proposal to privately fund a
light-rail line that would serve the project and
the fast-growing Eastern Waterfront, which
perspective news
Working with Snøhetta and Heatherwick Studio, Sidewalk Labs developed their proposal for a mixed-use waterfront
project east of downtown Toronto that uses mass-timber construction.
might otherwise take years to realize. They did
not like a private entity’s taking a cut of the
eventual payback.
Given the need for a transit connection,
Doctoroff told The Canadian Press in early
March, “If there is no light rail through the
project, then the project is not interesting to
us, to be perfectly honest.” He added, “If we get
to a place . . . where we conclude that achieving
the lofty ambitions that we and Waterfront
Toronto and their government constituents
have established for this project are not pos-
sible, then obviously we would be foolish to
continue.” Sidewalk Labs did not make anyone
available for further comment.
If Sidewalk Toronto stays on track, it will
push the envelope of urban development in
several ways. The proposed mid-rise and high-
rise housing components, 40 percent of which
are designated for below-market or
low-income renters, would be erect-
ed with modular units of mass
timber, helping the project to reach
its Cradle-to-Cradle sustainability
goals. Solar panels with battery
storage—coordinated with a “ther-
mal grid” of waste heat, as well as
geothermal heating and cooling—
minimize greenhouse-gas
emissions. Additionally, the design
features curbless streets to change
the mix of autos, ride-sharing, and
pedestrian space depending on
demand. Ground-floor spaces allow
greater tenant flexibility (including
office and community uses) and
lower build-out costs. Operable facades are among
the techniques that blur the boundaries between
the public realm and private space. To catalyze
job creation, an urban-innovation institute would
combine research with new-business incubators,
much the way Cornell Tech (record, Novem-
ber 2017) in New York does.
Nontraditional financing is necessary to
realize these ambitions, says Sidewalk Labs,
because the scope is not viable if confined to
conventional short-term development scenarios.
The company now seeks to extend some of its
innovations farther than Quayside, across the
190-acre Eastern Waterfront district, to create
economies of scale. If the city agrees to the use
of mass timber beyond the original site, it would
lower costs and could jump-start a mass-timber
industry in Ontario. In addition, Sidewalk,
Alphabet, and others might contribute some
“patient capital” to the timber construction, the
energy tactics, and the mobility innovations.
Patient capital investors accept longer payback
periods than the cycles preferred by convention-
al developers.
To move forward, Sidewalk’s proposal, which
will be fully fleshed out in the next few months,
must be approved by the client, Waterfront R E N D E R I N G S : C O U R T E S Y S N Ø H E T TA
Toronto, a public-development entity involving
government on three levels: city, province, and
nation.
The breadth and complexity of its ambitions
may fail to win over Torontonians, however.
Should Sidewalk withdraw, the city could also
lose the crown jewel—a new Google headquarters.
According to a Sidewalk spokesman, Quayside
and the headquarters are a package deal. n
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24 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
Katerra Introduces New
Products, Building Platforms
BY DEBORAH SNOONIAN GLENN
In late february, on the eve of the National
Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Inter­
national Builders’ Show in Las Vegas, the
design­build and technology firm Katerra
announced a broad series of products aimed
at improving the quality and lowering the
cost and delivery time of design and construc­
tion projects.
The Silicon Valley company’s new offerings
will be launched throughout 2019. They include
a building platform tool that allows for design
and mass customization, manufacturing, and
construction of market­rate, garden­style, and
affordable multifamily housing. Also in this
panoply of goods and services are Apollo, a
software platform that manages design, cost,
material, and schedule data for the life cycle of
any building type; structural and panel systems
made from cross­laminated timber (CLT) that
can be flat­packed for shipping and field assem­
bly; proprietary energy and HVAC systems
known as KES and KTAC, respectively; a bath­
perspective news
room kit designed for
rapid field assembly;
windows; and two
series of interior
fixtures and finishes,
KOVA Select and
KOVA, which include
lighting, plumbing
fixtures, flooring,
and tile.
Katerra will also
open two new high­
tech manufacturing facilities in 2019—one in factories,” says Trevor Schick, president of
Spokane, Washington, that will make CLT, and Katerra Materials and a former manufacturing
another in Tracy, California, that will produce executive at Hewlett­Packard.
building components such as utility walls, By adding a portfolio of products to its
cabinets, and truss assemblies. The company existing design­build services, Katerra is dou­
plans to establish similar facilities on the East bling down on its ambition to become a fully
Coast in future years, though it declined to integrated one­stop shop for buildings—the
discuss specifics. “Down the line, for cost Amazon of design and construction, if you
efficiency, we aim to have 80 percent of our will. With more than 5,000 employees world­
projects located within 500 miles of one of our wide, “the company has taken a collaborative
S I T E FU R N I S H I NGS
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 25

Katerra’s 24-unit tects Katerra currently employs on a full-time or

and inclusive approach to working with build-
ers, architects, and others to inform its
I M AG E S : C O U R T E S Y K AT E R R A
garden apartment contractual basis, but points to its acquisitions
building in Las Vegas,
called K90, is designed
and partnerships to indicate the importance of
to be built in 90 days architecture to the company’s mission. Since
(left). A rendering 2017, Katerra has acquired Nystrom Olson
shows how the project Architecture in Spokane, as well as Michael
is intended to be
customizable to
Green Architecture of Vancouver and the multi-
different markets based office of Lord Aeck Sargent. The Texas
(opposite). architects Lake|Flato and Boston-based Leers
Weinzapfel Associates are listed as collaborators.
“Right now, we can’t be in all markets at all
times, so having strong relationships with firms
that offer expertise in needed areas will be
crucial to our long-term success,” he says.
Over time, Katerra plans to roll out plat-
forms similar to its multifamily tool for all
types of buildings, enabling designs based on
kits of parts that are tailored to the needs of
crete. Recent proposals to update U.S. building the client, program, site, and climate. Curtis
codes for mass timber structures have paved says its system offers architects “the best of

strategy,” says Craig Curtis, president of
Katerra Architecture, who was previously a
partner at the Miller Hull Partnership.
The firm’s investment in CLT is a bet that
mass timber, more commonly used in Europe
and Canada, will gain broader acceptance in
the U.S. due to its durability and smaller envi-
ronmental footprint relative to steel and con-
the way for approval of timber-framed build-
ings up to 18 stories tall, far higher than its
current limit of five stories. That being said,
Katerra’s new multifamily-housing building
tool can be used for both timber- and light-
weight steel-framed structures, giving it
broader application in today’s U.S. market.
Curtis wouldn’t name the number of archi-
both worlds, enabling designers to spend time
on the details that matter rather than rein-
venting the wheel with every project.”
As of July 2018, Katerra had $3.7 billion in
bookings for multifamily and commercial
projects. Among them is K90, a 24-unit garden-
apartment building in Las Vegas designed to
be built in just 90 days. n

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26 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
[ NEWSMAKER ]
Thomas Woltz
BY MIRIAM SITZ
With projects under way from Tennessee to
Tasmania, landscape architect Thomas Woltz,
FASLA, and his firm, Nelson Byrd Woltz, work
at the intersection of the natural and built
environment. One of the practice’s highest-
profile commissions of late—New York’s
Hudson Yards development, on the far west
side of Manhattan—has quite literally elevated
the challenge of creating a beautiful, healthy
ecosystem in a major urban area: the five-acre
plaza and garden sit on a deck atop a function-
ing rail yard.
Just before the opening
of Hudson Yards, record
spoke with Woltz by phone
as he traveled along the
Pacific Coast Highway,
from Malibu to Los
Angeles, to catch a flight to
Houston, where his firm is
working on Memorial Park.
With Hudson Yards offi-
cially open, what lies
ahead for your firm with
this project?
The plaza is complete,
and the landscape will
continue to evolve and
grow with the seasons. We
will be planting through
the spring and summer. Big trees, for instance,
can’t be dug and craned in during February and
March because of the freezing temperatures.
Right—I recently tried to plant some window
boxes and discovered all my dirt was frozen.
You know what? Hudson Yards is really not
unlike your window box. You have soil in a
suspended box that can freeze on all sides,
unlike the earth, which has natural insula-
tion. Hudson Yards is similarly vulnerable
from all sides, because it’s a constructed box of
soil, with water, sewage, and high voltage
electricity in it as well. Imagine if all of the
utilities of your apartment ran through your
window box. Also, nothing is on the ground;
the trains, just like the street below your
window, are moving, and you can’t drop any-
thing out of your window box into that street.
I hadn’t thought about this before, but your
window box is actually the perfect analogy.
Have you met your own goals for the project?
I feel like we have been able to achieve the
vast majority of what we set out to do: to make
a beautiful, hospitable place for the people of
New York. This is the part of Hudson Yards
where you don’t pay an admission fee; you
perspectivenews
don’t have to buy anything to enjoy the plaza
and gardens. I’m very proud of the fact that
we are making a civic space for the next cen-
tury. When you think on the term of a
hundred years, you think about public space
differently, and that shift in thinking affects
how you build. For example, our deep invest-
ment in the structures below grade will allow
the large trees to get to full maturity.
How does your design anticipate the growth of
both plants and buildings in such a rapidly
changing neighborhood?
Because the skyscrapers cast so much
shade, we looked to the native forest ecology
of the Hudson Valley, where there’s a really
beautiful, diverse, and resilient plant com-
munity that thrives in our
climate.
We’ve relied heavily on
the ornamental qualities
of native plants, and I
think people will be re-
warded for paying
attention with subtle
surprises, like tiny,
ephemeral lilies in the
spring and bright red twig
dogwood in the winter.
There will be no purple
cabbages—no shopping
mall plants.
What are the next steps?
The trees in the plaza
were planted last summer
and will be breaking bud
in the spring. In April, the large trees in the
north garden will be craned in. You want to
plant them while they’re still dormant so that
they wake up in their new environment.
Next, we’ll come in with shrubs; then, when
it’s warmer, the perennials, and bulbs again
in the fall.
Your firm has been engaged with Hudson
Yards since 2012. What is the value in being
part of the team from so early on?
We have had a major role in coordination
of all the engineering decisions related to
drainage, retention of stormwater, and struc-
tural considerations, so that the final design
maintains its integrity. It’s been really inter-
esting for our firm to participate in that, and
I think it helps debunk the myth that the
landscape architect comes in with a truck of
plants at the end of the project and makes it
look pretty. No—the design of the space
comes first, and that gets back to the very
first point of making a welcoming environ-
ment for the public. Tens of thousands of
people will visit and observe this site from
above, and we want them to be dazzled by
the harmony of the design. n
noted
Hirshhorn Museum Taps Hiroshi
Sugimoto to Overhaul Garden
The Japanese artist and architect’s early plans for
the Washington, D.C., museum’s sculpture garden
call for the creation of a more prominent entrance
facing the National Mall, as well as the reopening
of an underground passage that connects the
garden to the main museum plaza. Sugimoto
previously renovated the Hirshhorn’s lobby.
New York’s Art Deco Chrysler
Building Sells for $150 million
The Abu Dhabi Investment Council and real-estate
firm Tishman Speyer, which together paid $800
million for the tower in 2008, have agreed to sell
the Chrysler Building, designed by William Van
Alen and completed in 1930, to Austrian company
Signa Holding and New York–based RFR Holding.
New York State Aims to Promote
Low- and Zero-Carbon Buildings
As part of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Green New
Deal, the New York State Energy Research and
Development Authority has launched a three-year,
$30 million initiative called Buildings of
Excellence to advance the design, construction,
and operation of energy-efficient projects. The
first round will focus on multifamily buildings.
ARO to Renovate Rothko Chapel
Architecture Research Office, along with lighting
design firm George Sexton Associates and Nelson
Byrd Woltz Landscape Architect, will restore the
building, reconfiguring the skylight, lighting
design, and entryway while respecting the
original vision of Mark Rothko and John and
Dominique de Menil. The Chapel is slated to
reopen in late 2019.
60
63 60
61 59 58
50
52 53 54 54
50
40
F M A M J J A S O N D J F
2018 2019
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © R O B E R T W R I G H T
INQUIRIES BILLINGS
Billings Remain Strong in 2019
The AIA’s latest data show that billings grew for
the second consecutive month this year, keeping
to 2018’s trend, though the Architectural Billings
Index dropped by 5 points to 50.3 in February.
(Scores over 50 indicate an increase in billings.)
The project inquiries index rose by 0.2, while the
design contracts index dipped by 0.8.
 © R O B E R T B E N S O N P H OTO G R A P H Y

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 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
Kevin Roche, FAIA, 1922–2019
BY FRED A. BERNSTEIN
Like his mentor Eero Saarinen, Kevin Roche
could design buildings of startling originality.
His Ford Foundation headquarters, on 42nd
Street in Manhattan, completed in 1967, arrays
glass-walled offices around a spectacular
12-story atrium (record, February 1968). His
Oakland Museum of California, which opened
in 1969, conceals galleries in planted terraces
cascading down a hill. And his Center for the
Arts at Wesleyan University, in Middletown,
Connecticut, completed in 1973, is a collection
of discrete limestone boxes, almost heroic in
their simplicity.
Roche, who died early last month at 96, will
be remembered for those iconic buildings, and
for the more than 200 other projects realized
by his firm, Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and
Associates (KRJDA). “It would be impossible to
write a history of 20th-century architecture
without Kevin Roche,” Robert A.M. Stern said
in the 2017 documentary Kevin Roche: The Quiet
Architect. Roche won the Pritzker Prize in 1982
and the AIA Gold Medal in 1993.
In a more than 70-year career designing
corporate, institutional, and commercial
buildings, however, Roche rarely matched the
P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E S Y K E V I N R O C H E J O H N D I N K E L O O A N D A S S O C I AT E S ( L E F T ) ; © T I M G R I F F I T H ( R I G H T )
heights of Wesleyan, Oakland, and Ford.
Reviewing a 2011 exhibition of Roche’s work,
Belmont Freeman, an architect and critic,
described his path from those early projects
“through the increasingly gargantuan subur-
ban corporate buildings of the 1970s and ’80s
and the sometimes banal developer projects of
more recent years.” At a symposium associated
with the exhibition, Roche himself comment-
ed that the previous speakers “had made him
feel like he had retired in 1980.”
In fact, Roche continued working almost
until his death. His career included a 40-year
relationship with the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. Hired in 1967 to devise a master plan for
the museum, he and his partner, John
Dinkeloo, created a wide stairway in front of
the building, replacing McKim, Mead &
White’s narrower flight. John Morris Dixon,
the longtime editor of Progressive Architecture
magazine, called the new steps “one of New
York’s architectural coups.” Later, the firm
completed the pyramidal Lehman Wing and
the glass-walled container for the Temple of
Dendur, among other additions to the mu-
seum, which together nearly doubled the
building’s size. New galleries for Greek and
Roman art—replacing an old cafeteria—opened
to rave reviews in 2007.
Some of his buildings, like the Knights of
Columbus Tower in New Haven (1969), corseted
perspective tribute
In a career spanning more than seven decades, Kevin Roche (left) designed
a number of memorable projects, including the Oakland Museum of
California (above), which opened in 1969.
by four massive round piers, were lightning
rods for criticism, and the quality of the firm’s
work in recent decades was uneven. Paul
Goldberger, writing in The New York Times,
praised 1 United Nations Plaza, the hotel and
office tower completed in 1976, as “an exqui-
site minimalist sculpture.” But Roche’s
Egyptian-inspired headquarters for E.F. Hutton
on West 53d Street, completed in 1987, was,
according to Goldberger, “pretentious and
overblown.”
Eamonn Kevin Roche himself was never
either of those things. Born in Dublin in 1922,
he was raised in Mitchelstown, County Cork,
where, he said in the 2017 documentary,
“Nobody had ever heard of an architect.” But
his father, a successful farmer, asked Roche to
design a pigsty, which he did. “The pigs loved
it,” he recalled—and Roche was on his way.
During World War II, he earned an architec-
ture degree from the National University of
Ireland. In 1948, while working briefly for
architects in Dublin and London, he saw the
work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in maga-
zines and resolved to study at the Illinois
Institute of Technology, where Mies presided.
Roche arrived there in 1948 but, finding Mies
“uncommunicative,” lasted only one semester.
He planned to try his luck working for Alvar
Aalto. But he was “totally broke” and “living in
the streets,” he said, when he heard about Eero
Saarinen and joined his office in Bloomfield
Hills, Michigan, in 1950. In 1954, he was
named Principal Design Associate, working
closely with Saarinen. Seven years later, when
Saarinen died unexpectedly, Roche and
Dinkeloo took over. Together they completed
about a dozen Saarinen projects, including the
Gateway Arch in St. Louis; the gull-winged
TWA Terminal at Kennedy Airport in New
York; and the stoic, soaring CBS Headquarters
(known as the Black Rock) on Sixth Avenue
and 53rd Street in Manhattan.
In 1966, when most of the Saarinen projects
were complete, Roche and Dinkeloo formed
31
KRJDA in Hamden, Connecticut, where
Saarinen had begun moving his firm just
before he died. Roche was its chief designer.
The Saarinen connection helped the new
firm snare its first important commissions.
Roche told the authors John Cook and Heinrich
Klotz for their 1973 book Conversations with
Architects that the committee searching for an
architect for the Oakland Museum “had in-
tended to invite Eero” and therefore invited
KRJDA “as a courtesy.” The committee was won
over by the firm’s scheme—which ultimately
gave Oakland a beloved public space and pre-
saged the “green roof” movement by decades.
But at the same time as the architects were
working in raw concrete in Oakland, they were
using luxe materials, like grayish-pink granite,
for Ford. With that building, Jonathan Barnett
wrote in architectural record in 1968, the
architects “created a new kind of urban space
that stands between the sealed environment of
a modern office building and the increasingly
harsh and uncontrolled urban landscape out-
side.” But they avoided that kind of mediation
in later buildings, some of which are tightly
wrapped in mirrored glass. If Roche’s work
lacked a single unifying element, that was
intentional, he said. “Society is enormously
complex, so I suppose it’s reasonable to expect
this range,” he told Cook and Klotz.
In recent years, the Metropolitan Museum
began working with architects other than
Roche, and the Ford Foundation didn’t for-
mally involve him in its recent $200 million
renovation (record, February 2019). Last July,
the firm announced it would “wind up opera-
tions” after completing a 2.2 million-square-
foot development in Washington and prepar-
ing its archives to be donated to Yale.
Roche was married to the former Jane Tuohy,
whom he met in Saarinen’s office (she and their
five children survive him), but in the 2017 film,
he was also depicted as wedded to his work.
According to his assistant, “He only stopped
coming in on Saturdays last January.” n
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 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
“This projecT started with a disaster,” says
Beat Huesler, head of Oppenheim Architec­
ture’s Swiss office, about the boulderlike
20,000­square­foot water­treatment plant his
firm recently completed in Muttenz, a munici­
pality bordering Basel on the River Rhine. He’s
referring to the 1986 Sandoz agrochemical fire,
which caused tons of pollutants to enter the
river—the principal source of drinking water
for half a million people. The political fallout
eventually resulted in Muttenz’s separating its
water system from Basel’s and building its own
filtration plant on a protected­forest site. Under
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © B Ö R J E M Ü L L E R ( T O P ) ; A A R O N KO H L E R ( B O T T O M )
the area’s strict environmental and building
standards, typical industrial materials that
might contaminate the stored water are pro­
hibited. Oppenheim was hired to design an
external envelope that would not only conform
to code, but also blend in with the natural
surroundings.
According to principal Chad Oppenheim,
who founded the firm in Miami 20 years ago,
the hardest part of the project was “creating
the most economical building possible, because
we were going to be under tremendous scrutiny
where costs were concerned.” Opposition par­
ties were contesting the expense of pulling out
of the Basel system, and political pressure
to remain within the $7 million construction
budget was intense. Searching for a meaningful
form, the architects decided to express the idea
of economy by shrink­wrapping the plant in a
concrete envelope that closely follows the con­
perspective landscape 33
A WATER-TREATMENT FACILITY IN SWITZERLAND CONFORMS TO THE EQUIPMENT
IT HOUSES—AND ITS SURROUNDING LANDSCAPE. BY ANDREW AYERS
1
5
2
0 30 FT.
SECTION
10 M.
1 ENTRY HALL 4 LOUNGE
2 CIRCULATION SPACE 5 OFFICE
3 FILTRATION PLANT
tours of the equipment inside. They then
covered it with a layer of semi­porous shot­
crete, colored a rusty brown by the addition of
clay and soil, so as to create “an organic object
that begins to disappear into nature and
doesn’t require repainting or refinishing. We
wanted it to be beautiful in its decay,” explains
Oppenheim. To perfect the naturalistic illu­
sion, trees have been planted right up to the The structure’s concrete shell curves to the contours of
the equipment inside (top). Visitors to the facility are
building’s perimeter and, once mature, will all guided through passageways that come into close
but hide it from the forest approach. proximity with water (above).
A visitors’ center, placed to one end of the
plant, afforded the team a little more archi­ building begins to emerge through the trees,
tectural latitude. “Visitors are taken on a and you’re not sure—is it part of nature or is it
procession,” says Oppenheim, “a very purifying man­made? Then you enter a sort of cave, a very
decompression in this industrial area. You’re mystical experience, stepping over water, which
near the highway, there are a lot of man­made reflects indirect light from above. We find that
structures, and then you enter this kind of water is a very poetic medium to work with.”
sacred forest and meander past the water chan­ The facility is also, as he points out, a timely
nels and the ground­filtration pools. Slowly, the reminder of the element’s preciousness. n
 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 IN FOCUS 35

On the far west side of Manhattan—where

Hudson Yards, the monumental city-within-a-
city that will someday encompass 18 million
square feet, is rising on a platform held aloft
above a sea of railroad tracks—stands one of
the most original structures in New York.

Vessel Has Viewed head-on at a sufficient distance—look-

ing east from the spur of the High Line, say,
across acres of parked commuter trains—

Landed Vessel, the climbable sculpture designed by

Thomas Heatherwick, has the calming aspect
of a pagoda, its eight levels of upturned wings
Thomas Heatherwick’s glowing a soft copper color in the sun. But up
2,500-step climbable close, at ground level, its rigid symmetry dis-
solves into a jumble of stairs and platforms,
sculpture opens in mushrooming from a base of 50 feet across to
Manhattan. 150 feet across at the top. London-based
Heatherwick Studios managed to come up
BY JERRY ADLER with a shape that defies geometric description.
The elaborate website devoted to it, which
features a promotional video staged by the
Alvin Ailey dance company, calls it a “spiral
staircase,” which it most definitely is not. The
interior of the Guggenheim Museum is a spi-
ral, one continuous ramp circling a central
axis, but Vessel is a nest of steps, landings, and
P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E S Y M I C H A E L M O R A N F O R R E L AT E D - OX F O R D

Heatherwick’s Vessel (left) mushrooms from a base of 50

feet. Its stairs and landings are clad with a copper-colored
stainless steel (above).
36 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
walkways that run in straight lines
and intersect at oblique angles.
Nor is it “soaring,” as the website
calls it—a curious description for a
150-foot-high object just yards from
a 900-foot-tall tower, 10 Hudson
Yards, and its even more gigantic
neighbor, 30 Hudson Yards, both by
Kohn Pedersen Fox. For that matter,
it’s not a “vessel” either, a name that
pretentiously eschews a definite
article—just “Vessel,” like “London
Bridge” or “Jupiter”—but which has
nothing to do with the object itself,
either in the sense of a ship or a
container. Heatherwick drew inspi-
ration from the 1,000-year-old
stepwells of Rajasthan, deep cisterns
reached by steep stairs chiseled into
the walls. They are vessels that hold
water, but Vessel encloses nothing
but air.
Stephen Ross, the chairman of
Related Companies, which, along
with Oxford Properties, developed
Hudson Yards, wanted to make a
bold statement with Vessel, and he
spared no expense. The structure’s
154 staircases and 80 landings,
mostly fabricated in Monfalcone,
Italy, are clad with stainless steel,
copper-colored by a process called
physical vapor deposition. This
creates a shiny surface that will not
weather or corrode into verdigris. In
The 150-foot-high structure consists of 154 staircases and 80 landings that run in
certain lights, it reflects a sallow straight lines and intersect at oblique angles (above).
sheen onto the movable ETFE “shell”
of the adjacent performing and visual-arts
space, the Shed, which will open in early
April. There is no obvious reason why the
copperlike-cladding was necessary, except as a
statement of how much money the developers
had and were willing to spend.
“Our brief was that Hudson Yards needed a
galvanizing moment,” said Stuart Wood, the
project manager for Heatherwick who led a
tour of the site, a week before it opened to the
public. “New York is an intense, bold, very
compressed environment, one of the few
places in the world that can take this.” Apart
from that generalization, Vessel makes no
obvious gestures toward the surrounding
cityscape—it is only a couple of hundred feet
from busy 10th Avenue but walled off from it
by the two big towers and the new shopping
mall between them—or to the site itself, either 28 acres and spanning the trainyards and the
the once-bustling waterfront nearby or the
enormously complex infrastructure below. It
is meant to complement the nearby High Line
and attract at least a fraction of the 7 million
or so who visit there each year, but it has none Heatherwick, Frank Gehry, Robert A.M. Stern, who wrote about architecture and other subjects.
IN FOCUS
The brief to
Heatherwick Studios
was that Hudson Yards
“needed a galvanizing
moment.”
of the High Line’s DNA, the sense of discovery
imparted by its origins as a hidden, indeed
forbidden, remnant of New York’s industrial
history.
Once completed, almost the entire Hudson
Yards project will sit on two platforms totaling open space, have been habituated to less likely
rail tunnels to New Jersey under the Hudson
River. (Construction is scheduled to start next
year on the western half of the site, which is
expected to include towers designed by
and Santiago Calatrava.) This marvel
of engineering was designed not just
to support the buildings but also the
landscaping, which required a
stormwater storage tank and a venti-
lation and air-conditioning system
to exhaust the heat of the idling
trains below and cool the soil
enough for plants to survive.
“Considering what it takes to hang
225 trees over the rail yards,” said
landscape architect Thomas Woltz of
Nelson Byrd Woltz, “these must be
the most expensive trees in the
world” (see “Newsmaker,” page 26).
By the same token, Vessel must
rank among the most expensive
pieces of public sculpture in the
world; for the same $200 million
price, Ross could have bought, just a
week earlier, the entire Chrysler
Building, with $50 million to spare.
And expectations are high; admis-
sion will be by timed ticket,
although there are no plans to
charge for it. The optimum number
of visitors at one time is calculated
to be around 700, although it re-
mains to be seen whether that will
allow for Heatherwick’s vision of
New YorkersÕ ditching their gym
memberships to get their exercise
running up and down Vessel’s 2,500
steps. The truth is, there isn’t much
else to do on it; there are no places
to sit, no food for sale or allowed,
and you can take a selfie but the
rules prohibit selfie sticks. Vessel conveys, in
Wood’s words, a “hyper-acceleration of arousal
from the outside but, on it, a calm material-
ity.” The best views, he adds, “are inwards,
because they focus on intimate spaces, on
human beings.”
It’s good that he thinks that, because, once
the entire project is built out, the current
sight lines to the Hudson River and the New
Jersey shore will be mostly cut off, and the
views will be of the looming towers and the
expensive shops inside the retail atrium, the
experience less like walking across the Brook-
lyn Bridge than being a mouse trapped in a
wastebasket. The success or failure of the
project won’t be known until people begin to
use it, of course, and New Yorkers, starved for
places. It’s a safe bet it will fulfill its destiny to
provide them—or, certainly, tourists—with
Instagrammable moments. n
Jerry Adler is a former senior editor of Newsweek
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 perspectivebooks
California Dreaming
Two books highlight defining moments in mid-20th-century residential
design on the West Coast.
Reviewed by Deane Madsen
Pierre Koenig: A View
from the Archive,
by Neil Jackson.
Getty Publications, 304
pages, $55.
Just the mention of
Midcentury Modern
architecture easily
conjures up Julius
Shulman’s image of
Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House 22, cantile-
vering over the Los Angeles landscape. But
Koenig was so much more than just the cre-
ator of a pair of Case Study houses, as Neil
Jackson’s new book reveals. Anyone who has
drawn a steel detail should feel a debt to Pierre
Koenig (1925–2004), whose refinement of
technique and materials spanned a whole
career. Thankfully, Jackson has included most
of these details in a rich set of plates that fills
the final third of the book.
As important as these illustrations is his
deeply researched investigation of individual
projects executed over the course of Koenig’s
professional life. These include episodes of
Koenig’s working through wood post-and-
beam construction with Rafael Soriano on his
way to designing his own house in steel.
Bolstered by the expansive archives of the
Getty Research Institute, Jackson traces project
Photo by Steve Hall, Hall +Merrick Photography. Designer: Eastlake Studio. development and change orders as well as
sketches, plan sets, and photographs showing
works in progress and completed buildings.
The author emphasizes the peaks of
Koenig’s career—the inclusion of his work in
John Entenza’s Arts & Architecture program in
the late 1950s and, in 1989, a full-scale recon-
struction of Case Study House 22 for the
Blueprints for Modern Living exhibition at the
Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
Yet Jackson doesn’t neglect the slow period in
the early 1980s when few new clients arrived,
and the bulk of Koenig’s work was devoted to
updating past projects. When Koenig was at
his height, his visions for custom residences,
achieved economically through industrializa-
tion, helped to define the Southern California
modernist style.
The Sea Ranch: Architecture, Environment, and
Idealism, edited by Joseph Becker and Jennifer
Dunlop Fletcher. Prestel, 176 pages, $60.
In November 1965, architectural record
featured the then new Sea Ranch among other
Class A
modulararts.com 206.788.4210 made in the USA
so-called “Second-Home
Communities” in a
15-page spread touting
its “exceptional plan-
ning.” (You can find
that issue in the online
archive at architectur-
alrecord.com.) Now the
Northern California
residential retreat is
the subject of a current SFMoMA exhibition,
open until April 28, and is accompanied by
this catalogue.
What becomes immediately apparent, in
observing how embedded the Sea Ranch build-
ings are in its landscape, is just how crucial
that design ethos was for the talented team
assembled by developer Alfred Boeke. Land-
scape architect Lawrence Halprin seized upon
the experiential and environmental value of
the 5,000-acre plot to help preserve it as a
communal benefit. Working with him were
Berkeley architects Charles Moore, Donlyn
Lyndon, William Turnbull, and Richard
Whitaker of MLTW, as well as San Francisco
architect Joseph Esherick. Finally, Barbara
Stauffacher Solomon developed the Sea
Ranch’s strong and playful visual identity,
from logo and signage to supergraphics. The
group designed weathering-wood-clad condo-
miniums and cabins, protected by earth berms
and hedgerows, with rooftops angled to shelter
the structures from the prevailing winds. The
modified barnlike forms appeared clustered
together for warmth like the herds of sheep
that once occupied the land.
The book’s editors, Jennifer Dunlop Fletch-
er and Joseph Becker, provide written
recollections of the Sea Ranch experience
from residents and creators. Solomon is quot-
ed: “That was the whole idea, that good design
was good for you, good to look at.” More aca-
demic essays offer critical responses to the
development, intermingled with contempora-
neous and commissioned photography so vivid
that the salt-laden fog becomes almost pal-
pable. The whole production sheds light on
East Coast misgivings about this free-spirited
West Coast vernacular modernism and the
designers’ prescient notion that the craggy
landscape was one well worth protecting. n
Deane Madsen is an architectural writer and photog-
rapher based in Washington, D.C.
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perspective books

When You Really Want to Get Away

Off the Grid: Houses for Escape, by Dominic Bradbury. Thames & Hudson,
272 pages, $45.
Reviewed by Anthony Paletta

GoinG off the grid is often easier said

than done, since electricity, water, and gas
may sound like shackles only until you
don’t have them. Yet the remote retreats
offered in this book involve moderate to
limited compromises in comfort and con-
siderable design excellence.
With his selection, UK-based Dominic
Bradbury argues that creating houses
without the standard infrastructure
“requires a degree of imagination and
confidence. But, he adds, it makes “everyday living in remote and rural
parts of the world a rewarding and tempting reality.”
There is an element of the rustic to many of these houses, yet none is a
drafty shack. Many are built with a deliberately light footprint, often on
pilotis, and some are conceived with easy relocation in mind. Local and
reused timber is common, components become as demotic as plywood,
and some resemble time-honored backwoods archetypes like the A-
frame. Steel is a common component, and many of these dwellings are
modular. Nevertheless, a small number have a more permanent charac-
ter, with a few built of stone: one, the Bolton Residence in Quebec, by the
firm _naturehumaine Architecture & Design, sits on a concrete plinth.
Oil lamps or fireplaces provide light and heat in a few of the houses.
Most rely on a mixture of the “deeply familiar and reassuringly low-
tech,” from devices burning wood or private wells and harvested
rainwater to more innovative technology, such as photovoltaics and
wind and hydroelectric turbines. Some of them are only suited for use
during certain seasons, while others can function year-round.
Several of the houses are distinctly modern. There’s a Miesian pavilion
in Arbrå, Sweden, conceived by Delin Arkitektkontor, consisting mainly
of glass. One home in Mudgee, New South Wales, by Casey Brown
Architecture, features adjustable corrugated copper canopies reminis-
cent of Paul Rudolph’s 1952 Walker Guest House in Sarasota, Florida.
Some geometries are rigid, while others are purposefully irregular. One
craggy roof in Okstindan, Norway, created by Jarmund/Vigsnæs was
molded in response to a study of snowdrift patterns at the site.
Adjustable elements are frequent, including doors that can be
opened to create breezeways. The Japanese-styled Premaydena House in
Tasmania, designed by Misho + Associates, features an inner core sur-
rounded by a veranda that can be enclosed by sliding ochre-colored
steel panels, providing either views and breezes or comprehensive
insulation. It also includes a solar-powered roof whose eaves can raise
up to open the structure to the skies.
Some of these houses are within a modest drive of the grid, but
others are genuinely out of reach. One has access only by foot or on
horseback, another by foot or helicopter. Though there’s not much of
an indication of cost here, a few of the dwellings would seem to be
affordable only to the helicopter demographic, while others are com-
posed of common enough materials that the pastoralist of more modest
means might stand a chance of owning one. In any case, the author’s
sustainable credo that “any kind of construction should carry with it a
degree of responsibility” is well borne out, and his selection demon-
strates that this ethos requires no diminution of quality. n

Anthony Paletta is a architectural writer based in Brooklyn.

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perspectivecommentary 49

What Happened to the House?

Single-family dwellings used to outrank other
buildings in the architectural canon. No more.
BY LANCE HOSEY

Two years ago, Thom Mayne and UCLA’s Now Institute produced 100
Buildings, a guide to the “most important and influential buildings” of
the 20th century, as ranked by nearly 60 leading architects and prac-
tices. While the projects range in location, scale, and function, by far
the most common building type is the single-family house. Twenty-four
houses appear in the survey—more than twice the number in any other
category. Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (1931) tops the whole list, and two
other houses are included in the top 10: Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth
House (1951) and Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre (1932). (Wright’s
Fallingwater is No. 13.) By these measures, houses dominate the canon
of 20th-century architecture.
Yet the timeline reveals that houses became less and less common on
the list over the century. Half the 24 were designed before 1930, but
only six after 1950, and none of those ranked in the top 50. Only one
house—OMA’s Maison à Bordeaux (1998)—was completed after 1980. By
the year 2000, leading-edge houses had all but disappeared.
Other sets of rankings are similar. In 2010, Vanity Fair ran a survey of
the “most important” structures since 1980, and not one house ap-
peared in the final roster of two dozen buildings. Over the past two
decades, two dozen houses have won an AIA Institute Honor Award, but
that accounts for only 10 percent of all winners; only four have won in
the past decade, none since 2012. And of the 16 houses in record’s 2016
poll of the 125 most significant buildings since 1891, the most recent
was completed 40 years ago.
P H O T O G R A P H Y (C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P ) : C O U R T E S Y PAU L KO Z L O W S K I /© F O N DAT I O N L E C O R B U S I E R /

What happened to the house?

“A lot of it has to do with economics,” says James Timberlake, of
KieranTimberlake, whose Loblolly House (a record house, April 2007)
was one of the four houses to win an AIA Institute Honor Award over
the past decade. “The more elite, wealthy owner can afford the fees to
commission an architect. Many cannot.” This signals a stark change
from past generations. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between
A R T I S T S R I G H T S S O C I E T Y; L I B R A RY O F C O N G R E S S ; DA D E R O T; M A R K LYO N S

1940 and 2000, inflation-adjusted housing prices quadrupled. In 2018,

the median home price was twice the equivalent cost in 1960. Two-
thirds of the houses in 100 Buildings were completed before World War
II. In the postwar era, Case Study houses showed that beautifully de-
signed modern homes could be affordable, but cookie-cutter production
housing increasingly became the norm. Some sources estimate that

Clockwise from top:

Villa Savoye, Le
Corbusier, Poissy,
France (1931);
Farnsworth House,
Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe, Plano, Illinois
(1951); Fallingwater,
Frank Lloyd Wright,
Bear Run, Pennsyl­
vania (1938); Maison
de Verre, Pierre
Chareau and Bernard
Bijvoet, Paris (1932).
50 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
perspectivecommentary
From top to bottom: Colorado House, ARO, Telluride, Colorado (1999); Loblolly House,
KieranTimberlake, Taylors Island, Maryland (2006); McCann Residence, Weiss/Manfredi,
Tuxedo Park, New York (2014); Maison à Bordeaux, OMA, France (1998).

architects now design fewer than 2 percent of all houses built in the
U.S. Timberlake notes that his firm, founded in the mid-80s, used to
design at least one house every year. “Now we’re lucky if we have one
every three to five years.”
Urbanization is another factor. A century ago, a minority of Ameri-
cans lived in cities, and now over 80 percent do, according to the
Census Bureau. The number of single-family detached dwellings
peaked in 1960, while the number of households living in apartments
and condominiums grew by 63 percent over the following three de-
cades, the Census reports. As a percentage of all new residential
construction, multifamily housing has nearly tripled since the early
Õ90s. This trend is positive in many ways, since various studies show
that denser, more diverse, walkable communities are environmentally
and socially beneficial, dramatically lowering resource consumption
while improving health and wellness through casual exercise and
social engagement. But the shift also means fewer opportunities for
architects to design houses.
How might these changes affect the profession? “Historically, single-
family houses have been important commissions for young architects,”
notes Adam Yarinsky, of Architecture Research Office (ARO). “They
provide an opportunity to test new ideas.” Yarinsky was in his 30s
when ARO designed the Cor-Ten-clad Colorado House (a record house,

P H O T O G R A P H Y ( F R O M T O P T O B O T T O M ) : © PAU L WA R C H O L ; P E T E R A A R O N / E S T O ; A L B E R T V E C E R K A / E S T O ; H A N S W E R L E M A N N
2001). Robert Venturi and Charles Gwathmey were 37 and 27, respec-
tively, when they designed their parents’ houses, which launched their
careers. Houses also can be midcareer reboots. Frank Gehry was 51
when he completed his Santa Monica home, which made him famous.
KieranTimberlake had been in business for two decades when it de-
signed Loblolly, which reinvented the firm’s practice around alternative
production methods. “We couldn’t have done that with a larger, more
complex building type,” says Stephen Kieran.
“Houses are incubators for experimentation,” contends Tom Kundig,
of Olson Kundig. “Smaller projects present opportunities for quickly
testing ideas—both poetic and technical—on how to create an architec-
ture that relates to its context and connects people to place. Residential
design leads innovation trends.” The kinetic window of the Chicken
Point Cabin (2004 Institute Honor Award)—“a turning point in my
career,” says Kundig—led to similar experiments in larger projects. Yet
many architects now focus on other project types, notes Yarinsky.
“Over the last decade or so, young architects have more design opportu-
nities in the public realm. These offer greater visibility and impact
than the single-family house, which has lost some of its significance as
a means of exploring ideas.”
Take the work of Weiss/Manfredi. “Our own practice is focused pri-
marily on projects with a public dimension, particularly where
architecture and landscape play a powerful role together,” explains
Marion Weiss, who contributed to 100 Buildings. The stone of their
McCann Residence (a record house, April 2016) appears to be extruded
directly from the site, so the firm’s attitude toward geography and
materiality in the public realm seems to influence its work on private
houses.
Weiss and Yarinsky both say that if the profession does not follow a
single canon of residential architecture, it may have less to do with the
quality of contemporary design and more to do with the quantity of
media outlets. “The canonical houses of the 20th century were de-
signed, built, photographed, and published at a time when the media
was less saturated by their seductive imagery,” Weiss says. Online me-
dia have exploded: since 2005, the percentage of Americans using
social media has shot from 5 percent to 69 percent, according to the
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perspectivecommentary

Chicken Point Cabin

(above), Olson Kundig,
Idaho (2004); Keenan
TowerHouse (left),
Marlon Blackwell
Architects, Fayetteville,
Arkansas (2000).

P H O T O G R A P H Y: © B E N JA M I N B E N S C H N E I D E R ( T O P ) ; T I M O T H Y H U R S L E Y ( B O T T O M )
Pew Research Center, while the number and influence of national
architecture magazines began dwindling during the same period. As a
result, architects’ attention is being diffused: a major museum project
might be featured in every media outlet, while the latest house may not
get as much coverage, so there’s less opportunity for consensus.
“There’s a different media landscape determining what is or is not
‘important,’ ” Yarinsky points out.
“We may be in one of those periods where there’s not too much that
surprises us about houses,” muses Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, whose
Keenan TowerHouse (record, February 2001) brought him national
acclaim. For years, at the University of Arkansas, he taught a course on
the 20th-century American house. “A lot of houses built over the past
25 years are incredibly familiar, extensions of what came before. They
may not be strange enough for architects.” He calls some of the houses
in 100 Buildings, to which he contributed, “wonderfully strange” and
“transgressive,” redefining dwelling at a time when the single-family
home was a staple of the American landscape. “The issues we’re dealing
with as a profession today—affordability, prefabrication, sustainabil-
ity—haven’t fully manifested themselves yet. We may still be working
through something before the next radicalization. The next revolution-
ary house will be something anyone can afford. That will be a
breakthrough.” n

Lance Hosey is an author, architect, and a design director at Gensler.

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54 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
A Little Known Gem
An important, previously unpublished Frank Lloyd Wright
house from 1957 has been newly renovated.
BY SARAH AMELAR
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES CAULFIELD
In 1956, Frank Lloyd Wright said about an
impossible client, “There can be but one Louis
Fredrick . . . He does not know what he wants,
nor what he does not want. He has cost us more
pains in time and money . . . than he can ever
repay. If ever he gets a house, he will be the
architect—and God help both him and the
house.” Oddly, Wright was addressing that
complaint to the client himself.
And, even more surprisingly, the following
year, Wright actually built a home for Fredrick
and his family, in Barrington Hills, Illinois, an
affluent area 40 miles northwest of Chicago.
It’s not clear, however, that the Hungarian-
born contract-interiors designer and onetime
boxer became less of a nightmare client. For
the same site, he’d already had Wright develop
two entirely different, construction-ready
house designs (including a textile-block
scheme)—and rejected both. Then he switched
to another architect before circling back to
Wright, who completed the Lewis B. Fredrick
House for move-in in 1958. In the process,
FIRST LOOK
funds ran short, leaving most of Wright’s
custom furniture unrealized. And, when the
architect died a year later, his fee remained
partially unpaid. So, that history—combined
with Fredrick’s sense of privacy—may explain
why this striking project never got published.
But now it’s emerged from extensive
renovations by Chicago-based Eifler & Associ-
ates (E&A), commissioned by an owner who
wanted to include many of the previously
unexecuted elements and is willing to share
the results more widely.
Wright’s final design for the wooded 10-acre
site was (unbeknownst to Fredrick) a hand-me-
down from a canceled Michigan project.
Modifications for Fredrick included substitut-
ing Cranbrook brick for stucco cladding on the
low-slung, 2,650-square-foot single-story
house, which sits high on a hillside. A 34-foot-
long daylit gallery connects the playroom (now
a study) to the rest of the house, with its origi-
nal three bedrooms, two and a half baths,
and—like Wright’s other Usonian Houses—pol-
 55

Instead of stucco, Frederick requested Norman (or

Cranbrook) brick, as used by Eliel Saarinen at Cranbrook.
The low-slung house has a daylit corridor along the
bedrooms and entrance (above) and, at the other end
(left), a long gallery leading to the study.

ished concrete floors with radiant heating. The

purportedly modest and affordable “Usonians”
often became pricey to build—and this one, at
$100,000, was astronomically costly for its era.
Fredrick lived there until his death, in 2002.
His children later sold the property to an art
collector, who—despite high aspirations—left it
vacant and unmodified for 12 years. Finally, in
2016, real-estate developer David McArdle
bought it.
Decades earlier, McArdle, with his wife,
Joyce, had owned and renovated Wright’s 1901
F.B. Henderson House, in Elmhurst, Illinois. In
1989, they helped found the Frank Lloyd
Wright Building Conservancy. And, in 1994,
they commissioned a home from Wright dis-
56 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 FIRST LOOK

10

3
4
2 5 6 7
8
1

0 20 FT.
FLOOR PLAN
6 M.

1 ENTRANCE 7 BEDROOM
2 LIVING ROOM 8 STUDY (FORMER

3 DINING BEDROOM)

4 KITCHEN 9 STUDY (FORMER

PLAYROOM)
5 MASTER BEDROOM
10 TERRACE
6 MASTER BATH

ciple E. Fay Jones, right in Barrington Hills. “Yet we never

got to see the Fredrick House,” says McArdle. “It’s not
visible from the road, and the driveway is steep and
private.” He finally got inside—and made his offer—the
day it went on the market (listed at $795,000). “It was a
wonderful time capsule—almost nothing had been done
to it,” he recalls. “But that also meant it needed lots of
work.” He approached Eifler, who’d renovated more than
20 Wright houses, including 15 Usonians, and impressed
on him, the architect remembers, “that he wanted to do
a bang-up job.”
The two-year renovation included restoring roofs,
floors, and radiant heating, while borrowing square
footage from an oversize secondary bedroom for a more
generous master bath. E&A stripped Fredrick’s pink and
green tints from the cabinetry, restoring natural color
and luster to the interior’s ubiquitous Philippine mahoga-
ny. Now the house has geothermal heating and cooling,
plus Wright’s custom furniture, most of it for the first
time. The McArdles also mixed in contemporary pieces—
notably by Nakashima, who’d created some of Fredrick’s
original furnishings here. This spring, Eifler will build
Wright’s freestanding stable (as a teahouse with garage
space, since Usonian homes only have carports).
The owners, who also reside in Florida, moved in last
June. “It’s been wonderful,” says McCardle. “If you’re
lucky enough to live in a Wright house, you constantly
see things you haven’t noticed before, even the play of
light, or the way a small detail leads your eye. Such amaz-
ing thoughtfulness in the design. Everyone who steps
inside says, ‘Oh, my God!’ ” n
Throughout the interior, the renovation restored Philippine mahogany
and radiant-heated concrete floors—as seen in the dining area (top),
living room (opposite, top), bedrooms (opposite, bottom), and light-filled
corridor (left) leading to the study.
 57

credits
ARCHITECT: Frank Lloyd Wright, 1957
RESTORATION ARCHITECT: Eifler & Associates
Architects — John Eifler, principal; Virginia Eby, interior
designer; Gil Galan, team member
ENGINEER: J&R Herra (mechanical)
PROJECT MANAGER: Deer Creek Construction
Management
CLIENT: David and Joyce McArdle
SIZE: 2,650 square feet
COST: withheld
COMPLETION DATE: December 2018

SOURCES
MILLWORK: Distinctive Millwork
MASONRY: Marion Masonry
STONE: Vetter Stone
ROOFING: Cedar Roofing
 2 GRAND PRIZE

ARCHITECTURAL RECORD WINNERS

COCKTAIL NAPKIN
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SKETCH CONTEST 2019
CALL FOR ENTRIES
If you are a licensed architect or related professional
who practices in the United States, you can enter this
remarkable contest.
All you need is a white cocktail napkin and pen to
demonstrate that the art of the sketch is still alive.
Two grand prize winners will be chosen (1 licensed
architect, 1 related professional). Grand prize winners
will receive a $300 gift card and a set of cocktail
napkins with their winning sketch printed on it!
The sketches of the winners and runners-up will be
published in the November 2019 issue of Architectural
Record and shown online in the ArchitecturalRecord.
com Cocktail Napkin Sketch Gallery.
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HOW TO ENTER:
} Sketches should be architecture-oriented and
drawn specifically for this competition.
} Create a sketch on a 5-inch-by-5-inch white
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} Use ink or ballpoint pen.
} Include the registration form below or from the
website.
} You may submit up to 6 cocktail napkin
sketches, but each one should be numbered on
the back and include your name.
} All materials must be postmarked no later than
September 6, 2019.
Winning Sketch 2018 by Kevin Utsey, Registered Architect

DEADLINE: September 6, 2019. ENTER NOW!

For more information and official rules visit: architecturalrecord.com/cocktail-napkin-sketch-contest
Due to the volume of entries, cocktail napkin sketches will not be returned.

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62 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
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67
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 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY 1,005 71

Record
Houses
2019
72 Meadow Lane Residence,
Southampton, New York
Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners
78 Casa Terreno, Estado de México
Fernanda Canales
84 Wuehrer House, Amagansett, New York
Jerome Engelking
88 PATH, Tokyo
ARTechnic architects
94 Bayhouse, Northeast U.S.
Studio Rick Joy
100 Agahnia House, La Jolla, California
Sebastian Mariscal Studio
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © J E F F G O L D B E R G / E S T O

106 Gallery House, Chicago

John Ronan Architects
112 Riverbend Residence, Jackson, Wyoming
Carney Logan Burke Architects

BAYHOUSE, NORTHEASTERN U.S.

STUDIO RICK JOY
72 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

Meadow Lane Residence | Southampton, NY | Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects / Partners

House Warming
A typically cold material makes for a surprisingly cozy concrete beach retreat.
BY JOSEPHINE MINUTILLO
PHOTOGRAPHY BY READ MCKENDREE
 73

BEACHCOMBER Facing the Atlantic Ocean, the heavily

glazed southern facade features a two-story brise-soleil
that’s detached from the house.
74 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES
A
sk Tod Williams and Billie Tsien—designers of the
Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and the erstwhile
Folk Art Museum in New York—and they’ll tell you they
don’t do houses. A few years ago, David Walentas, the
real-estate tycoon who transformed part of Brooklyn’s
derelict waterfront into one of New York’s most desir-
able neighborhoods, and his wife, Jane, needed an
architect for a house they were building on Long Island’s East End.
They didn’t think Tod and Billie—whom the couple, as patrons of the
arts, had known for years—would do it.
“We wanted a simple concrete box,” says David. In fact, the
Walentases had originally hired a local architect to deliver that. But
nothing is ever as simple as it seems. By the time they came to Tod
Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners (TWBTA), plans for a bar-
shaped structure were already far along, and the couple didn’t want to
change that. David and Jane, as it turns out, had very strong feelings
about what they wanted. After developing several million square feet of
residential space, and living in numerous renovated lofts or old
Victorians in New York City, Connecticut, and the Hamptons, this was
the first house they were building for themselves. “The last place we
had was a 1670 farmhouse, on an equestrian estate in Bridgehampton,
with low ceilings and small windows,” explains Jane. “We wanted
something contemporary. And some of the places we looked at to buy
were just too beautiful.” After giving up riding and playing polo, they
also wanted to return to a strip of beach in Southampton where they
had lived in the 1970s in a Ward Bennett–designed house they bought
for $200,000. (It recently sold for over $17 million.)
As it also turns out, TWBTA does do houses—some pretty nice ones,
in fact. “I believe all the original owners still live in them,” Williams
says of the smattering of private residences, most of them in that part
of Long Island, that the venerable New York–based firm has designed
during several decades of practice. The studio’s extensive experience
with institutional buildings, on the other hand, and the difficult build-
ing process those often entail, was particularly useful in what would
become a complex construction. “Poured, board-formed concrete is very
unforgiving,” says David. “There are no do-overs.”
That might also explain why a concrete house is such an anomaly
here. While the locale might be an ideal summer escape, the weather in
winter can be brutal, especially on this ever-so-narrow strip of flat, open
land facing Shinnecock Bay to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the
south. It took over two years to pour all the concrete walls and floor
slabs, section by section, when the temperature was not too hot, and not
too cold. The builder, who specializes in commercial structures in the
area but enjoys taking on the occasional architectural challenge, started
with the caretaker’s pavilion embedded in the front lawn by the tennis
court, working out any glitches there. That space is connected by tunnel
to the vast, flood-resistant basement, where storage, mechanical, and
electrical rooms are located.
The process wasn’t without its trying moments. The two stories above
ground are surprisingly modest in size, but the concrete there needed to
be pristine. “Tod recommended tenting the formwork,” recalls David, who
opted not to do so. As luck would have it, an unexpected storm hit, warp-
ing much of the Southern yellow pine that was left exposed. Adds David,
“The neighbors have tented the house they have under construction now.”
That calamity behind them, the team was then faced with an extraor-
dinary coordination effort so that each pour, alternating between
interior and exterior walls and slabs, accommodated all the rebar, wires,
radiant heating, track lighting, recessed cans, and depressions (for in-
wall iPads that control the lighting, shades, security, audio, and
mechanical systems), as well as a last-minute request from the clients to
embed additional uplights throughout the lower-level ceiling. “That
ceiling was the most complex thing in the entire house,” says project
architect Peter DePasquale, referring to the 8-inch-thick, cantilevering,
post-tensioned structural slab. “It’s so dense. If you took an X-ray of it,
you’d see more non-concrete than concrete.” To keep the layers of con-
crete thermally isolated from each other, the exterior walls were poured
against balcony connectors made of stainless steel and polystyrene
insulation protruding from the floor slabs.
MEADOW LANE RESIDENCE SOUTHAMPTON, NY TOD WILLIAMS BILLIE TSIEN ARCHITECTS | PARTNERS 75

CURB APPEAL
From the road, the
elevated house is
visible past a berm,
into which the
caretaker’s residence
is embedded
(opposite). A fireplace
set within one of the
interior concrete
walls faces both the
living room (right)
and dining room,
where another wall
conceals the adjacent
cantilevering stair
(above).
76 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

4
Cast-In-Place
Concrete Facade
Post-tensioned
Insulated Balcony Concrete Slab
Connection
5
Motorized
Shade Enclosure
Stainless-steel
3
Enclosure

SITE PLAN 0 100 FT.

30 M. Stainless-steel
Window System

5 Concrete
1 MAIN-RESIDENCE ENTRY Topping with
Radiant Tubing
2 CARETAKER-RESIDENCE ENTRY
3 PARKING COURT Post-tensioned
Concrete Slab
4 SERVICE
7
6 5 POOL
11
8 6 LIVING
7 STUDY
8 GUEST BEDROOM Stainless-steel
Window System
9 FIREPLACE Concrete
0 20 FT. 10 DINING
Topping with
GROUND-FLOOR PLAN Radiant Tubing
6 M.
11 KITCHEN Stone Sill

12 STORAGE/LAUNDRY
8 8 13 SUNROOM Cast-In-Place
8
14 Concrete
13 Cast-In-Place
14 MASTER SUITE Concrete Facade Rigid Insulation

0 0 20 20
FT. FT.
SECOND-FLOOR
SECOND-FLOOR PLAN PLAN EXTERIOR ENVELOPE SHOWING THERMAL BREAK
6 M.6 M.
 MEADOW LANE RESIDENCE SOUTHAMPTON, NY TOD WILLIAMS BILLIE TSIEN ARCHITECTS | PARTNERS 77

The design of the southern, oceanfront facade presented perhaps an INTERIOR ACCENTS Stainless-steel cabinetry in the kitchen matches the concrete
equal but different challenge. The architects insisted on including a aesthetic (opposite, left). Teak adds warmth to a guest bedroom upstairs (opposite,
right). The second-floor sunroom features a retractable roof (above).
two-story, occupiable brise-soleil, both to protect against the harsh sun
and for aesthetic reasons. “We really had to convince the clients on that
one,” says Tsien. “Finally, we told them that without it, the house would
look like a motel on the beach.” Set 2 inches from the facade glass, the credits
detached brise-soleil is structurally independent. ARCHITECT: Tod Williams Billie Tsien SOURCES
Great care was taken with interior details, the kind for which Architects | Partners — Tod Williams, Billie CAST CONCRETE: Ruttura & Sons
TWBTA is known. An impressive cantilevering stair, hanging off a Tsien, principals; Peter DePasquale, project STONE: Precision Stone, ABC Stone
vertical steel truss extending from the basement, features treads of a architect; Denise Lee STEEL & GLASS WINDOW WALL
polished bleu de savoie stone that almost matches the concrete but is
ENGINEERS: Gilsanz Murray Steficek SYSTEM: Roschmann Steel & Glass
noticeably a step above. Doors and shelves in raw teak add warm ac- Construction, Secco Sistemi
(structural); Ettinger Engineering
cents to both the kitchen pantry and bedroom closets. The master suite
Associates, Weber & Grahn (m/e/p) PHOTOVOLTAICS: Greenlogic
is separated from the guest quarters by a sunroom adjacent to the open
CONSULTANTS: Reg Hough Associates HARDWARE: Lowe Hardware
stair. A metal roof over that area can be manually retracted by turning
(concrete); PW Grosser Consulting RAILINGS: Studio 40
a wheel along the wall, exposing it to the sky and wind. “They hardly
have guests stay over, so no one ever really sees the second floor,” (geothermal/PV); Steven Winter Associates LIGHTING: Viabizzuno, Visual Lighting
Williams says. “There needed to be a reason to look up.” (energy efficiency, certification) Technologies, Boca Flasher
But, mostly, David and Jane look out—to the incredible water views GENERAL CONTRACTOR: CONTROLS: Lutron, Savant
on either side, to the ocean and the bay—that this inimitable site offers Two Trees Management — Alex Forden, BATHROOM FIXTURES: Fantini
from both the living spaces on the lower level and the bedrooms up- Joe Fowler SOLID SURFACING AND WOOD
stairs. As for the house itself, the clients call it tight and cozy. “Our DOORS: Descience Laboratories
CLIENT: David and Jane Walentas
friends are happily surprised,” Jane admits. “They expected a bunker.” KITCHEN CABINETS: St. Charles of
SIZE: 12,000 square feet
And though she says the stressful construction led Williams to refer to New York
the project as “that goddamn concrete house,” she and her husband COST: withheld OPERABLE ROOF HATCH AND
didn’t mind. “We’re builders,” David says. “We loved the process.” n COMPLETION DATE: January 2017 FOLDING STEEL DOORS: Turner Exhibits
78 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

Casa Terreno | Estado de México | Fernanda Canales

Order in the Courtyard

A remote vacation house is designed around a series of patios.
BY JOANN GONCHAR, FAIA
PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAFAEL GAMO
 79

I
f you know the work of a particular archi- MAKING AN ENTRANCE
tect well, you can often spot his or her Casa Terreno sits on a
relatively flat piece of
preferred forms, identify favored materials,
property in the midst of
or discern a particular aesthetic. But that is rugged surroundings, and
not the case with the buildings of Fernanda has four courtyards
Canales, a Mexican architect known for her interspersed among its
small but polished body of work. Each of her interior living spaces
(opposite). You enter the
projects looks as though it could have been house through an
created by a different designer. Among her irregularly shaped patio
single-family residences, one urban house is a defined by a curved brick
Modernist composition of crisp, overlapping wall (below) and then
proceed into a small skylit
and projecting white concrete boxes, while
chamber (left), which is
another, in a popular vacation area, is a rustic also made of brick,
assemblage of stone-enclosed volumes with including its gabled roof.
pitched roofs supported by exposed timber
structure. And her Casa Bruma (record, May
2018), in a secluded community about 100
miles southwest of Mexico City, is a villagelike
cluster of discrete one- and two-story struc-
tures formed in assertive black concrete.
Her most recent house, Casa Terreno, a
weekend retreat for her own family, has yet
another expression. The 6,500-square-foot
residence, in the same remote development as
Bruma, is a horizontal ensemble of textured
red brick walls and terra-cotta-tiled barrel
vaults. As diverse as these projects might
sound, however, they have a strong commonal-
ity: all are conceived around open-air living
spaces, building on the long tradition of the
courtyard in Mexican architecture. It is a
theme Canales returns to again and again,
“even though the formal solution is always
different,” she says.
This newest project has not one but four
such courtyards. These outdoor spaces are of
various sizes and shapes and are interspersed
among the elements of the one-story com-
pound, which include a wing of four bed-
rooms, each under its own barrel-vaulted
ceiling and each facing east toward the morn-
ing sun; an open-plan living/dining room
under a larger vault; and flat-roofed volumes
for the kitchen and the caretaker’s apartment.
While providing daylight and fresh air, the
voids break down the scale of the overall struc-
ture. But, according to Canales, they also bring
a human scale to the spectacular landscape,
which feels especially vast at night. This
drama should be preserved, at least for the
foreseeable future: Terreno, along with Bruma,
is among a handful of houses completed so far
on the community’s 500 largely untamed
acres, which for decades had been used for
cattle grazing and logged for its once-plentiful
supply of old-growth oak trees. The developers
aim to keep the wild feel intact, capping the
total number of residences at only 70.
80 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

UPONTHEROOFA combination of vaulted and flat roofs shelter the house. These
can be reached via a stair in one of the courtyards, offering an unusual perspective
on the constantly changing landscape.
1 COURTYARD
Amid this rugged and sparsely populated terrain, the house’s imme-
2 ENTRY
diate 2.5-acre site is level, with few mature trees to provide shade from
3 STUDIO/ the often intense sun. Canales chose to emphasize its flatness, not only
CLOSET with the low-lying architecture, but also with her choice of plants for
4 BEDROOM the area surrounding the complex and within some of the courtyards,
5 FAMILYROOM including small fruit trees, flowering shrubs, and other, mostly
6 LIVING/DINING ground-hugging, vegetation. During the dry season, which stretches
from November through April, this flora, along with plantings on the
7 KITCHEN
flat roofs, turns reddish brown, like the brick exterior, camouflaging
8 EQUIPMENT/
the house. Similarly, during the region’s extended rainy season, Terreno
  STORAGE
also nearly disappears in the mist that often shrouds the site.
9 CARETAKER’S You enter Terreno through the curved brick wall of an irregularly
  APARTMENT shaped patio and proceed through a small skylit chamber, which, includ-
3 5
10 GARAGE ing its gabled roof, is also made of brick. The almost cryptlike room is
1
intended, says Canales, to accentuate the sense of arrival. This unusual
2 space opens onto a central courtyard and an arcaded walkway from
10 1 1 6 which the interior living spaces flow: brick gives way to a different mate-
1 rial palette, with the vaulted ceilings cast in exposed poured-in-place
8
concrete and the floors and built-ins made of local oak, the grain of the
millwork echoing that left in the concrete from the forms used during
construction. The overall effect is simple yet refined, with generously
0 50 FT.
SITE PLAN
15 M.
proportioned rooms, and an aura of coolness and calm.
CASA TERRENO ESTADO DE MÉXICO FERNANDA CANALES 81
82 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

Canales’s design approach was highly re-

sourceful, making the most of the limitations
of building in such a remote location. The
bricks, for instance, were manufactured near-
by. But the architect, predicting that many
would be damaged during transport on
winding and unpaved roads, decided to use
intentionally broken brick. These are “torn” in
half, with the rough face exposed, creating an
unusual and rustic wall surface.
This practical mindset extends to the operat-
ing strategy, and almost every element of the
house performs double duty. The roofs filter
and collect rainwater, directing it to a 26,000-
gallon cistern below the central patio, which is
Terreno’s sole source of water (sewage is treated
on-site). And because the rooftops are accessible
by way of a stair in one of the courtyards, they
also are a vantage point for taking in the spec-
tacular landscape, even offering views—on a
clear day—of the Nevado de Toluca, a volcano
about 20 miles away. The house has solar panels
for electricity and hot water, but no mechanical
heating or cooling systems: its 18-inch-thick
brick walls and the concrete roof, in addition to
serving as support and enclosure, provide
thermal mass. These hefty structural compo-
nents, along with wood-burning fireplaces and
operable windows, are sufficient to keep the
interiors comfortable—despite fluctuating
climatic conditions and temperatures that can
swing more than 30 degrees Fahrenheit over
the course of 24 hours. “We get winter and
summer all in one day,” jokes Canales.
The constant change is what Canales loves
about staying at the house—the rapidly mov-
ing clouds, the lifting of the mist, and the
shifting colors of the hillsides. And with Casa
Terreno, she has created a welcoming and
intelligently designed retreat from which to
appreciate the ever-evolving backdrop. “Every
time we come,” she says, “it is a new place.” n

credits
ARCHITECT: Fernanda Canales
CONSULTANT: Grupo SAI
GENERAL CONTRACTOR:
Felipe Nieto
CLIENT: Fernanda Canales and Carlos Del Río
SIZE: 6,500 square feet
COST: withheld
COMPLETION DATE: April 2018

SOURCES
METAL FRAME WINDOWS: Cortizo
HARDWARE: Arquideco
SIMPLE AND SERENE In all the interior living spaces, including the bedrooms (top), the kitchen (above), and the
FLOOR AND WALL TILE: Mármoles Arca
living room (opposite), the material palette consists almost exclusively of the poured-in-place concrete roof slabs
and vaults, formed with reusable wood molds, and wood floors and millwork in local oak. CUSTOM WOODWORK: Óscar Nieto
CASA TERRENO ESTADO DE MÉXICO FERNANDA CANALES 83
84 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

Wuehrer House | Amagansett, New York | Jerome Engelking

Family Ties
A New York City architect creates a glass-and-
wood getaway for his in-laws.
BY ALEX KLIMOSKI
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NIC LEHOUX

W
hen Jerome Engelking’s in-laws asked him to design a
vacation home on a wooded plot of land in
Amagansett, on Long Island, he found it the perfect
opportunity to do what he thinks any architect would
dream of doing: build a glass house. “The site spoke to
the idea,” he says. “It was virgin land—I didn’t want to
whack everything down and make some big, formal
statement.” But first, he had to convince the in-laws, who had some concerns
about privacy. According to the French-born Engelking, who is a senior
associate at Richard Meier + Partners Architects, his father-in-law came
around after seeing pictures of Philip Johnson’s Wiley House in Connecticut.
“He liked the idea of looking at nature rather than walls,” says the architect.
What he didn’t like, however, was the idea of steel, which he found too aus-
tere. Being from Austria, he and his wife wanted a warm and casual setting
for spending summers with their adult children and eight grandkids, all
based in New York. So Engelking proposed an all-timber structure.
 85

For the architect, the project, which he designed SIMPLE PLAN

in his spare time, was a chance to experiment with The rectilinear house is
divided into a private wing
a prefabricated building system that would merge
and a social one, which
the structural frame with the glass envelope. After includes the combined living
some research, he found a Quebec-based manufac- and dining area (above). Cedar
turer, specializing in energy-efficient timber slats along the front facade
curtain walls, that could combine the load-bearing (opposite, top), and wood
blinds on the rear (opposite,
columns and the glazing support into easily trans- bottom) provide privacy and
portable elements. Within six days, the entire prevent heat gain. For easy
skeleton of Southern Yellow Pine glulam beams maintenance, aluminum caps
and mullions was assembled on-site, for the “most the mullions on the exterior.
pleasant construction experience I’ve ever had,”
says Engelking.
In the middle of the 3.2-acre site, the architect
depressed the land to create a grassy clearing, and
placed the one-story, 12-foot-high house toward its
edge, so that the lawn serves as the backyard, and
the front facade, to the east, is protected by a re-
taining wall formed against the dip in grade. Using
5-foot modular increments as his base, he divided
the simple, rectilinear plan into a private wing, to
the north—which comprises the master suite, two
bedrooms, and a flexible lounge space—and a social
wing, to the south, with the combined living, din-
ing, and kitchen area; he organized the living
spaces so they have access to the back garden along
86 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

1 ENTRANCE 6

2 KITCHEN
5
3 LIVING/DINING
4 LOUNGE 5
5 BEDROOM
6 MASTER SUITE 4

INTO THE WOODS A minimal material palette brings out the warmth of timber (top).
Doors to the outside along the west facade are instrumental for natural ventilation
0 30 FT. (opposite, top). A flexible lounge space doubles as a bedroom (above). The baked pine
GROUND FLOOR SITE PLAN 10 M. blinds are lowered in the afternoon, when the sun is strongest (opposite, bottom).
WUEHRER HOUSE AMAGANSETT, NEW YORK JEROME ENGELKING 87

the west wall, while the bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry are arrayed occupied. Yet having everyone stay overnight at the same time is not
along the east. the usual scenario, explains the architect, as people come and go; dur-
Although fully glazed, Engelking made moves to visually protect ing the non-summer months, both his family and his sister-in-law’s use
the interior from outside eyes, though “the only spectators lurking the house as a weekend getaway. It’s a tight fit regardless, but “my
about are deer,” he jokes. In fact, as one approaches the front facade, father-in-law is very informal—he wanted it to be festive,” he says. “For
which is clad with vertical slats of cedar, the residence doesn’t seem us, it’s like a camping ground.” n
like an all-glass house. It is not until one enters that the full effect of
transparency is realized; as you walk in, the woody surroundings credits
become one with the house. To provide privacy for the living and ARCHITECT: Jerome Engelking
dining area and bedrooms, as well as to mitigate heat gain, Engelking
ENGINEERS: Stutzki Engineering (structural); Fusion Systems (mechanical)
placed automated thermally modified wood blinds on the exterior of
SIZE: 2,500 square feet
the west facade. The blinds are usually lowered only during the after-
noon, when the sun is strongest, although they sometimes come COMPLETION DATE: March 2018
down at night too.
Throughout, wood is the only expressed material. Its presence is SOURCES
felt everywhere—the vertical mullions, the exposed plank ceiling, the STRUCTURAL WOOD FRAME, GLAZING: IC2 Technologies
built-in surfaces in the kitchen and bedrooms—but subtly, just
GLUE-LAMINATED TIMBER: Art Massif
enough to lend that sense of warmth that Engelking’s in-laws want-
EXTERIOR BLINDS: Skirpus
ed. Cozy and minimalist might not be words that often go together,
SLIDING DOORS: Xinnix
but the house is both—especially when the eight kids, parents, and
CUSTOM WOODWORK: Vitsoe
the grandparents all flock here during the summer months.
It’s a big family for a relatively small building but, according to SOLID SURFACING: Corian
Engelking, they make it work. One bedroom, which he dubs the LIGHTING: Artemide (interior ambient); Luminii (LED strips); Litelab (tracklights); B-K
“party room,” has two sets of bunk beds and a convertible sofa, and Lighting (facade)
the lounge space doubles as a sleeping area when the other rooms are RADIANT HEAT FLOOR: Uponor
88 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

PATH | Tokyo | ARTechnic architects

Upwardly Mobile
Circulation takes the high road in a singular home, tucked into a tight urban site.
BY NAOMI R. POLLOCK, FAIA

A
craggy mountain of a house,
the appropriately named
PATH, is as much a piece of the
landscape as a place to live—ex-
cept that it is located in central
Tokyo and is made almost
entirely of concrete. Belonging
to a couple with three children, the structure
was designed by ARTechnic architects, whose
principal, Kotaro Ide, dreams of building amid
big rocks and bold natural places. “But we
never have that kind of site,” laments the
Tokyo architect. Compensating for this deficit,
Ide took the actual conditions, a 3,122-square-
foot plot surrounded by houses on three sides,
and recast them as his ideal property.
Oriented toward the street in front, PATH is
a U-shaped structure with a courtyard and
outcroppings of greenery in the middle.
Essentially, it has no facade. “I am more inter-
ested in the internal space than the external
appearance,” explains Ide. Though regarded as
a three-story house, the floors of the two
wings differ by a half-story. The resulting six
levels are connected in the middle by stairs
that switch back and forth like a hilly hiking
trail. Starting at grade, one wing houses the
garage and the other the main entrance, with
a passageway linking the two in back. From
the foyer, stairs ascend to the kitchen/dining
and living areas on the second floor, above the
garage. The third floor contains individual
bedrooms for the children plus a communal
study space, followed by bedrooms for each
parent on the fourth floor, and the family
bathroom—a trio of discrete spaces for a sink,
water closet, shower, and bathtub—on the
fifth. Topping the entire building is a roof

BOTTOM TO TOP Bracketed by planters, gently rising

steps lead up from the street to the front door (left).
While solid concrete shields much of the interior from
passersby, large, stragically placed windows admit light
and views. A roof garden overlooks the courtyard
(opposite). Clad with wood decking, it features a place
for outdoor dining amid patches of greenery.
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © N AC A S A & PA R T N E R S I N C . (O P P O S I T E ) ; G E N I N O U E
89
90 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

11 10

11

2 6
4

SECTION A - A

12
12

11 11
7

0 10 FT.
THIRD-FLOOR PLAN
3 M.

11
10 11
11

0 10 FT.
SECOND-FLOOR PLAN
3 M.

1
7
6 2

A A
5

4
3

0 10 FT. P H O T O G R A P H Y: © N AC A S A & PA R T N E R S I N C .

GROUND-FLOOR PLAN
3 M.

1 ENTRANCE 7 CLOSET

2 RAISEDSEATING 8 KITCHEN/DININGAREA

3 GARAGE 9 LIVINGROOM

4 MECHANICALROOM 10 STUDYAREA

5 COURTYARD 11 BEDROOM

6 HALL 12 FAMILYBATHROOM

PATH TOKYO ARTECHNIC ARCHITECTS 91

STEP BY STEP Concrete planters integrate with the architecture in the courtyard quired more sophisticated analysis tools than is typical to calculate the
(opposite). They contain native Japanese plants and trees, which are nourished by an load-bearing capacity of a single-family home. Consulting with two
automatic irrigation system. At the entrance foyer (above), stairs ascend to the
kitchen/dining and living areas on the second floor and descend to the garage.
terrace that can also be accessed by taking the elevator at the rear of
the house.
Except where partitions are needed for privacy, the interior is essen-
tially a continuous multilevel corridor containing a chain of functional
areas. To develop his design, Ide began with the volume instead of
starting with the plan. His inspiration for this extremely complex
shape was “columnar jointing,” a natural geological formation defined
by faceted, pillarlike protrusions resulting from cooling lava. With that
image in mind, he designed the building using parametric modeling,
which enabled the concurrent manipulation of multiple variables, such
as how the volume would step up as it moves back on the site, and the
ratio of the building’s height to the width of the courtyard void. Once
the basic form was decided, Ide carved out its interior and inserted the
programmatic pieces, massaging the volumes to make everything fit
comfortably without compromising the building’s overall proportions.
Construction had its challenges. The building’s unusual shape re-
structural engineers, the architects determined that the concrete struc-
ture needed to be reinforced with numerous small beams, as well as
copious amounts of rebar in the concrete itself. Forgoing the usual
practice of positioning the reinforcing steel and then constructing the
forms around it, the contractors used 2-D measurements taken directly
from Ide’s 3-D model to build the complex wood molds first. “We had to
provide more drawings than usual, but most of my work is like that,”
laughs Ide. Due to the concrete slabs’ irregular geometry, locating
formwork panel joints and rebar anchors in a balanced, visually pleas-
ing pattern was nearly impossible. To conceal the irregularities, Ide
applied a thin layer of mortar to the surfaces of the interior concrete
walls, followed by a coat of semitransparent silicate-base paint. The
concrete on the outside of the building is covered with foam insulation
and finished with stucco.
Walnut floors and custom cabinetry provide a warm contrast to the
gray-hued concrete surfaces. Because of the quirky room shapes—there
are only three right angles in the entire house—custom was the only
option for most of the furniture. While the polygonal dining table
92 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

echoes the angled walls nearby, the living

area’s modular seating nestles cozily against
the stepped wood floor and the concrete walls.
Even the bed frames had to be designed to
mediate between conventional rectangular
mattresses and Ide’s unconventional architec-
ture. Integrated with the fit-out and
furnishings are ambient lighting and HVAC
systems. These include strips of LED fixtures,
lining the tops of cabinets as well as in coves
tucked around the ceilings and air-handling
ducts built into the floors.
Even in Japan, a place that spawns some of
the world’s most distinctive dwellings, homes
of this complexity are uncommon. Most hous-
es in this country last a mere 25 years—they
wear out, the land changes hands, the owner
wants something new. Yet there is a method to
Ide’s seeming madness. As with any stony
peak, PATH’s sharp edges will naturally soften
over time: its surfaces will weather, and new
growth is likely to overtake the current plant-
ings. But beneath those superficial changes,
Ide’s architecture is rock solid. According to
the designer, “If an architect were to discover
this concrete structure in the future, they
would reuse it.” n

credits
ARCHITECT: ARTechnic architects — Kotaro Ide,
principal; Bala Sivakumar, Ruri Mitsuyasu, Yukako Kitae,
Takume Sugi, design team
ENGINEERS: Naomi Kitayama and Hiroki Osanai
(structural); TNA (mechanical); Makoto Electric Design
(electrical)
REAR WINDOWS
On the second floor, the CONSULTANTS: Lysing (landscape design); Chizuki
dining room segues into a Iizuka (lighting design)
living area, which contains
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Wada Construction
seating that overlooks the
courtyard (above). A SIZE: 4,260 square feet
custom platform bed and
COST: withheld
built-in storage in a child’s
bedroom adapt to the COMPLETION DATE: September 2018
architecture (right).
Jutting into the courtyard,
the living room’s glass SOURCES
enclosure makes one of EXTERIOR INSULATION AND FINISH SYSTEM:
the only right angles in
Toho Leo
the house (opposite).
ROOF: Handywood (regenerated-wood deck);
Aqasoil (green roof system)
WINDOWS: YKK AP
HARDWARE: Miwa Lock; SECOM; West Hardware
PAINT: KEIM; Ducale
TILE: IOC
CARPET: Karastan
FURNISHINGS: Cassina
LIGHTING: Daiko; Luci; Moriyama; Yamada
ELEVATOR: Mitsubishi Hitachi Home Elevator
PLUMBING: Hansgrohe; Cera: Toto; Kaldewei
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © N AC A S A & PA R T N E R S I N C . (O P P O S I T E , 2) ; H I R OYA S U S A K AG U C H I A T O Z
PATH
TOKYO
ARTECHNIC ARCHITECTS
93
94 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

Bayhouse | Northeast U.S. | Studio Rick Joy

Style and
Substance
A weekend place owes its calm presence to its highly
crafted use of granite walls and slate roofs.
BY PILAR VILADAS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF GOLDBERG/ESTO

S
ince Rick Joy started his practice in Tucson, in 1993, he has been creating
buildings that deftly balance modernist formal rigor with sensitivity to
place. His houses have ranged from rammed-earth desert structures such as
the Adobe Canyon house in Patagonia, Arizona (2005), to a Vermont farm-
house in Woodstock, a record house (April 2009), where the shingled roof
and side walls contrast with the stone shear walls at each end—a striking yet
seamless blend of contemporary form, rich materials, and local tradition.
That approach is at the heart of his recent Bayhouse, a spacious single-story residence
set on two acres of waterfront property in a small coastal town known for its pictur-
esque charm. The clients, a mature couple, wanted a modern house, but the town favors
traditional architecture for new buildings. “I knew that Rick would design something
modern that would be a good neighbor,” the wife says. So Joy and his studio looked for
cues in the historic houses of the Northeast, with their clapboard or shingled walls and
pitched roofs that shed snow, but didn’t take them literally.
Rather than use painted clapboard, for example, the architects clad the house in
varying lengths of 4-inch-high, 5-inch-deep white granite, with flush vertical joints and
 95

TAUT PLANES The granite-walled house, with an asymmetrical hipped slate roof,
includes a “car porch” at the entrance (above). At the rear (opposite, bottom), the
living and dining areas face the water. The detailing of the stone corners and recessed
windows of the screened porch (left) deftly articulates the thick planar walls.

raked horizontal ones to evoke clapboard’s forms and rhythms. (The

clients also wanted stone for its ability to insulate the house from the
noise of summer boating activities.) The steeply pitched slate roof is
another reference to the past, but its asymmetrical hipped form and
exaggerated height are contemporary moves, Joy explains, that were
ultimately based on “a desire to create daylit spaces for the living and
kitchen/dining areas.”
To achieve that, the architects created two light monitors with clere-
story windows surrounded by a parapet at the top of the roof. These
belvederes bring light into the lofty, open-plan public areas within. An
inverted copper pyramid inside each monitor reflects daylight onto the
pitched, 28-foot-high wood ceilings. Joy is not a fan of direct daylight-
ing: “Don’t light up the architecture,” he says: “light up the life.”
(Electrical lighting was designed by Claudia Kappl, Joy’s wife and associ-
ate, and a partner with her husband in Concept Lighting Lab.)
96 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

2 6 A
8 4 3
8
5
0 15 FT.
SECTION A - A
4 5 M.

1 “CAR PORCH” 5 LIVING ROOM

2 ENTRANCE VESTIBULE 6 GALLERY

A 3 SCREENED PORCH 7 EXERCISE ROOM

0 30 FT.
GROUND-FLOOR PLAN 4 KITCHEN/DINING 8 BEDROOM
10 M.
BAYHOUSE NORTHEAST U.S.
KAHN-LIKE MOVES The entrance to the house admits visitors into the vestibule
(opposite) before they take a turn and enter the living area (above). Here the Douglas
fir–clad interior, pyramidal skylight, and granite chimney bring to mind the vocabulary
of Louis Kahn. The space is all the more dramatic because of the water view.
The granite chimney of the fireplace separates the living room on one
side and the kitchen/dining area on the other, with both looking out to
the calm waters of a bay. Adjacent to the kitchen at the west end of the
house is an enclosed porch, while the east end contains three bedrooms
and three and a half bathrooms. In contrast to the soaring spaces of the
living and kitchen/dining areas, this wing, with its walls of troweled
white plaster, has 9-foot ceilings. The bedrooms are laid out in a
pinwheel plan around a central gallery, which displays works by contem-
porary photographers. This space offers a view through the living areas,
while the corridors that branch off it look to the outdoors.
STUDIO RICK JOY 97
The house’s front facade was carved out to create what Joy calls a
“car porch” at the entry, with a bronze railing, like a ballet barre, run-
ning along the wall to aid passengers who need a little help getting out
of a car. That exterior alcove’s Spanish cedar wall, says project senior
designer Matt Luck, “reveals the soft core” of the house, with its sus-
tainably harvested Douglas fir–lined entry, living, and kitchen/dining
areas.
As dramatic as the house’s outlines and main interior spaces are, its
details are what make the building “an exercise in refinement,” as Joy
puts it. At the corners of the exterior, the ends of the flame-finished
granite pieces are burnished and buffed, creating a subtle contrast of
textures, while the top surfaces of the granite window sills slope to-
ward their centers in a gentle V to help drain water. The asymmetrical
angles of the roof became “a self-inflicted design challenge,” says Joy,
98 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

with conventional courses of slates impossible. SPATIAL FLOW The architects connected the living room with the dining and kitchen
Instead, the architects created eight different shingle sizes and area (above, left) by circulation paths on both the entrance and the water sides
(opposite). A second pyramidal skylight dramatizes its interior. In the bedroom wing, a
devised a set of patterning rules that produced a seemingly random
hall with Venetian plaster walls (above) frames the view of the bay.
effect. Combined with the slate’s natural color variations, the result-
ing surface is both subtle and complex. And then there is what can’t
be seen: gutters hidden between the edges of the roof and walls, credits
revealing themselves only when they span the stone walls (water ARCHITECT: Studio Rick Joy — Rick Joy SOURCES
drains into pipes that are concealed in the house’s corners) or the principal; Matt Luck, senior designer; CEDAR SIDING: Alan McIlvain Company
entirely invisible geothermal pumps that provide air-conditioning Natalia Zieman, project manager; Bach WHITE GRANITE: Granites of America
and heat for the radiant floors.
Tran and Oscar Lopez, team COPPER BELVEDERES: Cedar Design
The plantings, by Michael Boucher Landscape Architecture, are
ENGINEERS: Silman (structural); Altieri CEDAR-FRAME WINDOWS AND
natural and informal, reflecting the desire of both the architect and
ENTRANCES; DOUGLAS FIR DOORS:
clients that they fit into the beachfront setting. Though the house Sebor Wieber (m/e/p); Daniel Falasco
Duratherm
clearly stands out from its more conventional neighbors by virtue of Consulting Engineers (civil)
STEEL-FRAME WINDOWS, COPPER
its unusual roof and the precision of its materials and detail, the de- CONSULTANTS: Michael Boucher CLERESTORIES: Hope’s Windows
sign “attempts to be a good citizen, identifying with the spirit of the
Landscape Architecture (landscape); SOLARBAN GLASS:
place,” notes Joy, without trying to imitate them. Not only has he
Concept Lighting Lab (lighting) Vitro Architectural Glass
created an elegant but unpretentious house, he has met his own goal
BIRD-PROTECTION GLASS: Arnold Glas
of making architecture that is “at once emotional, existential, and GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Dowbuilt
PLASTER: USG Diamond
super-well crafted.” n SIZE: 7,000 square feet
LOCKSETS: Baldwin
COST: withheld LIGHTING CONTROLS: Lutron
Pilar Viladas, a former design editor at The New York Times, writes about
design and architecture. COMPLETION DATE: August 2018 TOILETS/BATHTUB: Duravit
BAYHOUSE NORTHEAST U.S. STUDIO RICK JOY 99
100 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES
Agahnia House | La Jolla, California | Sebastian Mariscal Studio
Hanging Gardens
Dense foliage and simple rectangular forms evoke an ancient wonder.
BY SUZANNE STEPHENS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAÚL RIVERA
I
wanted the architecture to be taken over by lush planting,” says
Sebastian Mariscal (a Design Vanguard winner, record, December
2007) about the 7,400-square-foot house he designed in the hills of
La Jolla, California. The location is a good choice for such botani-
cal immersion. The picturesque town, near San Diego, edges the
Pacific Ocean with bluffs and sandy beaches and is known for its
sunny weather, not to mention the abundance of palm and
eucalyptus trees.
The effulgent vegetation enveloping this site owes much to Marcie
Harris Landscape, a firm that consulted with Mariscal on several
projects during his 13 years in San Diego before he moved his practice
to Boston in 2012. The greenery lustily invades an assemblage of rect-
angular and square connected blue limestone–clad volumes stretched
along the ridge of the half-acre property. At his Phoenix House near-
by, Mariscal had draped the exterior concrete board-form walls with
vines (a record house, April 2014); in this case, the planting is even
more prevalent, with jasmine pandorea cascading from the roof gar-
dens, softening the gray-white stone walls. The fragrance emanating
from these hanging plants makes you appreciate another aesthetic
dimension.
The front of the house hugs the street with an abundance of Brisbane
box and Silversheen pittosporum, so you have to look carefully to spot
the “humble” entrance, as Mariscal calls it. “Too many houses here are
designed for curb appeal,” he says about La Jolla’s fanciful polyglot of
residential styles. “But we didn’t want that.” Not surprisingly, Mariscal’s
designs evoke the solidity of materials and massing, alternating with
voids, of Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute several miles away, and even the
stuccoed white planes of Irving Gill’s architecture in downtown La Jolla.
 101

LUXURIANT LANDSCAPE The entrance on the street

(left) appears unassuming amid planting, which softens
the clustered volumes clad in blue limestone. Light
monitors (above) pop up among the roof’s dense flora.

While the house appears to be one-story

high from the front, that perception shifts at
the back, where the main level is expressed as
a strong rectilinear bar, extending along the
west elevation and edged by an expansive
mahogany-and-cable balustrade. Another
floor is tucked below it where the slope drops,
with the entirety looking out on a verdant
golf course—“a lawn we don’t have to mow,”
says owner Kayvon Agahnia. Beyond it are
views of the Pacific.
The house sits high enough on the steep
slope to command this vista, but other houses
are perched even higher along the street’s
vertiginous ascent. “That is why I wanted to
create a fifth facade,” says Mariscal about the
thickly overgrown roof gardens and terraces.
“This is for the neighbors looking down from
above.”
The slightly meandering entry sequence
brings you through a gate into an open court,
where a mahogany gangplank bridges a koi
pond to the vestibule and a small internal
courtyard planted with slender China Doll
102 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

3 2 1
18 11

5 14
12 19
9

3 5 15
0 10 FT.
SECTION A - A
3 M.
7 7
2 10
6 5
8
4 17

1
16
15
20 19

0 15 FT. 0 10 FT.
MAIN PLAN PAVILION-FLOOR PLAN
A 5 M. 3 M.

1 ENTRY POND 6 GUEST ROOM 11 MASTER BEDROOM 16 GARAGE

2 VESTIBULE 7 GARDEN 12 MASTER BATH 17 COURTYARD

3 LIVING/DINING/KITCHEN 8 LAUNDRY 13 CLOSET 18 DECK

4 POWDER ROOM 9 PANTRY 14 STUDIO 19 RECREATION ROOM

5 BEDROOM 10 PLAYROOM 15 STORAGE 20 GYM

AGAHNIA HOUSE LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA SEBASTIAN MARISCAL STUDIO 103

THE LONG STRETCH While the house seems to be one level from the street, at the
back, the drop in the slope (right) allows a lower level for recreational spaces to be
tucked under the living and dining areas (above), where expanses of glass and open
decks make the most of the west-facing view to a golf course and the Pacific Ocean.

trees. But this is only the setup for what is to come: just ahead, the
living and dining area rises dramatically upward to a 15-foot-high
mahogany ceiling and expands out to the drop-dead view of the golf
course and the ocean to the west. Here a 50-foot-wide expanse of glass
sliding walls is free of columns, owing to a steel beam spanning the
length of the space in this hybrid wood-frame, cast-in-place concrete,
and steel structure. The living and dining area, demarcated by meticu-
lously detailed mahogany cabinetry and backed by a gridded wood
screen, is behind you as the glass walls to the outdoor deck of Mangaris
wood slide away, blurring any distinction between inside and out.
“We often gather here, especially at sunset,” says Kayvon, who, along
with his wife, Maite, was so enraptured by the natural panorama, they
located their bedroom at the northern end of the deck. Bedrooms for
the two children, now almost grown, occupy this wing as well, where
the spaces are treated as clustered units, to break down the scale of the
large residence. Two light monitors push up above the flat roof planes
like periscopes to bring daylight into an internal corridor. Near the two
monitors is a suite, facing east, with its own small patio, for Kayvon’s
mother. Originally, it was reserved for the children as a playroom. “The
design can evolve as the family evolves,” says Mariscal. A distinct but
connected pavilion on the northwest corner is reserved as an art studio
for Maite, an abstract painter and photographer. The 17-foot-high cubi-
form space also accommodates her office on a mezzanine.
Outdoor steps from the studio lead down the west side to the floor
tucked under the main level and bolstered by concrete retaining walls
104 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES
and caissons. Most of this floor is devoted to casual recreation space.
“Our kids love to entertain here,” says Maite, “and I can have recep-
tions for those coming to see my art.” In a gym on the south end,
Kayvon, a triathlete, can work out. Despite having a narrower deck
than the floor above, both spaces still partake of the ultimate in relax-
ation—the rolling landscape (with a few golf carts).
On top of the residence are roof gardens, one with a wood deck and
beach sand. While the weight of the soil for growing white yarrow and
dwarf mat rush and other foliage required beefing up the wood joists,
the payoff is greater than the combined visual and olfactory sensa-
tions. The gardens not only insulate the interior from the sun’s heat
but absorb most of the rainwater runoff. In addition, photovoltaic
panels on the studio and garage roofs provide 95 percent of the house’s
electricity, adding to the sustainability efforts, along with natural
ventilation, which the family often uses in lieu of air-conditioning.
Kayvon is not only a client. He is also an investment partner in
Mariscal’s practice for various development and design projects the
studio is executing in Boston and Mexico (where the Mexican-born
designer keeps a second office). When the client/partner is asked
how well Mariscal adhered to the budget and schedule with the
house, Agahnia deadpans, “When architects give you estimates on
time and money, just multiply by three and you’ve got it.” Maite,
who initially wasn’t sold on the idea of sandblasted concrete floors
in the living/dining room, says, “I went along. I have a blind trust in
Sebastian. He’s never arrogant, and he’s always calm, a therapist as
well as architect.”
The clients are effusive about how the house turned out. “I wake up
loving the house,” says Kayvon, “and I go to sleep loving the house.”
Maite adds, “It is modern, organic, and timeless.” Mariscal gives credit
for its success to the power of plants: “Luxuriant vegetation is always
going to make architecture better,” he says. He has a point, but there
are other elements that help considerably, such as his play of masses
and voids and use of materials. And, of course, the view. n
credits
ARCHITECT: Sebastian Mariscal Studio — Sebastian Mariscal, principal; Mauricio de la
Peña, project manager; Javier Gracia, construction supervisor
ENGINEER: DCI Engineers (structural)
CONSULTANT: Marcie Harris Landscape Architecture (landscape)
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: RLP Development
CLIENT: Kayvon and Maite Agahnia
SIZE: 7,400 square feet
COST: withheld
COMPLETION DATE: January 2018
SOURCES
BLUE LIMESTONE: Gem International
WOOD FRAME SLIDING DOORS: Mix Legno Group
CHANDELIERS: Ligne Roset
PV SYSTEM: Alternative Energy Application
AGAHNIA HOUSE LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA SEBASTIAN MARISCAL STUDIO 105

SITE SPECIFIC
The living and dining areas
open onto a wood deck
(above). Sliding glass
doors under an elongated
steel beam create a
column-free space 50 feet
long. At the north end of
the deck (right) is the
master bedroom. A
gridded wood screen
(above) separates the
public areas from the
interior courtyard
(opposite), which affords
privacy to the guest
bedroom behind it.
106 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

Gallery House | Chicago | John Ronan Architects

To the Manor Reborn

A meticulously detailed new residence reinterprets a neighborhood’s architectural roots.
BY LINDA C. LENTZ
PHOTOGRAPHY BY TONY ARMOUR

R
avenswood Manor, a gentrifying neighborhood on the
North Side of Chicago, is notable for its tree-lined streets
and eclectic mix of early 20th-century and prewar single-
family and multiunit dwellings, including many bunga-
lows and foursquare houses. Listed on the National Regis-
ter of Historic Places, it is not an easy place to build a new
residence. So when a local couple tore down their Craftsman-
style stucco house (circa 1910) to build a new one, it was not without
controversy. Yet, while some maintain the community “legacy” should
have been saved, the substantial, pale brick house that replaced it,
designed by local architect John Ronan, speaks to its surroundings with
a common materiality, geometry, and scale that is neither slavish nor
disrespectful to the area’s typology.
The homeowners—recent empty-nesters who had lived on the
property since 1993 and raised their two children there—loved the
neighborhood for its proximity to downtown and public transit, as well
as the growing influx of young families, shops, and restaurants. But
their existing 100-year-old residence was dark, carved up, and problem-
atic; it had also been rehabbed four times over the years. They
ultimately chose to demolish it when they couldn’t find a similar loca-

SECOND HOME Sitting squarely on its site, John Ronan’s house for a Chicago couple features elements that resonate with the neighborhood’s typology, such as the deep
front porch and masonry structure (opposite). A rear view reveals the building’s unique massing of three volumes connected by glazed interstitial spaces.
tion to build a new house that would better suit them. “Additionally,”
says the husband, “we have a 50-foot-wide lot, which means we’re land
barons, in Chicago terms.”
Ronan, known for such thoughtful urban and institutional works as
the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Ed Kaplan Family Institute for
Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship (record, November 2018) and
the Poetry Foundation in Chicago (record, November 2011), was also
attracted to the expansive 6,250-square-foot site, not least for the op-
portunities it would provide to bring sunlight into a building. The
couple wanted a light-filled home to showcase a collection of vintage
black-and-white photographs the husband, a commercial photographer,
has been accumulating. In addition to that, their brief to the architect
simply stipulated a brick house with a great kitchen. “We didn’t want
to put any constraints on anything, except for those three things,” says
the wife, who works in investment management, often from home.
“We wanted him to push us to make a great house.”
In keeping with the language and density of the neighborhood, the
5,600-square-foot, two-story residence fills the site comfortably without
overcrowding it. Like many of the surrounding properties, the house is
made of brick, has a basement and deep front-entry porch, and is
flanked by small but gracious front and back yards with a separate
brick garage facing an alley behind it. This is largely where the simi-
107
larities fade, however. The clients, who like to entertain, were never
satisfied with the spatial constraints and poor flow of their old house.
At the same time, they didn’t really want an open plan for the new one.
Ronan responded with a unique hybrid, creating a house that compris-
es three distinct volumes, each a skylit, load-bearing masonry structure
that defines a particular set of flexible programs. The first volume
spans the front of the house on its north side and contains a library/
dining room on the first floor, with two bedrooms for visiting children
or guests and shared bath above; directly behind it, to the southeast,
the largest structure houses a spacious kitchen/family room, topped by
the second-floor master suite; and, to the southwest, a slender, single-
story volume serves as the family’s mudroom and laundry wing. These
are massed around wide, double-height interstitial spaces enclosed by
each structure’s walls and insulated channel glass.
The resulting interior is welcoming, luminous, and surprising,
warmed throughout by hydronic radiant-floor heat and permeated by
a gentle, diffuse daylight, friendly to both photographs and people.
Generous doorways between spaces connect them visually and en-
hance circulation. Ronan paid particular attention to the in-between
places, making them as important and useful as larger rooms. An
8-foot-wide foyer, for instance, is more gallery than corridor, and can
also double as a dining area. Five-and-one-half-foot-wide stairways that
108 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

lead up to the second floor and down to a 2,150-square-foot basement

(housing a home office, guest suite, and mechanicals) are commodious
enough for moving things around the house, when necessary, or sit-
ting down for a chat—as in the roomy landing on the upper level,
where an adjacent bridge to the bedrooms overlooks the voluminous
entrance.
“This house is all about proportion and materials,” says Ronan.
“We wanted a reduced and neutral palette as a backdrop for the
photography collection.” This decision led to the selection of textured
champagne-hued brick from Iowa, white oak for custom millwork
(sourced from a single tree), and floor planks made from the same
species for the kitchen and library floors, stairs, and upper landing.
Flinty Vermont-slate tile marries outdoor and indoor spaces as pav-

10

13 13 14

0 10 FT.
SECTION A - A
3 M.

11
3
10 10
1

2
9
4

11

6
5

12
PHOTO OPS A second-floor bridge overlooks the foyer (above). The north-facing
library/gallery (opposite, top and bottom) has a large, fixed window with discreet
shades to control daylight; small operable windows transfer east–west breezes. A Carl
SECOND-LEVEL PLAN
Hansen desk morphs into a dining table for entertaining (opposite, top). A modular
photo-hanging system by Ronan allows the owner to easily rearrange the wall display.

credits
ARCHITECT: John Ronan Architects
8
— John Ronan, principal, lead
designer; Sam Park, Andrew Akins,
A Brett Gustafson, Laura Gomez
0 10 FT. Hernandez, project team
GROUND-LEVEL PLAN
3 M.
ENGINEERS: Stearn-Joglekar
(structural); AA Service (mechanical)
SOURCE
MASONRY: Sioux City Brick
GLAZING: Pilkington (windows); Bendheim
(channel glass)
STEEL FRAMES: Hope’s Windows
DOORS: Fleetwood (entrance)
HARDWARE: FSB; DORMA

1 ENTRY PORCH 8 GARAGE GENERAL CONTRACTOR: MILLWORK: KWI Cabinetry

2 FOYER 9 HALL Fraser Construction SLATE: Vermont Structural Slate

SIZE: 5,600 square feet LIGHTING: Flos; Louis Poulsen; Luminii; Kichler;
3 LIBRARY/DINING ROOM 10 BEDROOM
Kalmar; Focal Point; Begaa
4 POWDER ROOM 11 BATHROOM COST: $3.7 million
CONTROLS: Lutron
5 KITCHEN/FAMILY ROOM 12 MASTER SUITE COMPLETION DATE: March 2018
RADIANT FLOOR HEATING: Warmboard
6 MUDROOM/LAUNDRY 13 MECHANICAL ROOM PLUMBING: Vola; Kohler; Toto; Franke; Duravit;
7 BASEMENT STAIRS 14 BAR D-Line
GALLERY HOUSE CHICAGO JOHN RONAN ARCHITECTS 109
110 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

ing for the path from the street, front and back
entrance halls, and backyard.
Ronan’s attention to detail and craft is apparent
in all aspects of the project, from the random
bond pattern of the unique 24-by-4-by-15 ⁄16-inch
brick to the deep-set steel windows, solid white
oak front door, and the home’s bronze handrails
and curving zinc fence (which matches the coping
used around the house and garage). He even col-
laborated with the husband to devise a clever
modular photo-hanging system for the library
wall panels. Whenever possible, the scheme
affords opportunities for natural light and ventila-
tion. Apertures in the thick brick wall along the
back stair and operable windows in every room
frame views and transfer breezes, while a pierced,
screenlike section in the masonry facade filters
light and air into and from the porch. In the
evening, a warm glow radiates through the
porous wall and down the stairs, a gentle comple-
ment to the lanternlike effect of the building’s
translucent glass.
According to the clients, they occupy every part
of the house—especially the kitchen/family room,
where there is a well-used fireplace and a 6-by-7-
foot marble island that they typically dine at or
gather around with friends and family. They love
the home’s functionality and its generosity of
space and light. “And,” says the husband, “it’s no
bigger than our old house.” At 3,426 square feet
above grade, the new building’s street presence
remains within the limits of its predecessor, which
POINTS OF VIEWS The kitchen/family room (top, left) provides gathering spaces, with its large marble island
and brick fireplace (top, right). Operable windows above the beds in the children’s bedrooms (above) transfer was 3,500 square feet. “In terms of scale, the house
breezes. One of the husband’s favorite places, the generous 5½-foot-wide back staircase (opposite) and upper fits in with everything in the neighborhood,” says
landing encourages hanging out. Deep apertures in the brick wall frame snapshot views into adjacent areas. Ronan, “but it’s a house of its own time.” n
GALLERY HOUSE CHICAGO JOHN RONAN ARCHITECTS 111
112 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES
Riverbend Residence | Jackson, Wyoming | Carney Logan Burke Architects
Into the Wild
At the edge of Grand Teton National Park, a house takes the viewing platform to a new level.
BY BETH BROOME
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATTHEW MILLMAN
S
prawling between the Teton and Gros Ventre mountain
ranges in Wyoming, the valley of Jackson Hole is “America
the Beautiful” made manifest, with its majestic peaks,
winding rivers, and big skies. Home to an abundance of
wildlife, from bison to bald eagles, the area is also a major
destination for outdoor enthusiasts and thrill seekers,
especially with its proximity to Yellowstone and Grand
Teton national parks.
So there’s some irony to the architectural vocabulary that has taken
hold here as tourism has flourished and, increasingly, moneyed second-
home owners have flowed in. Epitomized by log-cabin-style homes,
with their outsize stone fireplaces and antler chandeliers, the typology,
while hoping to capture the western pioneering spirit, is one that tends
to look inward. Bucking this trend, the Riverbend Residence, by local
architects Carney Logan Burke (CLB), takes full advantage of its awe-
inspiring surroundings, with strong connections to the world beyond
its walls.
Built as a retreat for a Berkeley couple, their two teenage children,
and their extended family and friends, the 6,250-square-foot house
could hardly be simpler in concept. A concrete-and-steel, bar-shaped
structure with a steel plate skin, it is surrounded by broad decks with
10-foot overhangs that form outdoor, cedar-lined rooms. The long,
slender form, running east to west, addresses a common dilemma in
the valley, notes principal Kevin Burke. “All the lots are south of the
Tetons, so we are constantly hung up with this quandary of getting the
FULL METAL JACKET The house is wrapped in hot-rolled steel plate with a wax
coating that will weather slowly in the dry climate; the skin is most apparent on the
short, opaque west elevation (opposite). The county limits glass usage, so the team
strategized carefully, placing extensive glazing in the living area for views through the
house, across cedar-lined decks and, from the north (above), out to the Teton Range.
113
114 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

18 19

7
17 7 19
6
9 2
1 11 13
20

0 20 FT. 0 20 FT.
UPPER-LEVEL PLAN SECTION A - A
6 M. 6 M.

1 ENTRY views to the north yet also emphasizing the

2 LIVING south exposure to stay warm in this crazy
environment.” Abundant glazing and the
3 DINING
decks link interiors to the outdoors: a mini-
4 KITCHEN
mally landscaped and planked terrace,
5 PANTRY demarcated by the perpendicularly sited guest-
8 6 BAR house and woods to the south, and, to the
A 13 A
2 11 north, the Snake River and the panorama of
5 7 LOUNGE
7 1 the Teton Range gloriously splayed across the
9 6 8 MASTER BEDROOM
15
horizon.
9 MASTER BATH
The husband, who grew up in Berkeley,
10 GUEST SUITE spent much of his childhood hiking and
11 MUDROOM climbing in Jackson Hole. Still in love with
12 LAUNDRY the area, he and his wife purchased a house
13 GARAGE there about 10 years ago—a 1970s log cabin
with low ceilings and small punched win-
14 OUTDOOR KITCHEN
dows—within a bucolic subdivision north of
15 SPA
Jackson named Solitude. Though she was
16 OUTDOOR LIVING enamored of the valley, the wife, who was
17 MEDIA ROOM raised in California’s Mojave Desert, had an
18 BEDROOM adverse reaction to the house. “My soul needs
19 BUNKROOM
light, sky, expansive views,” she says. “I had a
physical response to this house in the woods,
20 CRAWL SPACE
bogged down by timber. I would shut down.”
0 30 FT.
COMPOUND PLAN 10 M. So, when a nearby 17-acre lot came on the
RIVERBEND RESIDENCE JACKSON, WYOMING CARNEY LOGAN BURKE ARCHITECTS 115

GREAT OUTDOORS A 1,000-square-foot guesthouse

is connected to the main residence (opposite) by a
large wood platform among Aspen trees. Broad decks
surrounding the house form outside rooms for cooking,
eating, and relaxing.
116 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

HIGH STANDARDS The Tetons are visible through floor-to-ceiling

glazing in the living area (opposite) and kitchen (left). The range
hood is made of stainless steel. “Hoods become an exercise,” says
CLB associate Jennifer Mei. “They’re critical, but no one wants to
look at them.” The adjacent dining area looks south (bottom).

market, she jumped at the opportunity, convincing her

husband to try something new with this exceptional
site, which sits in a cottonwood-dotted riparian land-
scape at a bend in the Snake River, the only major
feature lying between it and Grand Teton National
Park. With a desire to work locally as much as possible,
the couple turned to CLB.
The two gave the design team a lot of creative license.
“Their list of requirements was pretty short,” says princi-
pal Eric Logan, “beyond the programmatic demands and
an emphasis on treading lightly on the land” (a prerequi-
site given that much of the couple’s philanthropic work
focuses on environmental causes). “She wanted some-
thing modern that reflected her values. He just wanted
some warmth.” And, of course, there was the underly-
ing assumption that they were here to experience the
wilderness. When the team initially visited the site with
the clients, they mounted the viewing platform they had
erected and took in the vista over the levee that runs
along the river. It was suddenly obvious what they need-
ed to do, say the architects. “Really, the house just had to
replicate that experience,” says Logan. “Essentially, we
needed to do a remodel of the platform.”
To achieve the same vantage point, the team raised
the main part of the house 5 feet (excavation spoils were
used to elevate the south yard, and topsoil, which had
been scraped, was later repurposed). You enter at grade
and ascend a short run of stairs into the living area to
the west, with its 16-foot ceilings, and the master suite
beyond. Another short run of stairs scissors up to the
more compressed family room and the kids’ bedrooms
to the east, which are stacked atop a guest suite and the
garage, contained within a board-formed concrete enve-
lope, below. It’s like a split-level on steroids.
Steel columns in the double-height living area are left
exposed along the glass perimeter. All glazing is triple-
paned and, in combination with a super-insulated
envelope, geothermal system, and radiant flooring,
make for efficient operation. Bookending the living area
are two board-formed concrete walls that, at one end,
delineate the boundary of the kitchen and, at the other,
hold a large fireplace. Because the house sits on the
Teton Fault, these elements also function as shear walls,
resisting seismic forces. The team crafted the formwork
of charred wood boards, which left a sympathetic earth-
toned hue across the concrete expanses. The board-
formed walls extend outside, as do other elements: the
cedar ceiling transitions into the exterior cladding; the
concrete floors, with a subtle rose-colored tint and in-
flections of green glass, flows outside in places in an
unpolished state. Though, on paper, the building
blocks—concrete, steel, glass—are tough, the sensitive
application here, in combination with the wood, has
resulted in gracious, inviting interiors, quelling the
husband’s initial concern that a modern design would
project a hotel-like iciness. On a recent afternoon, re-
RIVERBEND RESIDENCE JACKSON, WYOMING CARNEY LOGAN BURKE ARCHITECTS 117
118 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES

INSIDE OUT All the private spaces, including the

master bedroom (left) and a bunk room (bottom) link to
the exterior. From the master suite, cedar plank flows to
the deck, blurring the line between inside and out.
Floors and millwork in the kids’ wing are of beechwood.

cord-breaking snow (which necessitated

cross-country skis for circumnavigating the
exterior of the house) continued to fall,
shrouding the landscape in white, the ground
plane morphing into the sky. As the sun set,
the backdrop shifted to a brilliant periwinkle.
Inside the living room, looking out through
floor-to-ceiling windows to the north and
south, a sense of freedom pervaded—that
feeling the wife had been looking for—along
with the warm embrace you want in a home.
In a valley rife with the trappings of
National Park–inspired design, the architects
are happy to bring clients along as they depart
from these memes, imbuing their work with
their own interpretations of what the West has
to offer. “There’s a lot of wonderful stuff we
see, driving around the landscape of Wyo-
ming, like rusty pickups, ag ranch buildings,
snow fences,” says Logan. “They are unpreten-
tious, matter-of-fact moments that somehow
feel appropriate to me.” With the Riverbend
Residence, the team has effectively captured
this spirit with a straightforward formal solu-
tion and restrained use of materials. “It’s just a
dumb box, after all,” says Logan, “rendered in
a palette intended to weather and blend with
the environs over time.” n

credits
ARCHITECT: Carney Logan Burke Architects — Eric
Logan, Kevin Burke, Jennifer Mei, Bryan James, Leo
Naegele, Libby Erker
ENGINEERS: KL&A (structural); JM Engineers
(mechanical); Nelson Engineering (civil); Jorgensen
Geotechnical; Helius Lighting Group
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Peak Builders
SIZE: 6,250 square feet (main house); 1,000 square feet
(guest house)
COST: withheld
COMPLETION DATE: October 2018

SOURCES
CURTAIN WALL: Grabill
SKYLIGHTS: Aladin Skylights
CUSTOM MILLWORK: Poliform, Western Woodworks,
Brandner Design, Willow Creek Woodworks
PAINTS & STAINS: Sherwin-Williams
SOLID SURFACING: Caesarstone, SculptureStone,
Corian
PLUMBING: Franke, Dornbracht, Rohl, Vola, Victoria +
Albert, Waterworks
FURNISHINGS: Kartell, Knoll, Herman Miller, Gandia
Blasco, Foscarini, Moooi, Poltrona Frau, Blu Dot, Cassina
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I M AG E S : B N I M | N I C K M E R R I C K © H A L L+ M E R R I C K 2 0 1 8 ( A B OV E ) ; C O U R T E S Y B N I M ( R I G H T )
ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 HIGH-PERFORMANCE FACADES 121

BNIM’s Block D in San Diego has features that help maintain comfortable

Face Value interior conditions for the majority of occupied hours, without use of the
mechanical climate-control systems, including sliding red sunshades and
overhanging floor slabs.

Architects refine the art and science of facade design.

1

By Michael Cockram
2
Like the Layers of atmosphere that protect our planet from the extreme tem-
peratures and radiation from space, facades provide buildings with the filters 4 3
and shields that make them habitable for living, play, and work. “The facade is
5
the interface between humans and nature. Our job is to elevate that relationship
as much as possible,” says Steve McDowell, principal at Kansas City–based BNIM.
One could argue that this has been true as long as there has been shelter and
architects. But now sustainability-minded firms like McDowell’s are demonstrat-
ing ways to enhance this experience while exploring new tools and approaches
to fine-tune energy efficiency and user comfort.
When BNIM began discussing the design of the 60,000-square-foot Block D
office building in Makers Quarter, a new urban district in downtown San
Diego, the clients hadn’t been considering a high-performance building. But BLOCK D SECTION/PERSPECTIVE
the firm, which has a history of energy-efficient design that dates to the 1970s,
convinced them that such a structure would demonstrate environmental
1 PHOTOVOLTAICS 4 OVERHEAD SECTIONAL
stewardship, provide long-term utility savings, and help attract tenants. Its
2 MANUAL SUNSHADES GARAGE DOORS
unusual skin, which includes bright red sliding screens, along with other
elements for harvesting daylight and controlling heat gain, is a key aspect of 3 AUTOMATED SUNSHADES 5 THERMAL MASS
122 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 HIGH-PERFORMANCE FACADES
the building’s efficiency. It is designed to
consume 41.6 percent less energy than a build-
ing that complies with the ASHRAE 90.1
standard. Block D’s 174 kW rooftop photovol-
taic (PV) array is expected to make it a net
zero building (one that produces as much
energy, from renewable sources, as it con-
sumes over the course of a year).
Site constraints dictated that the six-story
concrete-framed structure, which opened last
year, be elongate on the north–south axis, with
its front, mostly glass facade facing west, to-
ward the harsh afternoon sun—a less than
ideal solar orientation. To mitigate the effects
of glare, the architects devoted the areas on
each office floor directly behind the skin to
circulation rather than workspace, creating a
buffer zone. They provided additional protec-
tion by extending the slabs beyond the glazing,
with balconies that double as shading devices.
But since overhangs do not shade once the sun
sinks low, the team also devised the red perfo-
rated metal panels that can be manually
1 1
2 2
3 5
PALOMAR COMMUNITY COLLEGE — HEATING MODE
reconfigured by the occupants to shade criti-
cal areas.
For the remaining third of the main facade,
the glazing is pushed out to the slab edge, with
venetian-type exterior blinds suspended from
above on each level. Such shading elements
have the advantage of controlling glare and,
unlike interior blinds, blocking heat gain. A
weather station on the roof controls the blinds
as solar conditions change, and retracts them
in high winds to avoid damage.
These blinds were almost value engineered
out of the project when the contractor raised
concerns about the $250,000 price tag. But the
architects and engineers crunched the num-
bers and showed that cutting the blinds would
add $400,000 in initial costs to the efficient,
but mostly conventional, variable refrigerant
flow (VRF) HVAC system.
As realized, Block D should only need to rely
on this mechanical climate-control system
for about 40 percent of the year, says BNIM
principal Matthew Porreca. For the majority of
2 2
4 4
3 5
PALOMAR COMMUNITY COLLEGE — COOLING MODE
Solar chimneys (left, visible at far left) in a maintenance
complex at Palomar Community College are key elements
in the passive operations of its non-office portion. A roof-
top armature (visible near left) will support a planned 220
kW PV array, which should make the complex net positive.
occupied hours, the building is expected to be
able to capitalize on the mild coastal–Southern
California climate. To make the most of these
conditions, the east and west facades include
glazed garage-type doors that can open to
permit cross ventilation. If wind speeds be-
come too high, occupants can temper airflow
by positioning the sliding sunshades in front
of the doors. These openings also facilitate
“night purge” by allowing the cool night air
in, so that it can “flush” the heat stored in the
concrete structure’s thermal mass.
Several similar strategies were used in
BNIM’s design for another Southern California
project—a maintenance and operations com-
plex at Palomar Community College, in San
Marcos, completed in 2018 and designed to
achieve net positive energy (producing, from
renewable sources, more energy than is con-
sumed over the course of a year). The L-shaped,
one-story complex consists of a larger mainte-
nance volume and an office block, connected
by a courtyard that is to be shaded by a 220
kW photovoltaic canopy system. The solar
array, slated for installation next August, is
designed to supply 105 percent of the com-
plex’s power needs. The program makes the
project ideal for this aggressive energy goal,
since two-thirds of the 28,000-square-foot
I M AG E S : © B N I M | N I C K M E R R I C K © H A L L+ M E R R I C K 2 0 1 9 ( T O P ) ; C O U R T E S Y B N I M ( B O T T O M 2)
complex are devoted to the maintenance spac-
es, which have a wider temperature range
than is acceptable in an office environment.
This portion of the complex could therefore be
heated and cooled with passive means alone.
(As with Block D, the office portion has a VRF
system.)
The maintenance volume’s natural ventila-
tion scheme includes windows that open
automatically at optimal times. And just
behind its south-facing skin, solar chimneys
with a glazed area extend above the facade.
In warm months, vents at the top of these
shafts are opened to induce the “stack ef-
1 SKYLIGHT
2 LOUVERS
3 OVERHEAD
GARAGE DOORS
4 SOLAR CHIMNEY
5 OPERABLE WINDOWS
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124 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019 HIGH-PERFORMANCE FACADES
elements largely exposed on the interior to
store thermal energy and take advantage of
night-flush ventilation, as they did at Block D.
They specified a vapor barrier on the exterior
of the concrete wall, then 4 inches of mineral
6 wool insulation board, which is water resis-
7
tant. Between the terra-cotta plank-finished
wall material and the insulation, there is a
1-inch air gap—screened and vented at the top
and bottom of the wall—a typical detail in
4 rainscreen systems. The gap serves two pur-
5 1 poses: it helps the materials to dry out when
moisture penetrates the skin of the building,
and it allows convection to move warm air out
of the cavity, reducing the amount of heat gain
2
passing through the envelope. The assembly
creates a “perfect wall,” a term coined by
3
building scientist Joseph Lstiburek. It refers to
the placement of the insulation and the con-
AMHERST COLLEGE–COOLING STRATEGIES
trol layers (for moisture, vapor, and air)
outboard of the frame, in order to keep mois-
ture out of the building and prevent thermal
1 ATRIUM 4 INTERIOR SHADES bridging (the movement of heat across an
2 RADIANT FLOOR 5 SOLAR CHIMNEY object that is more conductive than the sur-
3 DISPLACEMENT 6 RADIANT PANELS
rounding materials and is a major source of
VENTILATION
heat loss in buildings).
7 NIGHTTIME FLUSH
Any high-performance facade design re-
quires architects to do their homework, but
fect,” allowing hot air to move upward the Boston-based firm Payette is raising the
toward cooler air and then be discharged. In bar on in-house investigation with its building-
winter, the chimneys’ vents are closed to science department: the four-person group
collect heat, which is then distributed collaborates with design teams on all the
throughout the interior with fans. firm’s projects but devote about half their time
The designers opted for a tilt-up wall to speculative research, not—according to
system, with the surfaces of the concrete Andrea Love, director of the department—
directly related to current projects but
potentially paying off for the firm in the
future.
For instance, the building-science group
created a tool to quantify the effects of glazing
geometry and U-value (a measure of thermal
performance) on occupant comfort and in
reducing HVAC costs. The software, available
free on the firm’s website, subsequently helped
Payette determine that it could eliminate
perimeter heating on its Amherst College
Science Center, completed in 2018. The
230,000-square-foot, three-story building sits
I M AG E S : © C H U C K C H O I ( T O P A N D O P P O S I T E ) ; C O U R T E S Y PAY E T T E ( L E F T )
at the eastern edge of the main campus in
western Massachusetts, which is stretched
north and south because of the configuration
of the site. To connect the building to the
campus, the scheme includes a highly trans-
parent west facade enclosing a three-story
atrium. Blocks of labs and classrooms, which
the architects call “pavilions,” plug into the
atrium.
The atrium’s curtain wall is suspended from
the cantilevered steel roof structure, allowing
minimal mullions. To control the western sun,
the architects specified internal roll-down
shades that deploy automatically in four hori-
zontal bands as the sun angle changes. In
addition to avoiding glare, the setup also al-
lows heat to be captured between the blinds
and the glazing that is then vented via roof
monitors to the exterior.
The Science Center is projected to have an
Energy Use Intensity (EUI) 76 percent below
that of a baseline building (EUI is a means of
 125

Glazing selection was critical for a west-facing multistory

atrium at a new Amherst College science building
(opposite and right). The Payette project team evaluated
various options for energy efficiency and transparency
with multiple digital tools.

comparing energy use among buildings and is

calculated by dividing annual energy use by
square footage). To select glass that would help
deliver this performance, the design team
compared the available types of triple-glazed
windows for optimal energy efficiency, shad-
ing, and transparency. In consultation with
the mechanical engineers, the architects
found that reducing the Solar Heat Gain
Coefficient (SHGC)—which is typically con-
trolled with low-E coatings—from 0.35 to 0.28
would achieve a 22 percent cut in peak cooling
load. The reduction allowed the elimination of
one air handler at a substantial savings.
Once the designers established these perfor-
mance targets, they input data from different
manufacturers into the thermal-performance
software WINDOW and also ran it through the
daylight- and glare-simulation program
Radiance (both are open-source tools devel-
oped by Lawrence Berkeley National Labora-
tory). The results of the digital analysis, along
with physical mock-ups, aided the architects in
selecting a glazing system with the desired
aesthetics and transparency.
The Science Center’s lab and classroom
blocks are mostly clad with a perforated
weathering-steel rainscreen system that in-
cludes stainless-steel connectors tying the
panels to the structure. The project team
arrived at this solution using imaging software
to study various wall assemblies, to determine
which produced the least thermal bridging.
The results showed that stainless attachments
would be one-third less conductive than typi-
cal steel.
Analytical and digital tools were also cen-
tral to the design process for SmithGroup’s
headquarters for the District of Columbia
Water and Sewer Authority, recently complet-
ed on a wedge of land between the Anacostia
River and an existing D.C. Water pump house.
In developing the six-story, 150,000-square-
foot office building, designers first had to
contend with an array of view sheds, setbacks
(two-thirds of Washington’s wastewater flows
beneath the site in a complex web of critical
infrastructure), and programmatic challenges
such as the requirement that the new facility
integrate the historic pump house without
having a negative effect on the operations or
integrity of the older structure. The new,
sinuous office building stretches the undulat-
ing south facade to face the river. Integrated
into the north side of the building, a 200-foot-
long truss spans over the old pump house.
126 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
The largely glass facade of the new headquarters building for Washington, D.C.’s water utility includes “sunglasses” to
reduce heat gain while maintaining views. These consist of an exterior layer of suspended tinted glass that sits outboard
of the windows by 3 feet.
The designers used parametric design
tools to help shape the curvilinear skin,
which was faceted into 4-foot-wide by 14-foot-
high flat panels, primarily of glass. Adding to
the complexity of the form, each successive
floor of the south facade steps out 2 feet to
create sunshades for the level below.
SmithGroup drew on the expertise of its
team of in-house specialists, referred to as a
Technology in Practice (TIP) group, to help
design many of the facade elements. For
example, the TIP assisted in defining the
ideal overhang for shading and determining
the potential for glare and heat gain. Using a
variety of open-source software tools, the
architects and the specialists designed a
system of automated interior blinds pro-
grammed to maximize beneficial light and
reduce negative effects.
The team digitally mapped areas of the
south facade where transparency was impor-
tant but heat gain was problematic. For these
locations, the designers created an exterior
layer of suspended tinted glass panels that
function as “sunglasses” for the building,
says SmithGroup principal Sven Shockey.
Fastened to the overhang above, the lami-
nated green glass is 3 feet from the face of
the window and incorporates the tinted
HIGH-PERFORMANCE FACADES
inner layer to reduce heat gain while main-
taining the views to the river.
In addition to the high-performance facade,
the headquarters building includes such inno-
vative technologies as a heating and cooling
system that takes advantage of the wastewater
flowing beneath the site. It depends upon a
closed-loop heat exchanger and helps the
design achieve a 45 percent energy-use reduc-
tion compared to a benchmark building
complying with ASHRAE 90.1. With these
features and others, including a rainwater-
collection system with two 20,000-gallon
cisterns, the project team is targeting LEED
Platinum.
SmithGroup’s impressive results for D.C.
Water, and those of BNIM and Payette in
Southern California and western Massachu-
setts, show that it is still possible to push the
envelope on high-performance facade design.
Old-school experience, deep research, and
evolving design tools are not only making
buildings more comfortable for their occu-
pants but, by conserving resources, are
improving the environment for all of us. n
Michael Cockram is a freelance writer and director of
Bowerbird Design in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Continuing Education
To earn one AIA learning unit (LU),
including one hour of health, safety,
and welfare (HSW) credit, read “Face
Value,” review the supplemental
material found at architecturalrecord.com, and
complete the quiz at continuingeducation
.bnpmedia.com or by using the Architectural
Record CE Center app available in the iTunes
Store. Upon passing the test, you will receive a
certificate of completion, and your credit will be
automatically reported to the AIA. Additional
I M AG E S : © A L A N K A R C H M E R ( T O P ) ; C O U R T E S Y S M I T H G R O U P ( L E F T )
information regarding credit-reporting and
continuing-education requirements can be found
NET SOLAR GAIN WITH at continuingeducation.bnpmedia.com.
“SUNGLASSES” AND METAL PANELS
Learning Objectives
1 Discuss glare-control and daylight-harvesting
strategies for sites that dictate a less-than-
optimal solar orientation.
2 Describe digital tools useful in facade design,
including those for understanding thermal
performance and for daylight simulation.
3 Describe the components in a “perfect wall”
system and explain how these are typically
assembled.
4 Understand technical terms and concepts
relevant to facade design and building physics,
including U-value, thermal bridging, and stack
NET SOLAR GAIN WITHOUT
“SUNGLASSES” AND METAL PANELS effect.
AIA/CES Course #K1904A
DC WATER — SOLAR HEAT MAP
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Protection Strategies
Some advanced products are available to help create better buildings
Sponsored by Inpro, Kingspan Insulation LLC, and TAMLYN | By Peter J. Arsenault, FAIA, NCARB, LEED AP

T
he design of building enclosures contin-
ues to receive a great deal of attention by
numerous design professions, building
scientists, and product manufacturers. Some are
motivated by meeting minimum building and
energy codes in the most cost-effective manner.
Others are seeking performance beyond code
minimums to meet voluntary certification or
rating programs, or simply to improve building
performance over time. Some focus on thermal
control in walls, roofs, and floors, while others
are concerned with air and water barriers to
protect the building and people. Still others look
at the details of construction and how to incor-
porate appropriate continuity of barriers across
some of those detail areas. The result of all of this
attention has been an ongoing need for architects
to stay abreast of advancements and improve-
ments in this arena to keep up with the best op-
tions and assembly configurations for buildings
under design or renovation. This includes being
aware of some of the latest products and how
they are intended to be used in order to create
successful results. Based on all of the above,
this course will examine some of the advanced,
high-performance options for effective thermal
and moisture control in building enclosures.
It will also highlight why it’s important that
manufacturer guidelines and best practices for
installation are followed.
DRAINABLE BARRIERS
The use of water-resistant barriers (WRBs)
and air barriers (ABs), particularly in exterior
walls, is not only required by codes but also
critical to good performance of a building en-
closure. The codes don’t dictate how to achieve
these barriers, they simply provide the criteria
for materials to qualify as either one and re-
quire them to be continuous. At the same time,
the established best practice is to be sure that
water or moisture can safely drain away from
an assembly if it does penetrate. In exterior
walls, the most common way this is achieved is
to create a space or gap between the outermost
cladding (i.e., siding, masonry, rainscreen pan-
els, etc.) and the WRB surface (i.e., sheathing
covered or treated with a water-resistant mate-
rial). Also quite commonly, the WRB surface
contains an air barrier against unwanted exte-
rior air infiltration. Hence, the gap separates
the cladding from these barriers and allows the
assembly to be considered drainable if it does
become wet for any reason. If the barriers also
CONTINUING EDUCATION
1 AIA LU/HSW
Learning Objectives
After reading this article, you should be able to:
1. Understand the significance of creating
water-resistive and air barriers that also
provide a needed air gap for drainage and
drying of wall systems.
2. Assess the performance aspects of different
types of advanced insulation products that
create higher R-values in thinner assemblies.
3. Explain the importance of proper detailing
and specification writing at areas that
interrupt thermal and moisture barriers,
including expansion joints.
4. Determine ways to incorporate principles
presented into buildings as shown in case
studies and best practices.
To receive AIA credit, you are required to
read the entire article and pass the test. Go to
ce.architecturalrecord.com for complete text
and to take the test for free.
AIA COURSE #K1904D
 ESR-3670
ESL-1022

.c om
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w ww

This innovative product effectively eliminates excess

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achieved through the gap created by 1.5 mm spacers
bonded to a high-performance housewrap that meets
all drainage requirements of drainability.
drainabilit

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136 HIGH-PERFORMANCE THERMAL AND MOISTURE PROTECTION STRATEGIES
Photos courtesy of TAMLYN
CONTINUING EDUCATION
Building wraps are widely used in residential and commercial construction because they
provide an economical means to add a WRB and AB over a sheathed exterior wall. Advanced
products provide greater performance and add the capability of providing drainage and drying
in a wall assembly.
allow for vapor to pass from inside to outside
while still resisting bulk water and air on the
outside, it is considered dryable as well.
It has been noted that traditional construction
techniques such as masonry walls manage water
and moisture by using a space or gap between the
sheathing layer and the masonry veneer (clad-
ding) to allow any accumulated water to exit
through weep holes. Similarly, rainscreen instal-
lations use a gap between the cladding and the
sheathing to allow water to drain away harmlessly
and ventilate the space between the cladding and
the sheathing that is covered with a WRB/AB. In
any wall construction, failure of water to drain
away can damage the cladding, or worse, the rest
of the wall assembly.
Thermally, there is also the increasing use of
continuous insulation between the cladding and
sheathing. This creates another set of surfaces
that may require a gap for drainage and drying
in case moisture or water find their way between
the insulation and sheathing. Fortunately, the
gap does not need to be very large (less than
¼ inch works) so there is little impact on the
thermal properties of the insulation.
One of the challenges then in designing an
exterior wall assembly can be in finding a way to
simply and economically provide all of the needed
barriers and gaps in the right places. When it
comes to providing a WRB, a high-performance,
nonwoven building wrap made from a synthetic
sheeting material is often selected. The advantages
of a modern synthetic wrap product over tradi-
tional products (such as building paper) include a
WRB that is more durable, and more easily sealed
along the seams to create a continuous barrier
over a variety of materials or different configura-
tions. Further, if the synthetic WRB is tested for air
infiltration, then it can also double as a continuous
exterior air barrier meeting the code requirements
for both WRB and AB in a single layer.
When a high-performance building wrap is
used as the WRB in a project, it takes advantage
of several innovative advances in its develop-
ment. First, as an engineered product, it creates
a weather barrier behind exterior cladding to
protect the sheathing and reduce water intrusion
into the wall cavities. This is important in all wall
systems since all cladding will likely allow some
degree of water intrusion at some point. It is also
particularly important in rainscreen assemblies
where water is expected to enter behind a clad-
ding material and is allowed to drain away. Sec-
ond, as a vapor-permeable or breathable product,
WRBs allow water or moisture trapped behind it
to escape, thus allowing any damp or wet materi-
als to dry in a relatively short amount of time.
During this drying, WRBs maintain their water
resistance because they are constructed with
pores that are large enough to allow moisture as a
vapor to pass through but too small for water as a
liquid to pass. Third, as an air barrier, a WRB will
be an energy-efficient means to stop air infiltra-
tion and exfiltration through walls.
A significant innovation in such high-
performance building wraps has been the
addition of integral spacers to very effectively
create a manufactured drainage gap between the
cladding and the wrap. The conventional means
to create a gap in a framed wall system is to use
furring channels or wood strips. This works, of
course, but requires more labor, time, and cost
to install that furring. The alternative that has
become recognized as a best-practice solution
is to use a drainable building wrap that pro-
vides its own integrated method of drainage.
Specifically, at least one manufacturer creates
this gap by bonding noncompressible propylene
spacers that are1.5 mm thick (less than 1/16 inch)
onto a high-performance WRB building wrap.
Photo courtesy of TAMLYN
Drainable building wrap includes noncom-
pressible spacers on the surface of the wrap
to create a gap between the cladding and
the wrap surface, which acts as both a WRB
and AB.
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A similar product uses 6.3-millimeter (less
than ¼-inch) spacers bonded in the same man-
ner for higher water-risk conditions, such as
marine environments or heavy-rain climates.
This deep cavity also lends itself to reservoir
cladding products—products that shed water
but also absorb some of it—especially stucco
and thin stone.
This integral gap design provides an effective
drainage space or capillary break between the
sheathing and cladding material. The depths are
large enough to provide true drainage between
the sheathing and cladding material but not
enough to compromise thermal performance
if insulation is installed over it. In essence,
drainable building wrap acts as a full rainscreen
system in miniature, without the added labor
or cost. Further, it will work with all types of
cladding systems, particularly those that can be
moisture sensitive, such as wood or fiber cement
siding. The economical beauty of it is that the
cladding can be applied directly over this drain-
able building wrap, eliminating the labor step of
installing the spacers as a separate component.
When specifying drainable building wraps, it
is important to recognize that there are literally
dozens of building wrap products available with
wide variations in performance and cost. While
most are made from polyethylene or polypropyl-
ene plastic, they can vary noticeably in terms of
water resistance, drainage efficiency, water-vapor
transmission, or breathability. They can also be
different in their ability to impede air flow, in
their overall durability including tear resistance,
and in cold-weather flexibility. In many exterior
walls, flammability and smoke developed ratings
are important too and need to be considered. Se-
lecting a drainable building wrap that excels in all
of these areas will assure best results overall.
Beyond the product itself, sealing the edges
and seams properly and fully without undue
penetrations from staples or nails is critical for
good performance and code compliance. Some
manufacturers offer full sealing systems that use a
compatible adhesive, sealant, or tape. This allows
the edges to be held permanently in place, usually
by using a hard roller or hand applicator to press
the wrap and the tape together. Such products may
also use fasteners with plastic heads that minimize
the impact of the fastener penetrations and help
maintain the barrier continuity.
Equally important are the details of how the
drainable building wrap deals with openings in the
wall, such as doors and windows. Being able to flash
and seal the wrap properly with window and door
flashing materials will assure that water drain-
ing down the face of a drainable WRB will flow
away properly and not enter behind other building
elements into the wall. It will also maintain the
continuity of the air barrier in the overall system.
Installed properly, drainable building wrap
effectively eliminates excess moisture and mitigates
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138 HIGH-PERFORMANCE THERMAL AND MOISTURE PROTECTION STRATEGIES
the damaging effects of mold and rot. It is a cost-
effective product, particularly when it is manufac-
CONTINUING EDUCATION
tured to be installed in any position, horizontally,
vertically, or diagonally. Overall, this approach has
been shown to have the same drying capability of a
3
∕8-inch rainscreen wall. This is important because
there is growing recognition among building
scientists and building codes that exterior walls
need to drain and dry. That means, going forward,
building wrap products will increasingly be judged
by how effectively they provide positive drainage of
water from the wall.
Choosing the right building wrap, then,
requires an understanding of the product’s key
attributes, including things like water resistance,
durability, vapor permeability, and drainage.
Brian Keith, an architect at JHP Architectural
Designs in Dallas, says, “Critical to the success
of any design is the detailing and construction
of it. We have been impressed with the drainable
building products we have specified due to their
complete system approach.”
HIGH-PERFORMANCE INSULATION IN
THINNER ASSEMBLIES
Incorporating insulation into walls, floors, roofs,
and other areas of a building enclosure is required
by code and needed in order to control heat loss or
gain in a buildings. The design challenge has often
been balancing the need to meet R-value targets for
the insulation with the thickness of the construc-
tion assembly (i.e., walls, roofs, etc.) required to
incorporate that level of insulation. The default
approach for many is to use some type of fibrous
insulation in batt, blanket, or loose form installed
between wood or metal framing members. Since
such insulation is generally available with R-values
in the range of R-3 to R-4 per inch, framing depth
has increased in many projects to accommodate
the need for more inches of insulation to meet the
targeted total R-value. For places where still more
insulation is needed, then continuous insulation
is added outside of the framing or in some other
manner (as in continuous roof insulation over a
roof deck) that is similarly built up by the inch to
achieve the needed total R-value. Of course, part
of the struggle is the recognition that increasing
thicknesses also increase construction costs, not
just of the construction assembly itself but also
the details of things that integrate with them, such
as windows, doors, skylights, etc. This issue is
particularly exaggerated on existing buildings that
are being renovated.
Hearing the outcry from designers and
contractors for ways to achieve higher thermal
values in less thickness, product manufacturers
offer a number of options. There are vari-
ous types of insulation on the market, but it
is important to note that they have different
circumstances where they are best fit to be used.
In that light, we look at three types of advanced
products in the following sections.
Photo courtesy of Kingspan Insulation LLC
XPS insulation is a commonly used rigid foam
insulation board with very good insulation and
moisture-resistant properties.
Extruded Polystyrene Insulation
There are a number of different types of rigid foam
insulation made from different types of plastic
foam and with different facings on them, or no
facing as the case may be. One that has been in
common use for some time is extruded polysty-
rene insulation board, commonly abbreviated
as XPS. It is made by extruding thermoplastic
polystyrene foam through a machine to form it
into continuous boards that are cut to length (just
like some metals are extruded for other purposes).
This produces a comparatively dense insula-
tion product with closed cells compared to the
somewhat lighter expanded polystyrene (EPS),
which can have an open-cell structure. Because of
this makeup and the extrusion process, XPS offers
superior cold-temperature performance when
compared to many other insulation types. Specifi-
cally, it typically provides R-values on the order of
R-5 per inch, meaning that it can achieve higher
overall total R-values in less assembly thickness
than fiber-based batts, blankets, or loose-fill.
XPS insulation also offers superior mois-
ture resistance compared to fibrous insulation,
meaning that it does not absorb water nor lose
its R-value rating when wet. Because of this, it is
often considered to be a superior choice for ma-
sonry cavity walls, below-grade walls and floors,
and in inverted roofing applications. These are
all moisture-prevalent applications, and XPS
is often chosen to be specified in these circum-
stances. There are other rigid foam insulations,
such as polyisocyanurate insulation, that may
claim a higher R-value per inch, but those are
not as well-suited for situations where moisture
is a concern. Many designers find XPS to be a
reliable and reasonably economical insulation
solution when the total costs of different assem-
blies are compared.
EDUCATIONAL-ADVERTISEMENT
Phenolic Insulation
In some cases, even higher R-values per inch
are needed for code compliance or performance
specifications. An alternative is rigid thermoset
phenolic insulation, which is produced by mix-
ing high-performance solids and phenolic resin
with a surface acting agent. It is manufactured
by a process in which a plastic foam forms an
insulating core between two facers with a fiber-
free closed-cell content. European formulations
of phenolic insulation have been in use for sev-
eral decades in both residential and commercial
construction.
Phenolic insulation offers an extensive range
of premium-performance insulation products
for wall, floor, soffit/structural ceiling, rain-
screen, and concrete sandwich wall-system
applications. With an R-value of up to 17 per 2
inches of insulation (i.e., approximately 8.5 per
inch), it is the thinnest among commonly used
insulation products on the market. In addition
to its superior insulation properties, pheno-
lic insulation is based on a fiber-free, rigid,
thermoset phenolic insulation core that resists
moisture as well as water-vapor ingress. It also
exhibits excellent fire performance with very
low flame spread and smoke developed ratings
when tested in accordance with ASTM E84/UL
723: Standard Test Method for Surface Burning
Characteristics of Building Materials.
In terms of environmental impact, phenolic
insulation boards are available that are manu-
factured with a blowing agent that has zero
ozone depletion potential (ODP) and low global
warming potential (GWP). By resisting mois-
ture and water-vapor ingress, it also eliminates
problems that can be associated with open-cell
materials that absorb water and can result in re-
duced thermal performance. Similarly, phenolic
insulation thermal properties are unaffected by
air infiltration. The products are safe and easy
to install, with no fibers that can irritate human
airways and harm health.
The high R-values of phenolic insulation can
help to reduce the build-out depth of residential
and commercial wall systems, potentially leading
to added rentable or sellable space on the interior.
It is designed to offer a thin solution for common
exterior wall continuous insulation applications.
It will also help to reduce the length of fasteners
and bracketry in commercial wall assemblies.
This product has many applications for cavity
wall, rainscreen, and soffit applications. When
installed correctly, phenolic insulation is known
for providing reliable long-term thermal perfor-
mance over the lifetime of a building.
Vacuum Insulated Panels
A new and very innovative insulation product is
known as vacuum insulated panels (often called a
VIP). This is a next-generation insulation compris-
ing rigid panels with a microporous core, which is
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140 HIGH-PERFORMANCE THERMAL AND MOISTURE PROTECTION STRATEGIES
evacuated, encased, and sealed to form a thin, gas-
tight envelope. It provides outstanding R-values by
CONTINUING EDUCATION
virtue of the literal vacuum formed in the panel all
in an ultra-thin insulation solution. This product
is designated as being applicable specifically to
commercial roofing applications, offering thermal
resistance values up to five times greater than
XPS. For example, a 1.6-inch VIP product has an
amazingly high R-value of R-46. Clearly, this is a
solution for those times when space is tight and
reduced thickness is critical to success.
As a means to substantiate these perfor-
mance claims, manufacturers use ASTM C1667:
Standard Test Method for Using Heat Flow
Meter Apparatus to Measure the Center-of-Panel
Thermal Transmission Properties of Vacuum
Insulation Panels, which is the only test method
designated by ASTM to be used specifically for
testing center panel thermal resistance of VIPs.
ASTM C1667 further states that VIPs fall outside
the scope of the more commonly known test
method ASTM C518: Standard Test Method for
Steady-State Thermal Transmission Properties
by Means of the Heat Flow Meter Apparatus. All
vacuum insulated panels should be tested accord-
ing to these protocols, and results of those tests
should be made available from the manufacturers
as part of the normal project submittal process to
confirm the tested R-value results. Note that test-
ing is based on the center of the panels. For edge
conditions, calculations can be performed per the
ASTM protocols to determine results.
These high R-values allow the roof insulation
buildup height to be drastically reduced. For
renovations or reroofing projects with height-
restricted situations, such as parapet height
and door threshold limitations, VIP insulation
allows designers to meet code while eliminating
the need for architectural renovations to accom-
modate the roof insulation system. It is worth
noting that the products are also more than 90
percent recyclable by weight.
Manufacturers of insulation often offer
multiple products. Therefore, many offer thermal
calculation support for many products, and with
some roofing insulation, they also offer a design
service and installation support. This helps the
architect be quite up to date on the innovative
insulation board technologies that offer a higher
R-value in minimal thicknesses, allowing for
thinner wall system profiles. Andrew Wilson,
commercial manager for Kooltherm & OPTIM-R
with Kingspan Insulation LLC, sums it up this
way: “High-performing insulation can help
cut energy bills and makes for a very efficient
building. Using a high-performance insula-
tion product will allow for a building to go well
Images courtesy of Inpro
Expansion joint materials and systems come in many types and configurations. Selecting
the appropriate ones for any given building project not only helps maintain the structural
integrity of the building, but it also helps assure that the continuity of thermal and moisture
barriers is maintained.
above the energy code, and for someone who
owns a building, the payback will be great over
the life of the building.”
ADDRESSING DETAILS:
EXPANSION JOINTS
Controlling thermal energy and moisture
in buildings is clearly a multifaceted task,
although it is fairly straightforward to compre-
hend when we are talking about the middle or
primary areas of walls, roofs, etc. It is critically
important, however, to pay attention to the
detail areas. On larger buildings, expansion
joints are one of those crucial details since they
represent an intentional break in the structure
to allow for the movement of different parts
of the building due to thermal expansion and
contraction, seismic loads, or other conditions.
Since those expansion joints typically inter-
rupt the thermal, moisture, and air barriers in
a building, how they are treated and addressed
will determine the continuity, or not, of these
barriers across the expansion joints.
Different types of buildings will utilize
expansion joints in different locations and
in different ways. Some may use them on
exterior roof or pedestrian decks in a hori-
zontal location. Others may incorporate them
into walls in a vertical fashion. Some may be
connected to concrete structures, others to
steel, or some to a hybrid system. Either way,
they all will incorporate a gap that needs to be
EDUCATIONAL-ADVERTISEMENT
filled with some sort of expandable material
that is appropriately secured to each side of
the gap. Depending on the durability and the
appearance of that filler material, they may
then be left exposed or covered over with a
metal cover system. From the standpoint of
thermal and moisture protection, the key to
successfully maintaining the needed barri-
ers often comes down to the selection of the
material or type of system used to fill the
gap in the expansion joint. We will look at
some of the more common choices below and
comment on their suitability for different
building applications.
Closed-cell foams. Closed-cell foams are
very watertight and do not allow the moisture
to enter the body of the foam. This is the best
application for horizontal runs where water
could pool. These are tougher to compress but
can be placed under tension or pulled to expand
quite well. The other key advantage of closed-
cell foams is that they take well to heat-welding
of seams. This renders a monolithic installation
that reduces the risk of water infiltration.
Continues at ce.architecturalrecord.com
Peter J. Arsenault, FAIA, NCARB, LEED AP,
is a nationally known architect, consultant, continu-
ing education presenter, and prolific author advanc-
ing building performance through better design.
www.pjaarch.com, www.linkedin.com/in/pjaarch
 ADVERTISEMENT 141

PRODUCT REVIEW
High-Performance Thermal and Moisture Protection Strategies

Inpro Kingspan Insulation LLC

Image courtesy of Inpro Corporation

Image courtesy of Kingspan Insulation LLC

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Exposure to water destroys fire blankets and their ratings. The
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and stadiums. The 1-, 2-, and 3-hour rated floor systems can accom-
modate joint widths from 2–32 inches wide.
Kingspan Kooltherm
Kingspan Kooltherm® offers an extensive range of premium performance
insulation for wall, floor, structural ceiling, precast, tilt-up, and rainscreen
applications. It has a fiber-free rigid thermoset phenolic insulation core
and offers the highest R-value per inch among commonly used insulation.
Kooltherm exhibits excellent fire and smoke performance.

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142 EDUCATIONAL-ADVERTISEMENT

Architectural Castings for Walls and Ceilings

CONTINUING EDUCATION

Material choices provide versatility in design for both interiors and exteriors
Sponsored by Armstrong Ceiling and Wall Solutions | By Peter J. Arsenault, FAIA, NCARB, LEED AP

T
he design of building exteriors and inte-
riors involves making a lot of choices and
decisions, particularly around architectural
details. In new construction of commercial and
institutional buildings, those details may be for
exterior facades, interior ceiling and wall treat-
ments, or other features. Sometimes, those details
can be selected from readily available off-the-shelf
products that are fabricated and fit into a project. In
other cases, it makes more sense to specify project-
specific products that fit into the unique design and
construction of a building. In building renovation
projects, particularly historical restorations, custom
pieces may be needed to match existing exterior or
interior building features and details. In all of these
cases, architectural castings can provide an effective
solution since they can be fabricated from a variety of
materials, allowing them to be used for both interior
and exterior design. They provide design versatility
with material and finish options for all types of walls
and ceilings. In this course, we will explore architec-
tural castings and see how an understanding of their
variety and properties can help architects use them
very effectively in virtually any type of building.

CONTINUING EDUCATION

1 AIA LU/HSW

1 IDCEC CEU/HSW

Learning Objectives
After reading this article, you should be able to:
1. Identify and recognize the characteristics of
architectural castings as an alternative to tradi-
tional concrete, stone, and gypsum materials.
2. Investigate the design potential and
innovative opportunities to incorporate
architectural castings made from GRG,
GFRC, FRP, and cast stone.
3. Assess the functional contributions of
architectural castings as they contribute to
green and sustainable design.
4. Formulate an assessment of the relevant cost
saving considerations when specifying and
designing with architectural castings.
Architectural castings, such
as this one at the U.S. Census To receive AIA credit, you are required to
Bureau, can provide dramatic read the entire article and pass the test. Go to
and durable features to build- ce.architecturalrecord.com for complete text
ing interiors and exteriors and to take the test for free.
and be fabricated from a
AIA COURSE #K1904C
variety of materials. IDCEC COURSE #CC-108687-1000

All photos courtesy of Armstrong Ceiling and Wall Solutions


Architectural castings are used on exteriors for
a variety of reasons, including this rainscreen
cladding on The Cooper Union in New York City
designed by Morphosis.
ARCHITECTURAL CASTINGS OVERVIEW
Fundamentally, architectural castings are job-
specific, shop-fabricated building elements that
are used to enhance and complete a building
design. While historically such elements may
have been made from plain plaster or solid
concrete, today they are more commonly made
with stronger and lighter composites reinforced
with glass fibers. These modern materials create
lightweight, decorative (nonstructural) build-
ing elements. Such materials can be cast into
molds and used on building exteriors including
architectural features like cupolas, columns,
light coves, fountains, decorative figures,
finials, and even cladding or rainscreen panels.
Interior wall castings have been made to create
decorative wall panels, specialty trims, mold-
ings, niches, pediments, columns, ornamental
details, and many more items. Similarly, ceilings
can benefit from architectural castings in the
form of curved soffits, decorative ceiling panels,
vaults, domes, coffers, cornices, beams, brack-
ets, or ornamental ceiling details. Essentially,
Armstrong Ceiling and Wall Solutions is the leader in the design and manufacture of innovative commercial and
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any defined shape or feature that is part of an
interior or exterior design can be cast from the
appropriate material and incorporated into the
final construction. Castings are available in
standard choices for shape and size or, where
desired, fully custom pieces can be designed and
fabricated to suit new construction or renova-
tion projects.
Architectural castings are used on a wide
range of buildings. They provide distinctive
looks, including the creation of unique figures,
logos, mascots, etc. for commercial buildings,
such as retail, hospitality, casino, sports, and
entertainment venues. They add character and
personality to institutional buildings as well as
the ability to address acoustics in K–12 schools,
higher-education facilities, government build-
ings, courthouses, transportation buildings,
churches, and temples. With any of these build-
ing types, you can incorporate standard or cre-
ative, custom-designed castings to support the
overall design intent of the building or highlight
specific spaces, such as lobbies, reception areas,
or communal spaces. For historical restoration
projects, castings have proven to be invaluable
since custom historical shapes can be easily and
readily replicated to match the existing building
and bring back its original glory in compliance
with Historic Preservation guidelines. The use
of architectural castings is thus well suited to
support the imagination and creative capacities
of any designer, current or past.
Since castings are nonstructural elements,
if columns need to be only structural with no
decorative or concealing treatment, then archi-
tectural castings are not appropriate. Other than
these few circumstances, when the design of any
other building condition needs some distinct
components to create or restore the proper style,
establish a preferred or new look, or simply tie
a design together in a durable manner, archi-
tectural castings are a cost-effective, highly
customizable choice.
The Casting Process
The process of creating architectural castings
is fairly similar regardless of the type, size, or
materials used. It starts with the architectural
drawings indicating the specific design and
locations where the castings are needed. The
manufacturer then takes the following steps:
Shop drawings: Once a project is procured,
the first order of business is to prepare a
comprehensive set of shop drawings referencing
the architectural drawings and any additional
information provided. Shop drawings typically
include plans, elevations, sections, and installa-
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tion details. Castings manufacturers understand
that each component is unique both in terms
CONTINUING EDUCATION
of architectural design and, in many cases,
installation. Hence, the goal of shop drawings
is to ensure design intent and provide practical
construction details to facilitate installation.
The drawings are submitted to the architect for
approval before manufacturing can begin.
Pattern and mold making: Once the
approved shop drawings and final site dimen-
sions are received, a pattern and mold must be
made before casting can begin. Commonly,
computer numeric control (CNC) program-
mers produce a 3-D file of the cast part using
CAD/CAM programs. These programs are
used to rout a model in wood or foam to the
exact proportions needed with extremely high
tolerances. Once the pattern is assembled and
checked for accuracy, a mold or negative is made
from the pattern by laminating resin or pouring
rubber over the pattern. In this way, the mold is
an exact negative of the part. Control flanges are
mounted on the mold to manage part thickness
and facilitate installation.
Fabrication: With the mold finalized, fabrica-
tion can begin. The casting ingredients are mixed
to precise proportions. The liquid mixture is
sprayed into the molds while introducing glass
fibers to reinforce the part. Once the mold is
sprayed, the back of the part is tooled to remove
air. The manufacturing process is complete, and
the part is allowed to dry into a solid while it is
still in the mold. Once dry, the part is removed
from the mold and visually inspected for quality
and accuracy. Air pockets or other surface imper-
fections are repaired at this point as needed.
Surface finish: Most castings can be
supplied in a smooth, paint-grade finish that
requires a field-applied coating, or they can be
integrally pigmented to a selected color or even
sandblasted to achieve a look of stone or precast
concrete. Castings are available in a range of
standard colors, and custom color matching
is also possible. If texturing is part of the final
look, that can be achieved either by sandblasting
after the part is removed from the mold or cast-
ing with molds that have texture built in, such as
a water ripple or wood grain texture.
Continues at ce.architecturalrecord.com
Peter J. Arsenault, FAIA, NCARB, LEED AP,
is a nationally known architect, consultant, continu-
ing education presenter, and prolific author advanc-
ing building performance through better design.
www.pjaarch.com, www.linkedin.com/in/pjaarch
144
Image courtesy of XYPEX Chemical Corp.
CONTINUING EDUCATION
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technology, which effectively improves the
durability and lifespan of concrete structures,
thereby reducing long-term maintenance
costs. This course explores how crystalline
technology provides a high level of perfor-
mance to concrete mixtures, materials, and
structures, and what design professionals
need to know in order to specify and under-
stand how this chemical technology will
enhance building projects.
Continues at ce.architecturalrecord.com
CONTINUING EDUCATION
1 AIA LU/HSW
1 PDH
Learning Objectives
After reading this article, you should be able to:
1. Understand how crystalline technology
works with concrete to provide high-
performance waterproofing qualities.
2. Explain the difference between porosity,
permeability and the mechanics by which
water is absorbed through concrete
structures.
3. Discuss how crystalline waterproofing tech-
nology improves the durability of concrete
structures and reduces maintenance.
4. Identify appropriate crystalline technology
product applications for various types of
concrete construction.
5. Analyze how crystalline technology admix-
tures can impact building life cycle and
project construction costs.
To receive AIA credit, you are required to
read the entire article and pass the test. Go to
ce.architecturalrecord.com for complete text
and to take the test for free. This course may
also qualify for one Professional Development
Hour (PDH). Most states now accept AIA
credits for engineers’ requirements. Check
your state licensing board for all laws, rules,
and regulations to confirm.
AIA COURSE #K1812Z
 145
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ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
New and Upcoming
Exhibitions
Leonardo Ricci 100: Writing, Painting and
Architecture
Florence
April 12–May 26, 2019
The work of Italian architect Leonardo Ricci
(1918–94), author of Anonymous (20th Century),
is featured through over 60 original pieces,
including paintings, drawings, sketches,
photographs, and models as part of a nation-
wide celebration of his centenary. At the
Santa Maria Novella. More at smn.it.
Nature—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial
New York
May 10, 2019–January 20, 2020
More than 60 projects will be featured in this
exhibition (co-organized with the Cube de-
sign museum in the Netherlands) to demon-
strate how designers are collaborating with
scientists, engineers, environmentalists,
academics, and others to find inventive and
promising solutions to the environmental
and social challenges confronting humanity
today. More information at cooperhewitt.org.
dates&events
Ongoing Exhibitions
Dimensions of Citizenship:
Architecture and Belonging
from the Body to the Cosmos
Chicago
Through April 27, 2019
This official U.S. entry from the recently con-
cluded 16th International Architecture
Exhibition of the Venice Biennale is on view in
its native country for the first time. Devoted to
exploring the notion of citizenship today and
the potential role of architecture and design in
creating spaces for it, the entry presents seven
unique installations, each created by a team of
architects and designers. At Wright wood 659.
For more information, see wrightwood659.org.
The Sea Ranch: Architecture, Environment,
and Idealism
San Francisco
Through April 28, 2019
The exhibition brings together original
sketches and drawings from the designers
of this Modernist beach development on the
Northern California coast. Archival images,
current photographs, and a full-scale architec-
147
tural replica are also on display. At the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art. For more
information, visit sfmoma.org.
David Adjaye: Making Memory
London
Through May 5, 2019
Through the British-Ghanaian architect’s
work, the exhibition addresses how a building
can shape the public’s perception of events,
and how architecture, rather than words, can
tell stories. At the Design Museum. More infor-
mation at designmuseum.org.
Patchwork: The Architecture of Jadwiga
Grabowska-Hawrylak
New York
Through May 18, 2019
The exhibition presents the work of one of the
most important Polish architects of the 20th
century. Through models, films, and photo-
graphs, visitors can learn about Grabowska-
Hawrylak’s studies in the 1940s and her
involvement in almost all stages of the recon-
struction and creation of Wrocław, in what is
the first comprehensive presentation outside
Poland of her work. At the Center for Archi-
tecture. Visit centerforarchitecture.org.
 dates&events
Nari Ward: We the People
New York
Through May 26, 2019
The exhibition features over 30 sculptures,
paintings, videos, and large-scale installations
made throughout the Jamaican artist’s 25-year
career. It also highlights the continued impor-
tance of New York, particularly Harlem, to the
material and thematic content of his art. At
the New Museum. More at newmuseum.org.

Hugh Kaptur: Organic Desert Architecture

Palm Springs, California
Through June 17, 2019
Exploring the visionary designer’s body of
work, this exhibit places him in the context of
his Desert Modern peers through archival
drawings, models, sketches, slides, period
photographs, and ephemera. At the Palm
Springs Art Museum. Visit psmuseum.org.

Secret Cities: The Architecture and

Planning of the Manhattan Project
Washington, D.C.
Through July 28, 2019
The exhibition delves into the innovative
design and construction of three cities born

Find these and many more available Lunch & Learn presentations at

ce.architecturalrecord.com/ee

Creative Freedom Through Targeted Acoustics Sharp Cornered Stainless Steel Profiles for
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Moisture Management for Multi-Family, Mix-Use and Managing Daylight with Automated Solar Control
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The New Benefits of Designing with BIM Code Considerations in Fire Rated Glass
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ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
out of the Manhattan Project, tracing their
precedents in the Bauhaus and other early
modern schools of architectural thought. The
show looks at daily life within those cities and
how it was shaped by their physical form. At
the National Building Museum. Visit nbm.org.
Prisoner of Love
Chicago
Through October 27, 2019
The exhibition, which examines human expe-
rience by attempting to capture the intensities
of love, fear, and grief, features artist Arthur
Jafa’s Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death, a
film that explores the African-American expe-
rience in the 20th and 21st centuries. The work
is set to the gospel-infused song “Ultralight
Beam” by rapper Kanye West. At the Museum
of Contemporary Art Chicago. For more, see
mcachicago.org.
HOOPS
Washington, D.C.
Through January 5, 2020
This exhibition presents photographer Bill
Bamberger’s images of private and community
SAVE THE DATE
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dates&events
basketball courts around the United States and
abroad. A selection of photographs takes view-
ers from the deserts of Arizona and Mexico to
the playgrounds of South Africa. At the
National Building Museum. Visit nbm.org.
Lectures, Conferences,
and Symposia
Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman
Los Angeles
April 3, 2019
The principals of San Diego–based Estudio
Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman will discuss their
work—much of which involves investigating
issues of informal urbanization, civic infra-
structure, and public culture in Latin
America—at the University of Southern
California’s School of Architecture. More
information at arch.usc.edu.
Mundaneum XIII-International
re_UNION on Architecture: Pan Americas
New York
April 4–5, 2019
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The conference will focus on current social,
environmental, urban, cultural, and archi-
tectural issues in Latin America. Twelve
prestigious Latin American architects and
urbanists will lecture, including Mónica
Bertolino, Guillermo Garita, Orlando García,
architecture critic Fredy Massad, and Colum-
bia University professor of architecture Pedro
Rivera. At the City College of New York Bern-
ard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture.
More at ssa.ccny.cuny.edu.
Living Future Õ19
Seattle
April 30–May 3, 2019
This conference, on regenerative design, will
bring together leading green thinkers and
practitioners to share their insights on
building socially just, culturally rich, and
ecologically restorative communities. Over
1,100 from around the world are expected to
attend. See unconference.living-future.org.
This event will offer
2.5 AIA LU | HSW.
UPCOMING SCHEDULE
• June 26 | DENVER
• October 17 | HOUSTON
• October 24 | PHILADELPHIA
For more cities, dates and
information, visit us online.
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:
 dates&events

INSTANT DOCK Competitions

Radical Innovation
Deadline: April 3, 2019
This contest challenges designers, architects,
hoteliers, and students to pioneer compelling
ideas in travel and hospitality. Finalists will be
flown to New York to compete in a live event
held in the fall of 2019, where they will pre­
sent their ideas. Audience members vote to
determine the winner of the grand prize of
$10,000. See RadicalInnovationAward.com.

Deborah J. Norden Fund

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Deadline: April 21, 2019
This competition awards up to $5,000 annually
in travel grants to students and recent gradu­
ates in the fields of architecture, architectural
history, and urban studies. Applicants must
submit a proposal (maximum: three pages)
that describes the objectives of the grant
request and how it will contribute to the appli­
cant’s intellectual and creative development.
More information at archleague.org.

E-mail information two months in advance to

1-800-THE-DOCK areditor@bnpmedia.com.

Ken Sanders +
DI Strategic Advisors
Ken Sanders, FAIA and former
managing principal at Gensler,
has joined DI Strategic Advisors
as the new managing principal of
strategic operations.

DI Strategic Advisors helps A/E/C

firms navigate both the greatest
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a DesignIntelligence initiative

Q4 2018
 151

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Advance Lifts INC 150 Dri-Design 7 Rocky Mountain Hardware 47

Architectural Record - LFI Lightfair 145 Fry Reglet 29 SAFTIFIRST 34

Architectural Record - Georgia Pacific Gypsum 18 SEIHO 119

Education Exchange 148
Graham Architectural CV4 Simonswerk 44
Architectural Record -
Record On The Road Washington DC 149 Heather & Little Ltd. 147 Skyscraper Museum 146

Architectural Record - Hormann High Performance Doors 69 Sonneman 9

DesignIntelligence 150
Huntco Supply 24 Steel Institute of New York 6
Architectural Record - Brooklyn Designs 130
Inpro Corporation 139 Stonhard 43
Architectural Record -
Cocktail Napkin Sketch Kawneer 2, 3 Sub Zero Group, Inc. 21
Contest 58
Kingspan Insulation 137 Thermory USA 48
Architectural Record - ICFF 131
Kingspan Light+Air | CPI Daylighting 120 Tournesol Siteworks 45
Architectural Record -
Record On The Road Boston 64 LaCantina Doors 27 Ultra-Tec 13

Architectural Record - Laminators Incorporated 146 Unilock 17

BST Global Webinar 132
Landscape Forms 32 USG Corporation 51
Architectural Record -
AEC BuildTech 128, 129 Lonseal 70 Versico Roofing Systems 60

Arktura LLC 53 Lorin Industries 25 Viewrail 10

Armstrong World Industries CV2, 1 modular Arts 42 Vitro Architectural Glass

(Formerly PPG Glass) 4, 5
ASI Group 37 NanaWall Systems 15
Vitromex USA 68
B+N Industries, INC. 123 Nathan Allan Glass Studios, INC. 147
Walpole Outdoors 20
Belden Brick Company 39 National Terrazzo & Mosaic Association CV3
Western Window Systems 46
Benjamin Moore 59 NYSERDA R

XYPEX 127
B-K Lighting 38 Ornamental Metal Institute of New York 8

C.R. Laurence Co., INC. 23 Petersen Aluminum 40

Cascade Coil 30 Raydoor 148

CAST CONNEX 65 RH Tamlyn & Sons 66, 135

Doug Mockett & Company, Inc. 52 Rieder Group 63

Publisher is not responsible for errors and omissions in advertiser index. R Regional AD
 152 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2019
snapshot PROJECT
LOCATION
THE PAINTED HALL, OLD ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE
GREENWICH, LONDON
ARCHITECT HUGH BROUGHTON ARCHITECTS WITH
MARTIN ASHLEY ARCHITECTS

designed by Sir Christopher

Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor,
the Painted Hall is one of the most
important Baroque interiors in
European architecture. Sir James
Thornhill painted the murals,
including the one on the west wall
that celebrates the arrival of King
George I and the Hanoverians in
Great Britain. Exposure to sunlight
and humidity through the hall’s
point of entry, however, damaged
the paintings. Recently, Hugh
Broughton teamed up with Martin
Ashley Architects to move the
entrance to the undercroft below.
As the paintings were restored to
their former glory, the subterra-
nean entry chamber was fitted
with a shop, café, and a glass
doorway to the hall. Broughton
also installed a heating system and
solar shading to preserve the
artworks. “Our key strategy with
the Painted Hall was to make any
work that we did as invisible as
possible,” says the architect. “The
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © JA M E S B R I T TA I N

star of the show is the paintings.”

Justin Chan
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understand that their job is a part of the big picture–bringing your
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Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Concourse E • Singer Architects • David Griggs & Scott Parsons – Artists • David Laudadio – Photographer
 This project must
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2019 Lucy G. Moses

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ARCHITECT: BODDEWYN GAYNOR ARCHITECTS

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With 5,000 openings, the historic window replacement project at the Starrett-
Lehigh Building was one of the largest in New York City history. One of the most
complex, too. To satisfy NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission guidelines,
the windows had to match the original steel window profiles and sightlines
using aluminum, thermally-broken frames while incorporating the original
steel windows’ operable vent design. Graham’s customized SR6700 window
met the challenge. Graham can meet yours too. grahamwindows.com | 800.755.6274