Complete. Climb On Home: 3-Story Prefab has Scalable Exterior Walls. While made of wood rather than stone, and not quite pyramids per say (more like three-dimensional triangles), these designs are still inspired by the megalithic architecture of ancient Egypt in more than one dimension. Scalable sides are the innovative key here: hatches that allow access to each level directly from the climbable exterior shell. Like its ancient architectural forerunners, these small-scale versions have scalable sides – in this case more manageable in size. Rather than a a stepped side/roof system, a series of intentional spaces in the exterior wood slats double as handhold and foothold slots. Double-duty combination door-and-window elements (disguised as part of the roof surface) flip up to let in light, air and even people on all levels while leaving some areas more secluded than others. There is also potential for expanding these lengthwise to accommodate multi-family housing and/or larger-community functions.
Rustic Modern: Concrete & Rammed Earth House Design. Regional modernism is nothing new, but when executed well it can create a timelessness surrounding house and home – an ageless aesthetic that mixes contextual layouts and sustainable local materials in combination with clean modernist lines, elemental architectural forms and cutting-edge eco-friendly building technologies.
This rural home in the heart of the New Mexico desert draws on vernacular building traditions, employing flat-packed mud brick and simple wooden post-and-beam construction, but also uses concrete as a counterpoint to these conventional materials. The stated goal of architect Signer Harris was to have an “antique home of traditional architecture” but without resorting to kitschy decor of faux-nostalgic ornamentation. A traditional courtyard was created and surrounded by a kitchen, living room and bedrooms that mediate between the outside world and peaceful interior garden space. (Page 3) A-Frame Prefab Manages Minimalism + Feeling of Familiarity. There is just something quintessentially domestic about that most basic of building shapes we come to recognize and represent in our earliest childhood sketches. This prefab manages to capture that essence without tapping too much into impractical sentimentality – it lacks that sense of self-sacrifice all too common in cramped dwelling designs.
Behind its basic outline and beyond its shockingly small amount of space (250 square feet) are a series of simple and effective techniques for maximizing interior space and minimizing the building’s ecological footprint. Lofted sleeping and storage areas are part of the equation, as well as the reduction of interior doors and walls to provide essential privacy and division without causing clutter or blocking lines of sight.
Hidden Luxury: Modern Underground High-Desert Home. There is not much to see from a distance: faded red-brown roofs barely rise above the level of the surrounding desert landscape, and blend in with the ground against the blue sky and white-capped mountains in the distance. Beneath the rusted core-ten steel roof-scape and between textured rammed-earth walls, however, sits a house that is anything but a rustic relic of the Old West. Outside, a minimally-decorated concrete porch features a smooth, modern edgeless pool. Inside flat panes of clear glass sit living, dining and bedroom spaces that are simple, contemporary and well-lit.
Rick Joy is no stranger to local climactic conditions and takes full advantage, using materials that might not work so well in wet climates but that also make the exterior of his structures seem almost a part of their desert surroundings. Contrast Cottage: Metal-Clad Prefab + Wood & White Walls. Japanese architect Toyo Ito is known for grand decorative gestures and ? Sweeping organic shapes, which makes this small prefab cabin design both fitting and unusual. On the one hand, it certainly stands out … but, on the other hand, it is quite simple and geometric. A closer look, however, reveals much of his architectural approach unfolding in slightly different ways that are a bit more subtle than (but perhaps still as ingenious as) his signature-style design moves. While his larger-scale projects often have natural-looking elements to offset their rectilinear shapes, a similar contrast is achieved through the juxtaposition of bright metal exterior cladding and wooden-themed interior.
The initial ‘design gesture’ of the folded-looking shell takes on other layers of function, providing a sun-and-rain overhang shielding the front entryway (by jutting out above) while creating a porch platform out back (via the inverse cantilever out the rear). Bio Beam Bridge Home: 50-Foot Cantilever Green Roof Deck. A regular rooftop deck structure has a lot of load in the best of circumstances – but deflection becomes a much bigger problem when you not only want to make it green, but also want to have it span for dozens of feet with no visible means of support. For a fairly simple and modern-looking home there is some extreme green engineering going on within the so-called Villa Bio. The design concept envisioned by the architects of Cloud9 involves folding solids and slices that reveal voids in between to let in light and allow for views out via the opened-up spaces. From interior concrete stairs and slopes to the underground parking ramp, each piece feels like it was cut from a single folding ribbon – a building unwrapping itself before your eyes.
Acting like a single solid-poured support beam, the cast-in-place concrete roof stays put without any interior columns or apparent smaller beams to support it.