Matthew's Blog
Stillwater founder Matthew Stannard has a deep appreciation for contemporary residential architecture. In his blog, Matthew shares his thoughts on contemporary design trends and aesthesis, and also throws in a little architectural history.
At Home With Bill Bryson
I enjoyed the dry wit and content of Bill Bryson’s “A History of Almost Everything” so much that I'm really looking forward to reading his latest book “At Home, A Short History of Private Life”. Bryson has an incredible knack for making nonfiction especially interesting and at times, painfully funny. The Seattle Times reviews Bryson’s latest publication:
'At Home': Bill Bryson Constructs a History of Private Life
By Bharti Kirchner
Special to The Seattle Times
Most people would be satisfied with a home in a village like one in the county of Norfolk, England, and simply go on enjoying it, but not Bill Bryson ("A Short History of Nearly Everything"). A chance inspection of an attic to determine the source of a drip leads him in an unexpected direction. He begins strolling from room to room, pondering domestic objects around him — a fork, a sofa, a cabinet — and also the function of each space, as well as how it might have evolved through time. The journal he keeps results in a new book, quirky but entertaining, filled with observations about the history of everyday life spanning the last 150 or so years.
"Houses aren't refuges from history," Bryson says. "They are where history ends up."
'At Home: A Short History of Private Life'
by Bill Bryson
Doubleday, 452 pp., $28.95
Read the complete review here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2013091826_br10bryson.html
Read More
Great Design: Modern Fan
Modern Fan deserves to own their market segment – they came up with a series of quality contemporary fans, which are a far cry from the kitschy, faux, plantation-style product that was all you could get beforehand.
And they work really well, both for cooling the room in summer and mixing warm air into the room in the winter. Although not totally passive they use the fraction of the energy of air-conditioning.
The latest model by Modern Fan, the Pensi, is their best yet, with its axle design and a sparser feel.
Read More
XBO Mobile Structure / 70ºN Arkitektur
I particularly like the exterior of this mobile habitat with its uncompromising simplicity. Statement making architecture in a stunning setting, featured in www.archdaily.com
The xbo is primarily a result of the Rotterdam based project ‘PARASITE’ (Prototypes for Advanced/ Ready-made/ Amphibious/ Small scale/ Individual/ Temporary/ Ecological houses). The idea of the xbo is to provide a mobile habitat for 2 young people on the move. The structure consists of two movable parts in sum twelve meters long, 3,2m wide and almost 3,5m high, the xbo is an attempt to keep things to a minimum, to stick to the basics and focus on the essential.
Today many people are economical prisoners in their homes. One way out could be to change our way of living. In a small house the focus is on what is actually needed. The house may be a tool for such a change. This means that simple and basic qualities of life is the main theme for the development of this minimal space. We want to use this tool as an object of investigation and discussion. Not only while it is created, but also when it is put into use.”
Read More
The Forerunner of Prefabricated Semi-Custom Homes
I have always loved Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonion homes, but I hadn’t thought about them for quite some time. Recently, I noticed the influence on our Stillwater designs; see the first elevation below. Maybe the Usonion home would have been more successful if it had been prefabricated?
“He called his modest house “Usonian,” after the United States. It was a single story built on a monolithic concrete slab and joined to a carport and not a garage. Wright believed that it could be replicated all across the country.
His main desire, which no contemporary architects pay any attention to whatever, is shelter for ordinary people...he got it down at one point in 1940 to $5000 per house for a family with children and a kitchen and gardens...and openness and a real milieu in which it was a highly civilized way to live. He thought about it all the time; he took commissions from the poor as well as from the rich, something unheard of in 1995, 1996... We’re not like that anymore and this was very important in any appraisal of what his work represents because he hasn’t had the following that he should have had in respect to shelter.”
—Brendan Gill, Writer
“What would be really sensible in this matter of the modest dwelling for our time and place? Let’s see how far the Herbert Jacobs house at Madison, Wisconsin, is a sensible house. This house for a young journalist, his wife, and small daughter, is now under roof. Cost: Fifty-five hundred dollars, including architect’s fee of four hundred and fifty. Contract let to P. B. Grove.
To give the small Jacobs family the benefit of the advantages of the era in which they live, many simplifications must take place. Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs must themselves see life in somewhat simplified terms. What are essentials in their case, a typical case? It is not only necessary to get rid of all unnecessary complications in construction, necessary to use work in the mill to good advantage, necessary to eliminate so far as possible, field labor which is always expensive: it is necessary to consolidate and simplify the three appurtenance systems—heating, lighting, and sanitation. At least this must be our economy if we are to achieve the sense of spaciousness and vista we desire in order to liberate the people living in the house. And it would be ideal to complete the building in one operation as it goes along. Inside and outside should be complete in one operation. The house finished inside as it is completed outside. There should be no complicated roofs.”
From An Autobiography, by Frank Lloyd Wright
Read More
Playa Prefab
I love these Buckminster Fuller-inspired prefabricated geodesic domes; their simplicity is cool and their detail and execution shows a well-designed, clean solution.
Originally designed as more humane temporary shelter for displaced people in emergency situations, Icosa Pods were first tested at Burning Man. Gorgeous to behold and out of this world.
The structures, from Folded Homes, are basic prefab huts made of plastic pieces that snap together like an Erector set. Easy to build with no need for special tools or skills, the Pods are extremely strong and yet very lightweight.
Read More
On December 14, 2012
With No Comments
Contemporary Architecture: Constraints Are Your Friend
Frank Lloyd Wright once said “constraints are your friend” and although one would think that limitations of creative thinking would be counterintuitive in the design world, it actually makes a lot of sense. Constraints define the character of the solution.
Besides the obvious constraints of topography, sun, wind, budget, etc., there are also constraints imposed by the properties of materials and systems; it’s from all of these constraints one can tease out meaningful solutions that are not arbitrary or faddish but are a thoughtfully considered response.
At Stilllwater Dwellings, modular construction is integral to the aesthetic language we have developed without dominating or overpowering it. For instance, the structural expression of the roof beams at the module ”marriage lines” create a secondary scale that define individual spaces within a larger room, giving a human scale to balance the overall dimensions.
In the Living Hall, the kitchen, dining, and sitting areas are given identity by the structural expression of the exposed wood beams which are regulated by modular dimensions.
Read More