Realtime Designs

This pavilion for entertaining and changing was added in 2007 to our 1999 home design. The wall and roof planes have been pushed/pulled apart and made translucent to create a sense of air and light.

This design proposal for two vacation homes for two brothers and their families on a large plot of land in upstate New York represents an examination of a curious part-to-whole relationship. The mathematical principle of “dis- section” states that any two regular polygons with equal areas can be divided into sets of similar shapes. This scheme appropriates this principle as a solution to general similarities in the programmatic requirements, and distinctions in the desired relationships to the site.

A regular six-sided polygon and a regular four-sided polygon contain the same five shapes—each are made up of the same four trapezoids and one triangle. The adjacen- cies between the five shapes are different, as are their orientations, within each of the polygons. Translated into spatial divisions in an architectural plan, these fixed arrangements prompt sectional-flexibility. Conceptually, in section the floor planes and the roof planes are configured in order to accommodate strategic micro-topographic continuities and discontinuities across the collective surfaces. Flows in circulation of residents and water govern possible configurations of the floor-scapes and roof-scapes respectively.

Programmatically, the pairs of parts are used similarly between the two houses, although each programmatic piece utilizes its unique adjacencies; the triangular space is used as a vertically-oriented, sun room in the center of the square house, and as a landscape- oriented, screened-in porch in the hexagonal house.

I have a bone to pick with contemporary architecture. How do we make good stuff? What does it take? It is worth noting that we are abundantly a visual species. Over 70% of all nerve function in our bodies takes place in the eyes. But is it enough? Can we just make good looking buildings? Asymptote Architecture has certainly done that.

The Abu Dhabi Yas Island is a 500 room, hotel located in Abu Dhabi . It incorporates an 85,000 square-meter complex and becomes a part of the greater Yas Marina Abu Dhabi development. The hotel’s star attraction (other than its proximity to the grand prix tracks) is the large steel ‘drape’ that envelopes the hotel. 5,800 pivoting, diamond shaped glass panels fit with steel framing. Contained beneath the semi-opaque shell are two hotel ‘towers’ and an adjoining bridge which spans the Formula 1 track that cuts through the complex.

However. I am not impressed with the hotel structures themselves. If I may be excused for directness- One doesn’t live up to the other. And that one is the Holiday Inn hiding underneath a beautiful work of architecture. The ‘drape’ exhibits clarity, a sense of purpose and an overall beautiful form. The sterile floor plates punctuating facades that make up the hotels display none of these characteristics. But before I digress too far, the life contained within the shell seems to reemerge beyond the hotel facade and seek refuge in the interiors. So it is a question of facades and we humans being so visually oriented, would perhaps like to see a little more continuity of ex*****on.

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