A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

House at Sagaponac in Southampton, New York by Marwan Al-Sayed, 2001   The Houses at Sagaponac , started by Coco Brown, president of The Brown Companies, and architect Richard Meier is a development of 34 houses in Southampton on New York's Long Island. Rather than continue the trend of "mega-mansions" typical to the Hamptons since the 90's, the development envisions modest, yet contemporary homes by well-known architects in a setting sensitive to the wooded landscape. Featured here is Phoenix, Arizona-based Marwan Al-Sayed 's design for parcel #39, a prominent corner site at the entry to the development. The south-oriented, 3,600 s.f. house, with 3 bedrooms and a study, sits in an oval clearing of the dense woods, allowing more sunlight to infiltrat...

StudioPlex Lofts in Atlanta, Georgia by Brock Green Architects & Planners, 1999 The following text and images are by Brock Green Architects & Planners for their design of StudioPlex Lofts in Atlanta, Georgia. The loft conversion is a 220,000 sf mixed-use development, built at a cost of $10 million and completed in 1999. An adaptive re-use project in the 1904 Southeastern Cotton Warehouse (listed as the oldest concrete building in Atlanta), StudioPlex is a mixed-use commercial, retail, and residential development. This project is an arts based development envisioned as the catalyst for the revival of the Martin Luther King Historic District. Brock Green prepared the masterplan, including historic facilities survey, programming, preliminary construction pricing, and presentation/marketing package. Documentation ...

9 Stock Orchard Street in London, England by Sarah Wigglesworth Architects, 2001 The following text and images are by Sarah Wigglesworth Architects for the husband and wife team's house and studio in London. Faced with a blank sheet of paper and a couple of buildings to design, where do you start? Any novelist will tell you: write about what you know. What we know is that living and working from the same building means our two lives (work and home) are never easily distinguished, but rather are irrevocably intertwined. An architect's response to this might be: separate the two physically; clarify zones; keep activities distinct; apply order. The person who lives and works there knows this is impossible. The building sits at the end of a row of Victorian terraced houses. One block, the office, bounds a railway ...

Future Shack by Sean Godsell, 2001 Seeing one of the roles of first-world, democratic countries as humanitarian, Sean Godsell designed emergency and relief housing that utilize recycled shipping containers. Mass-produced, inexpensive, and easy to ship and stockpile, the containers are approximately 8 feet wide by 8 feet high by 20 feet long, and adequate size for temporary housing. The Future Shack, through its use of a prefabricated, universal unit and a roof capable of site-specific material manipulation, embodies the contradictions of contemporary life. At the entrance to the container (top image) a ramp lowers to allow access to the raised floor as the wall raises to provide shade and create a makeshift verandah. This subtle maneuver is one ...

A New World Trade Center: Design Proposals in New York, NY by various architects, 2002 Organized by Max Protetch, the exhibit "A New World Trade Center: Design Proposals" is featured at the Max Protetch Gallery in New York City through February 16. Included here are five submissions included in the exhibit. At left is "Floating Memorial/Folded Street" by Steven Holl , with Makram El-Kadi and Ziad Jameleddine. Next is "Zero Zones" by Raimund Abraham which features three buildings situated so sunlight pierces slats in the buildings each day at the exact times the planes hit the WTC Towers. At left is "Oblique WTC" by Lars Spuybroek of Nox Architects : "Elevators form a highly complex structure of diagonals where at some platforms more than five or six different cores come together to form larger ...

National Wine Centre of Australia in Adelaide, Australia by Grieve Gillett and Cox Architects Located in Adelaide, Australia, the National Wine Centre of Australia is a design by the firm Grieve Gillette and Cox Architects (now Cox Architects ). Featured are images (click on each for larger format) by photographer Steve Rendoulis , also based in Adelaide. Text is courtesy of the photographer, with all images copyright Steve Rendoulis. The design brief for the National Wine Centre called for a world class interpretive and educational centre representing the whole of the Australian wine industry. The building was to house wine industry offices, an interpretive exhibition, education areas, function hall, restaurant, cellaring and tasting facilities. Just as wine carries the characteristics ...

Yancy Chapel and Mason's Bend Community Center in Alabama by Rural Studio This week's dose pays tribute to Samuel Mockbee, founder of the Rural Studio in Alabama and partner in Mockbee Coker , who passed away December 30, 2001 at the age of 57. Featured are text and images from the Rural Studio , including their Mission Statement and two projects: Yancy Chapel in Hale County and Mason's Bend Community Center, both in Alabama (photos by Tim Hursley). The mission of the Rural Studio is to enable each participating student to cross the threshold of misconceived opinions to create/design/build and to allow students to put their educational values to work as citizens of a community. The Rural Studio seeks solutions to the needs of the community within the community's own context, not from outside it. Abstract idea...