Smaller, Better, Stronger, Lighter

Architizer News

Smaller, Better, Stronger, Lighter

July 19, 2010

With a light footprint on the landscape of Portland, Connecticut, SplitFrame is a new wildlife viewing platform. Its observation deck rises and falls with seasonal changes in water levels and connects to an elevated viewing station by a hinged staircase. Using American Cypress for benches, aluminum structural components and (only) hand-held power-tools, Wesleyan University’s North Studio designed this eco-friendly project, now one of 10 winners of the 2010 AIA Small Project Awards.

The jury of architects and educators including Tom Howorth, Kevin Harris, Camilo Parra, and Thomas Fisher awarded three types of building: Architecture in the Public Interest, Small Project Objects (less than $50,000 construction) and the Small Project Structures (up to $500,000).

SplitFrame (in the Public Interest Category) had a “refreshing use of rhythm, asymmetry and a controlled randomness,” the jury said. “[It is] respectful and reflective of the natural environment. The architectonic pieces become diffused at the edges, giving the building a pleasing transitional relationship to nature.”

The award winners are all on the lean side, but create beauty in myriad shapes and programs. Some are surprisingly expressive, contemplative and even, dare we quote, magical. View the winners after the break.

SplitFrame_2

SplitFrame1

View From Observation Deck, SplitFrame by North Studio, Portland, Connecticut [Architecture in the Public Interest Award]

In another small albeit completely different project, Griffin Enright Architects bring the noise to a 600-square foot café slash bar/lounge for NeoCon West and the A + D Museum in Los Angeles called [Wide] Band. A thin, light, orange-yellow polycarbonate wraps around the café, “used to form space and interconnect program in a free flowing manner,” the jury said. An “eco-resin” table serves as the nexus inside the polycarbonate form, and floats above a platform lit from below. This small project is so hip it even has free-wifi inside! Score!

(Wide) Band 1

(Wide) Band 2

[Wide] Band – Nomadic Café by Griffin Enright Architects, Los Angeles, California [Small Project Structures Award]

Accomplished on a $100,000 budget in a East Village studio, Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture created a central service core, with a kitchen, sleeping loft, and bath identified by its wood-paneling. The plain, high-gloss white in the other, more leisurely living spaces contrast with the more utilitarian core (so, sleeping is a purely functional?). “A clever exercise in living and working in a tiny space,” the jury commented, “will become much more common in our crowded, debt-ridden world.”

(I just hope we all get curtains, or a sound proof door, between the bed and the living room in case someone is watching late night episodes of Real Housewives of New York.)

East Village Studio

East Village Studio by Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture, New York City [Small Project Structures Award]

Maybe the most experimental small project is the Shadow Pavilion, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a structure of holes. The pavilion’s wall is created with over 100 aluminum cones of varied sizes, which funnel light and sound into the interior. The process makes the structure lighter and weaker, but maybe the basic idea has applications in larger buildings? The simplicity and choice of one material and shape is key, creating a good mediation/yoga/spiritual awakening spot.

Shadow Pavilion