April 26, 2013
This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury Award in the Architecture + Self-Initiated category. See the full list of winners here.
The DIY thing is all well and good for folks who want to build their own tiny homes or renovate a row house. But for those of us who don’t know which way to point a hammer, design self-determination is a daunting prospect. It’s no wonder so many people live in condos!
Frustrated by the lack of choices in downtown Toronto’s housing stock, architects Kyra Clarkson and Christopher Glaisek decided to give archi-philes a readymade option. They formed a company, MODERNest, and began buying up centrally located lots and building sleek infill homes to sell on the market. “We thought, We can provide a turnkey solution for that sort of buyer, who wants something thoughtfully designed,” says Clarkson. “They know what they like when they see it, but they don’t necessarily know how to get it or make it or even find somebody who can make it for them.”
Our A+ Awards jurors took a shine to the duo’s first infill project, MODERNest House 1, which won the jury award in the Self-Initiated category. Read more!
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April 2, 2013
We’re getting back to basics, and no, we aren’t talking about the Christina Aguilera album. We’re talking about the rudimentary symbols that allow us to write addictive roundups like this one—letters! For today’s roundup, we spotlight 14 single-family homes—the most popular typology in our project database—that honor the building blocks (pun intended) of the Latin alphabet in their titles. Who knew that so many architects prefer to name their clients’ houses by a single letter? Click through to see the abbreviated ”Architizer Alphabet of Stunning Single-Family Homes,” in alphabetical order, of course! (And watch out for Part 2 soon…)
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November 29, 2012
Hans van Heeswijk Architects’ concept for the Meandering Tower House.
It’s not often that a European architect approaches American-style tract housing with anything resembling desire. But on a tour of the modernist developer Joseph Eichler’s homes in and around San Francisco, the Dutch architect Hans van Heeswijk was taken with the region’s hilly expanses of single-family homes. Imposing that style of development onto the already saturated Dutch Randstad—the urban super-region comprising Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht—is obviously out of the question, but California’s spaciousness got Heeswijk thinking about how to build a Dutch residence with the same sense of air and possibility. Read more!
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