How can startup breweries build customers and galvanize growth together under one roof?

Developer Michael Tilford asked us to create a brand and space that could house multiple micro-breweries and offer a unique customer experience centered on the brewing process. Such a brewer incubator allows brewmasters to operate at a low cost by sharing some equipment, building an individual identity, and having a direct connection to the customer at the same time. Each brewery has its own bar setup and holding tanks while sharing the central brewhouse at different times.

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Rapscallion

How can we enhance the interactions of family while engaging the lake frontage on a thin lot with a home only 16 feet wide?

The thin 16-foot wide house contains spaces that are arranged linearly to fit the narrow property. The design connects the beach to the heavily vegetated yard through a simple palette of materials that creates an uninterrupted flow throughout the interior spaces of the home.

Pavilions for writing, woodworking, and music recording dot the property and choreograph walking paths. These paths unfold with a sense of discovery as one moves around the property. Each room responds to the owners’ lifestyle and working habits while engaging the surrounding nature, bringing the outside in and the inside out.

H I G H L I G H T S

• Acid-washed metal exterior siding

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Tina Govan, AIA | Lou Pontigo & Associates | Aria Homes | Nick Renard

How can we establish a brand identity and ample merchandise opportunities in only 165sf?

Kendall Square has become as mecca for companies making tremendous advancements in technology and science but the recent commercial development has followed the status quo. This project proposes to play a unique role of enlivening a dead zone in the urban fabric by establishing an adaptable urban event space and an adaptable light filter to create opportunities day and night for organized events or low-key spontaneous gatherings. It is formed by two parts that establish its identity in the urban fabric. The ground level adaptable urban event space is defined by large bi-fold and swing doors that allow the Adapter to fully open up providing for a multitude of programmatic options. The upper section is an adaptable light filter made up of periscopes to choreograph the seasonal southern daylight, project light and graphics at night, and provide unique views into and out of the Adapter. The space is a brand, it stimulates interactive experiences and encourage users to observe space, light and material in unanticipated ways through its extreme adaptability.

H I G H L I G H T S

• Adaptive reuse of an underutilized MBTA utility space

• Flexible furniture components such as stages, bleachers, service counters, bike rack bartops, and display shelves adapt to various programmatic uses.

• Use of bi-fold hanger type doors.

How can a child’s playhouse foster open-ended creativity and self-direction?

Rather than replicating figurative notions of house this play structure departs from traditional playhouse designs by providing a dynamic framework for imagination.

Its renewable redwood slats filter light and create a rich spatial interior that allows passage over, under and through its various levels. A perfect place for learning, growing and discovering, the play structure exposes children to the value of design through lively hands-on interaction.

H I G H L I G H T S

• Visit our cubePLAY blog for more modern playhouses

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Paul M. Bowers Photography

How can we reinvent the stereotype of a bus shelter?

Typically, bus shelters consist of an enclosure for protection from the elements and a poured concrete slab to provide a standing surface. The sheltered garden reinvents this stereotype as a pocket park, able to be inserted in new or existing conditions to enrich the cityscape and improve the passenger experience by integrating a large bench, information and advertisement panels, trash receptacles, handicap accessibility, and native grass and plantings. The shelter is an undulating surface composed of a translucent fiberglass roof with perforated cor-ten steel panels below. It takes formal cues from the dilapidated agricultural structures that dot the North Carolina countryside. Like a leaf canopy over a forest, the shelter filters light and diverts water into the garden below. This sustainable approach allows for better storm water management with gravel recharge areas and plants to filter toxins out of rain water runoff.

H I G H L I G H T S

• Sustainable storm water management

• Use of native grass and plantings

• Simplified construction sequence to allow for use in new or existing conditions

Within this open loft condominium, a strangely inaccessible and residual space is converted into a study for a young professional couple looking to expand their family. Integrated into the 16 foot by 5 foot shelf space is a desk with two workstations, shelving for storage and display, and a alternating tread stair with guardrail. The legibility of construction for these new components and simple expression of off-the-shelf parts help give scale and sophistication to this otherwise ordinary loft.

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Nancy Stracka Interiors

How can a mountainside home enhance the feeling of serenity?

The home is perched like an observation post atop the mountain. This retreat and future retirement home is designed to facilitate relaxation while working with the owners various hobbies and interests. Large open spaces provide views of the valley below and the distant mountain ranges. Smaller spaces focus on particular views of trees, rocks, and sky, allowing privacy for bathing, contemplating, and reading.

H I G H L I G H T S

• Corten steel exterior panels

• Butterfly roof with exposed wood structure

How do we design flexibility into a modest, passive solar home?

The home was planned as a guesthouse with additional space for a woodworking, workout, and home-office. Over time the Owner wanted the ability to change the interior configuration and use it fully as a traditional home. To accomplish this we utilized a simple post and beam structure to allow the interior layout to change as desired.

Passive sustainable strategies are implemented throughout to reduce energy usage. These include proper orientation for passive solar and ventilation, increased insulation, and efficient mechanical systems. A solar panel array on the roof provides most of the homes energy needs.

H I G H L I G H T S

• Passive solar design

• Post and beam construction

How can we craft a home reflective of the owners’ indoor routines and outdoor hobbies while being aging-friendly?

The home was designed for animal lovers with a passion for gardening and being outside. A sunny plant room anchors the corner with space outside for potting and pruning. The home is planned as single-level living with accessible bathrooms and aging-friendly design features.

The spaces and materials of the home slip by one another to create paths and connections to the surrounding landscape and gardens. The home is oriented on the property for passive solar design with proper overhangs, increased insulation, and efficient mechanical systems. These features help to reduce the homes energy usage.

H I G H L I G H T S

• Passive solar design

How can a home on a steep canyon hillside feel both modest and expansive at the same time?

The home was designed for animal lovers with a passion for gardening and being outside. A sunny plant room anchors the corner with space outside for potting and pruning. The home is planned as single-level living with accessible bathrooms and aging-friendly design features.

The spaces and materials of the home slip by one another to create paths and connections to the surrounding landscape and gardens. The home is oriented on the property for passive solar design with proper overhangs, increased insulation, and efficient mechanical systems. These features help to reduce the homes energy usage.

H I G H L I G H T S

• Passive solar design

High in the mountains above Malibu at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, Sweetwater Mesa poetically rests at the nexus of the earth, sky, and water. Its undulating landscape is formed by microclimates of diverse vegetation, climate, and topography with expansive views to the Pacific Ocean, Malibu, and Los Angeles. Vulnerable to sun, wind, and fire, the site topography is characterized by rock outcroppings, low-lying brush, slopes and ravines. The 160-acre property is separated into five parcels that absorb their distinct surroundings marked by boundaries of Ocean, Meadow, Cliff, and Mountain zones.

The project included site masterplanning and the conceptual design for five single-family residences. The individual homes establish a cohesive relationship between the site and its occupants. The dwellings arise from the land and are conceived as ‘instruments’ for interpreting the landscape that capture and intensify specific site qualities. The site is traversed via footpath that carves sinuously through the terrain uniting scattered natural features and the dwellings.

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Andrew Scott and John Fernandez | Pamela Burton & Co. Landscape