The HA House is perched on a steep mountain slope overlooking a lake in Arkansas. The prospect is immense, generating a desire to counteract the view with a strong expression of enclosure. The HA House thus gathers itself together in a playful grouping of masses that provide the counterpoint to the expansiveness of the site and provide the occupants occasional relief from the view. The assemblage of masses introduces an urban microcosm into the site while engaging the topography in multiple unique ways. It is conceived as a horizontal glass “oblong” supported by steel-clad volumes that subdivide the interior, negotiate the steep slope, and visually anchor the house to the site.

This was a creative collaboration with Bradley Edwards in the earliest days of A226.

Quantum House

‘“The measuring device has been constructed by the observer, and we have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”

Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy

Through the delineation of distinct boundaries, architecture describes spaces of occupation founded on quantifiable measures of distance and volume, solid and void, space and time. Once these boundaries are fixed the architectural measuring device becomes the privileged reference for the occupants to understand their relationship to the natural realm. The Quantum house thus explores the realm of measure and scale in the design of a single-family house to physically manifest the circumstantial conditions of the site. It is a precise intersection of masses, incised with openings that, sometimes ambiguously, respond to interior or exterior events, or both.

VIA

Cities are about connections. The public spaces of the city—streets, parks, and plazas—are places of movement through, around, and within the urban system. Urban networks serve as the stage for all kinds of events: two strangers in a chance encounter, old friends taking some time to exchange gossip, a parent teaching a child how to ride a bike, or a group of schoolkids going from somewhere to someplace. Cities are full of somewheres and someplaces, and the network for moving from one to the next connects them all.

This mixed-use development fosters the idea of connection by incorporating numerous ways of moving through the block from Emma Avenue, Springdale’s commercial heart, to the new Luther George Park. These ways, or “vias” both organize the block and connect it to the larger spatial networks of the city.

With 132 apartment units and new commercial spaces along Emma Avenue, VIA adopts geometric clarity and compositional strength reflecting Springdale as it is now and what it aspires to become in the future. The four separate buildings adopt uncomplicated massing that articulated through precisely cut openings that address the relative scale of the perimeter streets and they are enlivened with sculptural projecting balconies.

The buildings exhibit variations on a common theme that is unique to their internal organization and location within the block. In this way, the buildings are not monotone nor are they screaming for attention. Instead, they are quietly talking to one another like old friends.

A226 is the design architect with MODUS Studio and BUF Studio as architects of record.

Honey House

“According to Posidonius, the stoic…man’s ultimate purpose was to live in contemplation of the order of the universe, cooperating as far as possible in bringing it about.”

Indra Kirgis McEwen, “Vitruvius: Drawing the Body of Architecture”

Perched on the edge of a hill with a broad distant view (as so many sites in the Ozarks) the Honey House joins two opposing yet complimentary gestures: the compact, introverted forecourt that receives visitors from the street and the expansive terrace that extends the interior space outward toward the landscape.

The single-family house consists of a Main Bedroom wing and a Guest Bedroom wing joined by a transparent volume serving as both barrier and gateway from the forecourt to the terrace. The mono-slope roofs recall the typical Roman domestic impluvium in the forecourt and the exaggerated eaves substantiate the radical scale shift from the interior spaces to the expansive view.