Villa Funf: Berlin

Villa Funf is the fifth in a series of villas designed for a piece of land near the Spree river in Berlin. It consists of 3 bedrooms and is approximately 200 square meters in area. The design represents a further exploration of moving in a more organic direction. Note that the horizontal wood slats indicated on the side elevations are mounted over fixed store front glazing, providing a simultaneiusly transparent and yet screened surface.

Villa Vier

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This is the fourth villa in a series of houses designed for a piece of vacant land located near the Spree river in Berlin. This design attempts to create a house which has an entirely simple plan, but a never the less interesting form, and skin.

Villa Vier has 220 square meters of floor area and contains either three or four bed / workrooms. The straightforward plan offers a variety of layouts which can be adjusted to the needs of the users. The wood cladding on the exterior is intended to be 10" vertical engineered lumber, set on a 12" grid, which leaves 2" air gaps between the external skin and the layer beneath. This offset of the skin provides shadoww linws which give a perception of depth to the building skin, and shadow effects which change with respect to the movement of the sun.

This particular design also fits nicely on the lots surrounding the  property in Highland Park, and may be used there on one of the adjacent properties in the future.

Personal Residence

This is the design for my personal residence located on a small parcel of land in the foothills of Highland Park, in Los Angeles. The parcel shares a private driveway with an adjoining house which I am designing in a similar style for my neighbor.

The house is raised above the ground in order to minimize grading of the land and the cost of building a garage. The house is composed of two 800 SF ( 20' deep x 40' long ) floors for a total area of 1,600 SF of living area, and contains three bedrooms and a great room. The simple, rectangular form minimizes the cost of construction. The house will be built using prefabricated steel structural members, interior walls and exterior cladding. A portion of the exterior will be clad in wood. Due to the prefabrication process, the total time required for construction of the house is estimated to be 8-10 weeks.

Villa Drei

Villa Drei is a 200 square meter residence for a single family located in Alt Moabit, Berlin. It contains three bedrooms and a two story living area with a 5m x 15m display/book shelf. The design is another partial step toward a freer, more organic design aesthetic.

New Work: Villa Zwei, Berlin

Villa Zwei is a proposed design for a residence for a single family in the Alt Moabit neighborhood of Berlin. It contains 200 sq meters of living area including  3 bedrooms, a Great Room with 12 meters of floor to ceiling book and display cases, an attached parking garage and a Wintergarten for year-long cultivation of veggies and flowers.

The design is a transitional step between geometric and organic Modernism.

New Work: Villa Einz, Berlin

Villa Einz

Kirchstrasse, Berlin
200 sq meters

This is a Villa for a single family located on a plot of land near the Spree river in Alt Moabit, Berlin. The Villa contains four bedrooms, a home office, family room and a sauna. The roof level is an open air terrace.

The exterior of the house is horizontal wood siding, storefront glass,and aluminum awnings. The large canopy roof is ideal for solar panels. The internal stair tower is concrete which supports passive solar cooling and heating. Heating is contained in the floor slabs and requires no forced air for distribution.

Work In Progress: City Center Lofts

This is a projects still very much in the design phase. City Center Lofts is located in the city of Woodland, just north of Sacramento, California. It covers two city blocks and is made up of 120 residential flats in 4 stories over 30,000 SF of ground floor commercial space. A second phase of similar volume is in design next door.

The project lies at the end of an historic Main Street which contains many picturesque buildings constructed between the 1880's and 1930's. Rather than mimic the various styles of the existing streetscape we felt that an equally lively cotemporary design would be the best approach. Hopefully the two will compliment and invigorate each other. The final design will contain street trees and a landscaped parkway at the street sides, and a large lushly planted garden plaza with a fountain on the alley side of the builing.

Much of the detailing and the selection of colors and materials has yet to be done. Since the use of poor quality stucco has been the general bane of architecture in California since the second world war, we are contemplating the use of prefinished metal siding, or rain screen panels for the exterior, and a color pallate derived form the Craftsman tradition.

Budget allowing we hope the design of the project will be complete by the end of 2009.