A unique hybrid of monograph and field guide, offering insights into the creative practice and design expertise of Houston-based Interloop—Architecture.
Authored by Dawn Finley, Published by Park Books, Edited by Chris Davey, and Designed by Normal Studio
System of Novelties is the first book on Interloop—Architecture’s work. It combines elements of both monograph and field guide, placing the firm’s novel architectural designs within their broader context, with special attention to how influences, procedures, and techniques have been threaded from project to project over a period of two decades. A diverse collection of built and speculative designs are framed by three pairs of research topics: Information–Shape, Procedure–Assembly, and Material–Detail. Graphic notes trace and synthetically connect the systems—some unique, some recurring—used in and between projects. System of Novelties demonstrates the firm’s technical expertise with materials, manufacturing, and delivery processes and offers insights into innovative forms of contemporary architectural practice.
Order from Park Books . . .
Finley’s ongoing academic research, Pliable, received a spring 2020 Spatial Humanities Design Studio Initiative from Rice University’s Humanities Research Center (HRC) – to support an interdisciplinary workshop with guest designers and speakers.
Interloop-Architecture’s new injection-molded version of their award-winning exit sign, designed for Architectural Safety Components, has launched and is now available online. www.architecturalsafety.com
Finley’s ongoing academic research, Pliable, received a 2019/20 Moody Arts Initiative Grant – to support experimental fabrication, and interdisciplinary workshop, and guest lectures.
LELU™ was awarded one of five prestigious winner awards in the annual program juried by leading AEC industry design practitioners.. The awards program “proudly celebrates the research, materials, and technologies that have advanced the AEC industry at every scale—from design strategies and building systems to revolutionary products, software, and fabrication methods.”
LELU Exit Sign establishes a new set of priorities for safety-related building components. Namely, an exit sign should exceed its important life-safety function by incorporating aesthetic and technical ambitions into the design. It combines a minimal, graphic appearance with equally refined mounting options to accommodate a range of design conditions. Luminosity is driven by compact LEDs arrayed within the EXIT legend to maximize uniformity, color, brightness and most importantly, legibility. The enclosure is substantial, milled from solid acrylic and aluminum stock, and is available with either red or green lenses. A concise range of metal finishes insures that every aspect of the sign performs at the same exceptional level.
http://www.architecturalsafety.com/
YS2 is a private Ashtanga Yoga studio located in a prominent historic neighborhood in Houston, Texas. More drawings and photos coming soon . .
Practice space with white macaubus quartzite stone surround (right) and custom FitzFelt perforation pattern (right). Photo by Amy Sanford
Inside-Corner House was selected as an architectural tour destination in Houston by Stephen Fox, architectural historian, for the national organization Tours d’Art, headed by Karen Bergenthal of Milwaukee.
Dawn Finley was honored by DesignIntelligence as one of 25 Most Admired Educators for 2016. Educators and administrators from the disciplines of architecture, industrial design, interior design, and landscape architecture are considered.
The 2016 class of education role models was selected by DesignIntelligence staff with extensive input from thousands of design professionals, academic department heads, and students.
The Texas Society of Architects Studio Awards recognize unbuilt projects demonstrating innovation and excellence in design. The program emphasizes real or theoretical projects that go beyond the boundaries of architecture to address current critical issues. Jurors: Karl Backus, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson; E.B. Min, Min | Day; Craig Scott IwamotoScott Architecture.
This year’s submissions offered a variety of building typologies proposed for locations in Texas and abroad, predominately Asia. Four projects were selected from among the 72 entries. The awarded projects all demonstrate pure architecture that, in the jury’s opinion, could be “understood through the drawings alone, without the words.”
The 2015 Studio Awards jurors met on Friday, August 21, at the San Francisco offices of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. Composed of all Bay Area-based architects,
J-Camp receives a Design Award from the Houston Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The judges were Mark Lamster of the Dallas Morning News, Michael Maltzan of Michael Maltzan Architecture in Los Angeles and Lorcan O’Herlihy of Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects in L.A.
Dawn Finley is an Invited Respondent for Print and Screen—Interface Design, a Colloquium organized by Reto Geiser at the Menil Collection. (Poster by Reto Geiser & Joseph Altschuler)
Dawn Finley is an Invited Juror for the 2014 Miami Chapter of The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Design Awards – with James M. Evans of Energy Architecture and Gary Machicek of Kirksey Architecture.
Interloop was commissioned to design a landscape strategy for a residence in Houston, Texas. The project plan is generated through a sequence of pentagram shapes that link diagonally across the lawn. Each pentagram is materially detailed to accommodate social and recreational activities. Stone paving defines an outdoor dining area, hard wood planks form a wood deck, and gravel beds accommodate specimen plants. Central to the design is a three-armed asterisk pool made up of three pentagrams that are differentiated in depth and access. This project marks phase two of the landscape design for the 9° House, a highly acclaimed private residence designed by Interloop-Architecture. Design Team: Dawn Finley, Mark Wamble, Erin Ruhl
View of concrete pool edge with shallow tanning area, new planted garden, and hard wood ipe deck beyond.
J-Camp is a commissioned design study for a year-round camp located on Lake Texoma, Texas that serves inner city kids in the Dallas-Forth Worth metropolitan region. The lush, wooded site is a peninsula located within the 100 year flood plane of one of the largest reservoirs in the United States. The design incorporates a Camp Commons (cafeteria, outdoor covered amphitheater, canteen, and first aid building), twenty-five cabins for up to 250 children and staff, a chapel, art center, and director’s residence. The buildings are structured and elevated on piers to allow for periodic flooding by the Army Corp of Engineers.
2014 AIA Houston Design Award Received
Design Team: Dawn Finley, Mark Wamble, Patrick Daurio, Michael Kapinus, Michael Matthews, Zachary Morrison
Dawn Finley is an Invited Juror for the 2014 Springfield Chapter of The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Design Awards – with Carlos Jimenez of Carlos Jimenez Studio and Danny Samuels of Taft Architects.
Interloop Architecture’s award winning Yoga Studio and Garden was featured in the Houston Chronicle design magazine.
Zack received a B.S. in Architecture with a minor in Art History, Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Professionally, he has accumulated experience (in Chicago and Houston) working on projects ranging from speculative designs for residential fictions to construction drawings for high-rise developments.
Yoga Studio & Garden is featured in the 2014 RDA architecture tour, Additionally.
Principals: Dawn Finley & Mark Wamble. Design Team: Eric Hughes, Mark Watabe. Specialty Fabrication: Kyle Henricks. Contractor: Royston Technologies. Structural Engineer: Brad Dougherty. Photography: Hester+Hardaway
Patrick holds an A.B. in Architecture from Princeton University. He is a recent recipient of the 2013 Mary Ellen Lovett Hale Traveling Fellowship from Rice University School of Architecture for his research on contemporary architecture in the Republic of Georgia, and writes about national politics and architecture in the former Soviet territories.
9° House was featured in the International Edition of Swiss Pearl magazine, highlighting the rain screen exterior facade. High precision cement composite panels were fabricated in Switzerland and constitute the first residential application of this sleak enclosure in Texas.
Three of Interloop-Architecture’s projects were each awarded through the American Institute of Architects, Houston Chapter. Jurors: Craig Scott, IwamotoScott, San Francisco; Susan S. Szenasy, Editor in Chief, Metropolis magazine, New York; and Jon Pickard, Pickard Chilton, New Haven, Connecticut.
9° House was highlighted in the 2011 AIA Houston Home Tour on the weekend of October 22, 2011. The project received critical attention, including a feature article in The Houston Chronicle’s Gloss Magazine.
Mark Wamble is invited to lecture at Auburn University College of Architecture, Design and Construction. His lecture, Just a Moment, features the recent design work of Interloop Architecture.
System Panel Moderator: Dawn Finley.
Conference Chair: Penelope Dean. Assistant Professor, UIC
Publication features conversations between Dawn Finley and Clover Lee and between Mark Wamble and Robert E. Somol.
Prospective home plan buyers and people interested in leading contemporary home design can get an in-depth look at Hometta’s new design delivery model. Hometta is a web-based modern home plan company offering small, sustainable home designs from internationally recognized architecture and design studios. The company is committed to making design accessible and affordable to a large cross-section of prospective homeowners. Interloop-Architecture Principal Dawn Finley is a founding partner of Hometta. A modified version of IA’s internationally acclaimed 48′ House is one of the design prototypes exhibited.
Welcome Hometta: Houston
New World Gallery, Houston, Texas
July 16, 2009 to August 2, 2009.
Welcome Hometta: San Francisco
San Francisco Living: Home Tours
September 12 & 13, 2009.
Welcome Hometta: Boston
PinkComma Gallery
October 16 to November 6, 2009
E-X-I-T was presented in its first exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Special Exhibitions Gallery on the third floor.
Vik Muniz (Brazilian, b. 1961) is the ninth artist to participate in Artist’s Choice, a series of exhibitions in which an artist serves as curator, selecting works from MoMA’s vast collection to create an exhibition. In his work, Muniz inventively questions the function and traditions of visual representation by using unlikely materials to render the subjects in his photographs. For this exhibition, Muniz has chosen a rebus—a combination of unrelated visual and linguistic elements to create a larger deductive meaning—as the organizing principle of his presentation. The exhibition will feature approximately 80 works of sculpture, photography, painting, prints, drawings, video, and design objects selected and installed by the artist in a narrative sequence to create surprising juxtapositions and new meanings. Among the artists whose work will be on view are John Baldessari, Gordon Matta-Clark, Nan Goldin, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Eugène Atget, and Rachel Whiteread. Design objects will range from a wooden pencil to a kitchen pail to a Rubik’s Cube to finally, an Exit sign.
Ben Thorne was a project architect for Tending,(blue) and a designer for E-X-I-T. He was also involved with the fabrication of Two-Seater and has photographed a selection of Interloop’s work. Ben currently lives in Los Angeles.
Dawn Finley and Mark Wamble are among six Rice University faculty members featured in article about Rice School of Architecture and its approach to education.
This project represents the major renovation of an existing public plaza in downtown Houston, constructed over an underground parking garage. The city’s opera house and symphony hall, a major theater, the federal courthouse and several large offi ce buildings bound the full block plaza. Jones Plaza is frequently used for large planned public events, and therefore requires standing room and restrooms for a crowd for 2,000 people, a level area for tents, a permanent concession stand, and a stage with an adjacent green room. The four elevated corners of the plaza, accessed by various stairs, are landscaped with trees, wild grasses, and flowers. Five canopied steel pergolas separate these landscaped areas for a slightly sunken hexagonal paved plaza at the center of the block. Several of the canopies shelter small, freestanding pavilions clad in glass mosaic tiles, which house concessions, restrooms, and other services. The colored tiles create a pattern that abstracts a landscape painting by the French Impressionist Claude Monet. On the northeast side of the site another pergola covers the open air stage. A broad walkway on the east side of the plaza aligns with the main entrance of the symphony hall across the street.
Finley’s design “Do Post” is featured in Abitare to promote an international product exhibition curated by Droog Design and KesselsKramer.
Andrew McFarland was a Design Consultant and Associate for the 9° House. He is a principal of d>mcf. In 1999, McFarland wrote (amazing, startling) scenarios for three Klip House configurations. His obsessions and addictions include: style, sailing, swimming with sharks, modern art, suburbia, california, scotland, bagpipe recordings and the Grateful Dead.
WSJ article features Interloop-Architecture’s innovative housing platform, Klip House.
Two essays by Mark Wamble are featured – “Parsing Eye; The Architecture of Greg Lynn” and “Kneeplay.”
Ana is principal of the Boston based architecture practice Project_ with partner Lee Moreau . She is currently an assistant professor at MIT Architecture.
Project_ contributed one of the first 25 house designs to Hometta (www.hometta.com) – featured in the Boston Globe in October 2009. The house is titled “Stanley and Oliver.”