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 is a one-story, single-family residence that occupies a corner lot in one of Houston’s more pedestrian, urban neighborhoods. The domestic spaces are organized around a central courtyard – an outdoor room surrounded by glass with minimal steel frames.
Photography: Jack Mussett, Susan George
Interloop-Architecture was commissioned by the Menil Foundation to develop a concept design for a new full-service cafe to accommodate visitors to the museum as well as a broader public within the city. The cafe proposal was to adapt and re-use an existing 1923 wood-framed bungalow on the campus, directly across from the Menil Collection museum entrance.
The Menil Collection building externalizes structure as an aesthetic means to mediate the scale of the museum building relative to the surrounding bungalows. The new Menil Cafe internalizes structure as an aesthetic means to expand the scale of the bungalow volume.
Welch Street House is a compact yet spatially expansive addition to a pristine single family residence originally constructed in 1945. The slender addition includes a family leisure space, laundry and garage at the ground level, with one kids’ bedroom, connecting bathroom, and a master suite above.
Exterior view from the backyard with new exterior terrace
Yoga Studio and Garden is sited behind an existing 1920’s “Airplane” style bungalow in Houston, Texas. The ground floor below the studio is a naturally ventilated space with sliding glass doors that open onto a garden with a pool. It serves as both a garage and at times a space for entertaining. The second level contains an open yoga studio that doubles as a guest room. A single piece of cabinetry divides the room into two zones. Incorporated into the cabinet panels are a Murphy bed, desk, closets, sliding glass doors and compact bathroom fixtures. Privacy and sunlight are filtered through an exterior hardwood screen. The screen produces different densities and “noise” patterns as it wraps the building and exterior stair. A series of computed, randomized scripts were written to develop the screen’s varied pattern.
Photographer: Paul Hester, Hester+Hardaway
The 9° House combines the renovation of an existing, historically significant modern residence with a new 3,000 sf addition. Where the addition begins the base geometry of the house skews 9° to the west to fill the vacant southwest corner of the lot and expand the rear garden for outdoor activity. Every detail of the addition conforms to the 9° shift. The skew produces a profound optical illusion. After spending time in the addition the natural tendency for the eye is to compensate and correct the disorienting effects of the skew. Upon returning to the original wing of the house the visitor then perceives the original portion of the house to be skewed 9° in the opposite direction. Photos: Benjamin Hill Photography
The Reiss Residence is located in Houston, Texas on a corner lot near Rice University, in a neighborhood originally developed in the 1910’s. The property is surrounded on three sides by public streets. To the north is Sunset Boulevard a prominent residential street with a planted median. To the west is Greenbriar Avenue, a major north-south thruway. To the south is a neighborhood service alley used by local residents for access. The interior spaces of the house are designed around a private garden with a small pool. The kitchen is a double-height room with tall, glass walls facing in to the private garden.
West Elevation
48’ House is a modest single family residence in Houston, Texas designed to accommodate the changing lifestyle needs of a young professional family. The size and proportion of the house are based upon a 4′ x 8′ framing module ideal for wood and steel construction—minimizing material waste during construction. The house is sited at the rear of a standard lot that spans between a residential street (to the north/front) and a masonry sound-wall adjacent to US Interstate 59 (to the south/back), a location where the interstate is depressed approximately 18’ below natural grade. The mass of the house blocks the majority of highway sound from the front lawn making this an ideal space for outdoor activity under two massive live-oak trees. The first level contains work spaces (an outdoor covered shop, an office, storage, and a half bath). The second level contains living spaces (a kitchen, a forty-eight foot long dining and living space, two-bedrooms, and a full bath).
First featured in Dwell Magazine’s October 2007 print issue, 48’House has received national and international attention for its design innovation and economy. In 2010, it was published in a special ten-year anniversary print issue, Dwell: 100 Houses We Love, 2000-2010.
Photographer: Daniel Hennessy
Sited along the edge of one of Houston’s bayous, the White Oak Bayou Studio was commissioned by a prominent painter in Houston to house a studio workspace for production, an exhibit space, and a modest domestic residence with pool.
View of front elevation. Perforated corten steel sliding panels allow the entry and studio to be completely open to the street, or closed down in the evening for privacy
Nasher Sculpture Center is a 60,000 SF structure and a 1.9 acre Garden designed to showcase the sculpture collection of Ray and Patsy Nasher. The Center is located in Downtown Dallas across from the Dallas Museum of Fine Art. Renzo Piano Building Workshop is the lead design consultant, Peter Walker and Partners is the Landscape Architect and Ove Arup & Partners is lead engineers. Interloop Architecture was hired by Renzo Piano’s office to administer the design of the building and garden. Interloop Architecture was also hired to coordinate between the owner and the other consultants all matters relating to the execution of the design, as well as produce Construction Documents for portions of the construction including Finish Millwork, Ornamental Gates, Stone details, a 2,500 SF Auditorium, and various other finish details associated with the project.
Photographer: Tim Hursley ©2003
Interloop Architecture was commissioned by The Nasher Foundation to design a building to house Tending, (blue), an artwork by James Turrell. Tending, (blue) is sited in a planted berm at the west end of the Nasher Sculpture garden, opposite the main museum building. Tending, (blue) contains two artworks – an entry piece and a skyspace.
Photographer: Tim Hursley ©2003
The following proposal is for the design of a new high school – approximately 489,000 square feet, on a 15.3 acre site – for the city of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. The City of Perth Amboy, the Perth Amboy Board of Education and the National Endowment for the Arts, in conjunction with the New Jersey School Construction Corporation and New Jersey Department of Education, held a national design competition in 2003 for a new high school, to be constructed with state funds as part of New Jersey’s $12 billion school construction program. The facility is to contain five semi-autonomous specialized academies, or schools-within-a-school.
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.
Houston Products Laboratory was designed in 1997 for a custom engineering and fabrication company. The site for the Products Lab is in Houston Heights, a neighborhood to the north of Downtown Houston, Texas. In response to the urban mixture found within Houston Heights, the design for the Products Laboratory builds upon the diversity of the context. Programming needs include a conference and presentation room, a products gallery, a design studio, a dark room, kitchen and bathroom area, a products archive, a fabrication shop and an assembly yard. The distribution of these functions from interior to exterior and from one level to the next is key to the way the building works.
The exterior skin organizes the space from front to back, allowing the interior programs to overlap, and interact laterally. Because the interior business goals for the Houston Products Lab require functions to overlap and interact over the life of the building, the exterior enclosure has to support these internal demands, exerted from inside and contained at the exterior. To formalize this condition, a single continuous surface, or “riboon” was used to define the spatial limits of the interior and to engage the building with the assembly yard and the street. The ribbon, made of 22-gauge galvanized aluminum, operated in one direction, wrapping front to back, top to bottom.
Texas Ice House proposes a new design for architecture in an auto-mobilized city. The approach develops in three ways: in the relationship of architecture to program; in the relationship of architecture to patronage; and in the relationship of architecture to a recognizable space-time continuum historically embodied in the static material and spatial dimensions of the city.