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/
Hometta is an innovative web-based house design delivery company, launched in June 2009. It is an entirely web-based set of tools that allows prospective homeowners to engage architecture as a product, while improving the design quality of single family houses built today. Rather than trying to reconceive how single family residences are produced and delivered (pre-fab model), Hometta modifies current modes of architecture practice to align with market driven building production. A client purchases modern home plans online and contracts a local builder to construct the design. Hometta will be the first subscription based open-source house design system that allows architects and designers to participate directly in the housing industry. Interloop-Architecture Principal Dawn Finley is a founding partner of Hometta.
Two-Seater is a folding bench armature that was engineered and fabricated by Interloop Architecture for Tending,(Blue). This bench is a critical element to experiencing the Skyspace artwork by James Turrell. Texas Accessibility Standards (TAS) requires that the bench accommodate wheelchair access for two individuals seated side by side. Instead of creating a void for these seats, we developed a retractable armature that would support the required portion of the bench, (over four-hundred pounds of stone cladding), enabling it to fold into the wall. Actuators allow an individual to operate the bench with very little effort using a concealed handle to slide the bench into position or to fold it back into the wall.
Interloop Architecture was commissioned to design and fabricate seven pieces of stainless steel and wood furniture for a private residence in Richardson, Texas. The Polara (7) pieces are used in a master bedroom that includes an eight foot by eight foot cantelievered glass sunroom (Plug-On). The pieces include two wall-mounted night-stands, a footlocker, a rolling upright credenza, a head-board, a picture rail, and wall-mounted lcd stand with drawer and cabinet.
EXIT is a custom exit light produced for The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas. Interloop Architecture designed and fabricated the exit lights, working with engineers, fabricators, UL technicians, and the graphic design firm 2×4. In keeping with city, state, and federal safety standards, every emergency light fixture must undergo extensive testing by the Underwriter Laboratories Testing Center to meet a wide range of design criteria. These stringent technical requirements typically thwart innovation by limited new design, requiring the exclusive use of existing UL approved components.
On November 7, 2007, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, inducted E-X-I-T into the permanent collection. A design like E-X-I-T marks a departure in MoMA’s collecting policy, and as such, provides an early precedent in the acquisition of architectural signage.
Plug-On is the first in a series of product prototypes intended for residential structures. It was fabricated and assembled in Houston, then delivered and installed onto an existing modest one-story ranch style house in Richardson, Texas. The client was interested in an addition that would complement the existing language of the house and accommodate a sitting area to redirect the space of the master bedroom to the lush trees in the rear lawn. Our directive was to maximize the qualitative effect of the square footage. Plug-on is an eight-foot cube, fabricated entirely of stainless steel, glass and wood. It is structured as a cantilever using a concrete counterweight and steel beam fulcrum underneath the bedroom floor.
Klip is a consumer based housing platform, a delivery system that provides the physical and operational infrastructure for trade corporations to participate in the production, delivery, and servicing of housing.
This project is a result of our participation in Sixteen Houses – a project organized and curated by Michael Bell in 1998 and funded by the Graham Foundation, the Fifth Ward Redevelopment Corporation, and DiverseWorks in Houston. Sixteen architects and designers were invited nationally to generate innovative concepts and new options for a low-income house – to expand the very limited market. To briefly describe the voucher program – these are Federal and State initiatives that provide financial assistance to qualified families and individuals by awarding, housing “Vouchers” to serve as the down payment on a house. In its current format, the voucher system distributes a mass of capital such that one voucher equals one house.
We were, and are, frustrated with a design system that is constricted by insurance companies, loan officers, municipalities, and contractors, etc. and decided to look at the overall economic impact that these vouchers might have if they were bundled, rather than distributed. Instead of designing a single house that has very little impact to the housing industry, we worked with the idea of consolidating the vouchers to pay for a housing platform, or infrastructure. We needed to work outside of the home mortgage process in order to gain some ground.