CLIENTE

Just a few inches over seven feet tall, this house was designed with two pragmatic objectives. The new house needed be energy efficient and inexpensive to build. Designed and constructed to have a mortgage payment that is affordable to those earning the national median household annual income of $61,000; the house has less than 1,000 square feet of conditioned living space. To help reduce energy loss, the exterior roof and wall assemblies are more robust than is structurally required. While well-insulated, the amount of exterior enclosure was minimized in the house’s configuration. The home’s floor is recessed into the ground, aligning the lawn with the kitchen island counter. This sunken floor level, inset windows (with coordinated sight-lines), a large skylight (allowing natural light deep into the plan) seek to reduce artificial lighting needs and offer surprisingly expansive visual connections to the neighborhood.

The architectural objective was for a building that is of Columbus, yet, at first appears indifferent to its context. The home’s scale and massing makes it hard to classify as a house. Its articulation and lack of domestic features disguise design references to Eero Saarinen’s Miller House and Irwin Bank & Trust, I.M. Pei’s Public Library, and Gunnar Birkerts’ Lincoln Elementary School. Beyond this balance between referential and autonomous design sensibilities, the project’s composition is concerned with creating a contradiction between how the building appears from afar and is experienced from within.

This modest project was born from a disciplinary argument and progressive planning ideas for Columbus, Indiana. This town has a world renowned portfolio of mid-century modern architecture and design; yet, with the significant exception of Eero Saarinen’s Miller House, few of Columbus’s great projects are domestic homes. It is odd that the value of design found in a community’s public buildings has not strongly influenced the qualities of its housing stock. Given the town’s appreciation for design; this project was driven by a desire to demonstrate that meaningful architecture is not only made in civic, religious and commercial efforts sponsored by philanthropy.

Understanding the links between the diversity of a community’s residents and the diversity of housing opportunities, the project was really initiated to introduce a new affordable housing type in the historic downtown. Located on a small vacant lot on Eighth Street, the project is a form of residential development that requires more compact domestic order and efficient land use than the surrounding housing stock of workers cottages and large two story homes from the 1900’s. Seeking to complement the city’s newly adopted accessory dwelling units program, this project was seeking to contribute to a denser pedestrian-oriented urbanity. Concerns for the accessibility of home-ownership were also fundamental to the project. As the project aimed for a small in-fill home to be sold with an attainable price point for your average American.

After additional reviews by the zoning board to understand the desire to build such a small house, city officials and community leaders have toured the completed house and now understand the motivations behind the project. A heightened awareness of how design can improve the residential landscape of the town can be felt. The evidence of this fact is a second commission for a new design is currently underway.

This house is now occupied by a first time home owner.