Contemporary home architecture

It is Univeristy Hall at the University of Lethbridge. They say the hallway that spans level 6 is the longest hallway in North America. A bizarre claim to fame.

Originally Posted by LabelKing

Click to expand...

Brutalism though, is quite unfashionable now. I think the brief love affair of the '70s has left people with a kind of hatred.

Oddly enough, I love it in single-family houses but can't stand it in larger buildings.

Klein Bottle House in Australia







"Inspired by its namesake: the klein bottle. this 19th century invention is used to describe a form which has no distinguishable inside or outside. the architects also wanted to move away from the paradigm of designing buildings based on orthogonal methods and instead imbrace the complexity inherent with computer aided design."

I feel contemporary architecture is stuck in a kind of PostModernist Loosian/Bauhaus aesthetic that simply cannot be taken any further.

Click to expand...

True...we are in one of those funks, where things are mostly derivative, if not downright retro-copiest, rather than "new" contemporary. The good news is, there are exceptions, although most tend to be too outrageous (the Zaha Hadid type places) and try too hard.

There have been a lot of contemporary houses built in Toronto in the last decade, and some of them even nice, but most seem to follow a trend. There is one that stands out heads and tails from even the best of them, and I was lucky to be involved (I installed their geothermal system).

It's called Integral House, and was designed by the Toronto husband-wife firm of Shim-Sutcliffe. The home is located on a Rosedale ravine lot, and owned by the mathematician-violinist-philanthropist James Stewart. It's bigger than it looks ( 18,000 sqft), and the budget is around $35 million (if you thought you couldn't get that kind of stinking rich authoring calculus books...you thought wrong). He lives there alone, and it's basically just a large bachelor pad, designed to hold large parties/private concerts (there are 2 or 3 guest rooms).

Every aspect of the house was re-thought without using any preconceived notions or concepts and everything in the house is bespoke...from the leather-wrapped railings, to the artist commissioned cast bronze door handles. It has a wonderful contextual relationship with both the streetside, where it reads as a modest-sized home of two floors, to the wild, natural ravine side, where it drapes itself 5 floors down the ravine.

Here are some pics, but I hesitate to show them, as they are of the house in not quite finished state, and in no way convey the amount of design detail and quality of the house/architecture (even the quality and beauty of the polished exposed concrete is better than most luxury/exotic stone).

I feel contemporary architecture is stuck in a kind of PostModernist Loosian/Bauhaus aesthetic that simply cannot be taken any further.

Click to expand...

Hmm, that may be true of the mainstream ...but high architecture is going trough a major technical revolution.

Cutting-edge science and advanced mathematics are transforming architecture in ways that were not possible until now.

This article may be of interest: http://seedmagazine.com/news/2006/03...ific_revol.php

I guess writing the single and multivariable calc books used in an ungodly percentage of high school and college classes is not such a bad gig...especially when you can pump out new editions with different problems.

Definately used stewart in high school, another book in college calc, and then stewart again for multivariable (I got the combined single/multi book and sold the other book...stewart was a way better text).

One possible benefit to using stewart is the widely available solutions manual PDF. I'm not sure if it was floating around while I was in high school but the multivariable solutions were common knowledge my second year of college (professors expected their students to have them and graded accordingly on *process*).

The modern homes I seem to prefer tend to incorporate overall look/size of the Craftsman bungalow era, the geometry of modernism and use of natural elements (exposed wood, local stone, I've really enjoyed some designs that use decorative steel and let it oxidize.

The blingy Dwell yuppie developments and the harshest minimalism don't do it for me.

I think living in an avante piece of architecture would make me tired.

Originally Posted by nathan

Click to expand...

Some Canadian Brutalism:

While some people describe this building as looking like a peacock, I've always thought of it as more of a turkey.

View from the other side:

Originally Posted by LabelKing

Click to expand...

They are talking about ripping this down and starting over.

How about this:

Originally Posted by freshcutgrass

Click to expand...

True...we are in one of those funks, where things are mostly derivative, if not downright retro-copiest, rather than "new" contemporary. The good news is, there are exceptions, although most tend to be too outrageous (the Zaha Hadid type places) and try too hard.

There have been a lot of contemporary houses built in Toronto in the last decade, and some of them even nice, but most seem to follow a trend. There is one that stands out heads and tails from even the best of them, and I was lucky to be involved (I installed their geothermal system).

It's called Integral House, and was designed by the Toronto husband-wife firm of Shim-Sutcliffe. The home is located on a Rosedale ravine lot, and owned by the mathematician-violinist-philanthropist James Stewart. It's bigger than it looks ( 18,000 sqft), and the budget is around $35 million (if you thought you couldn't get that kind of stinking rich authoring calculus books...you thought wrong). He lives there alone, and it's basically just a large bachelor pad, designed to hold large parties/private concerts (there are 2 or 3 guest rooms).

Every aspect of the house was re-thought without using any preconceived notions or concepts and everything in the house is bespoke...from the leather-wrapped railings, to the artist commissioned cast bronze door handles. It has a wonderful contextual relationship with both the streetside, where it reads as a modest-sized home of two floors, to the wild, natural ravine side, where it drapes itself 5 floors down the ravine.

Here are some pics, but I hesitate to show them, as they are of the house in not quite finished state, and in no way convey the amount of design detail and quality of the house/architecture (even the quality and beauty of the polished exposed concrete is better than most luxury/exotic stone).





That's really attractive, and reminds me somewhat of the Kimmel center (from the wood beams). in Philly.

Originally Posted by SField

Click to expand...

That's really attractive, and reminds me somewhat of the Kimmel center (from the wood beams). in Philly.
uhhh no.

Originally Posted by Connemara

Click to expand...

uhhh no.

What the **** do you know?

Originally Posted by SField

Click to expand...

What the **** do you know?
I love it when you get all testy

Originally Posted by Connemara

Click to expand...

I love it when you get all testy

One more time and I'm not bringing the "for her pleasure" rubbers for our next encounter.