Architecture: Exploring The Middle Density

Invariably, the first question I am asked when it is revealed that I am an architect, is this: “Do you do residential or commercial?” as if the field is that reducible. I suppose it is as simple a dichotomy as any: spaces to live in vs. spaces in which money is spent, or money is made. I like to say that there is residential DNA in a lot of what I do: designing dwellings in various scales (single family to high rise), for a blend of programmatic uses in addition to housing (ground floor retail, live-work units, office space, classroom space, structured parking), for a variety of residents (dorms for students, apartments for renters, hotels for travelers, senior housing for those of our elders that may need a helping hand now and again), all of this in the ever changing context and personality of particular sites.

The dichotomies fall away and The Architect left with the alchemy of combining the pursuit of Quality (morning light in the kitchen, the calm of the bedroom suite; a color that changes its mood at different times of day; conjuring a form that amplifies the spirit of the Place) with the tyranny of the Economics (land cost, construction costs, market comps, proformas, and return on investment). Architecture will result, and it will either add value to a place or not. Will that Value be monetary, in developing in a desired neighborhood? Or will that Value be in strengthening that Place, a strong affirmation of why someone would want to live here?

I started designing a stacked townhome thinking of that Value: 4 levels, each having an attached single car garage; perhaps one unit has two bedrooms, and the other has three; they would jenga and zipper together in an efficient but creative stack that could be repeated down a street. Each would have access to outdoor terraces. From the sketchbook lines to initial modeling to more figured out plans follow:

Initial sketch of floor plans, figuring out the vertical stairs, and where decks would carve away the building mass.

Front sides of the separated townhouses…

The Rear or garage-sides of the separated townhomes.

The forms pulled apart…

…And stacked together.

The scale and size of the units makes me think of ‘Triple Deckers,’ which are three story houses that are a Boston hybrid of a brownstone or similar walk-up, where each floor of the house was a separate unit. They typically do not have attached garages; we still need cars in Atlanta— perhaps the garage side of the units could create an alley or mews…

Drafted building plans further testing the idea.

This stacked townhome could offset the expensive in-town land costs, as well as assist in bringing a critical and necessary density to create a vibrant place: the critical mass of city dwellers that love being where the excitement is, with all of a city’s amenities steps away from their front door. Perhaps it is more affordable than a single townhome, and less anonymous than living in a 300 unit apartment block. Perhaps this is a direction that could add affordable housing to the spectrum of available units?

How would it relate to other kinds of developments? How do the densities differ?

I created a 200’ x 200’ buildable block, which is nominally close to one acre, give or take some right of way/public sidewalk space.

Starting on the left: Single family lots, 3 story townhome lots, stacked townhomes, a courtyard apartment block, and a high-rise tower.

Elevations of the one acre blocks shown above;

Conceptual aerial of the one acre density studies.

Aerial of the single family block, with 50’ x 100’ lots allowing for 8 houses per acre. Note the garages face inward with a shared ‘mews’ that would create a ‘semi-private’ zone for guest parking and city services to access the homes. The Floor-Area Ratio (or FAR: a measure of total built area against available site area) is 0.6.

You could imagine larger homes reducing this density even further. Common suburban densities would see only 2 houses per acre.

Aerial of the townhome block, with 24’ x 50’ footprints fitting 20 units per acre. Note the inward-block facing garages that leave room for a small central square, which could have community and garden uses. The FAR here is 1.8.

These units all contemplate stairs that would continue up to the roofs for added outdoor space.

Aerial of the stacked townhouse concept, using a 24’ x 55’ footprint for two townhomes in four levels for 32 units per acre. An internal ‘mews’ would gather the internal circulation for vehicles and service access. The FAR here is 2.1.

Perspective view of the stacked townhome block from the street. These units could be further designed to have variety and personality with changes in material palette and color.

Aerial of the courtyard apartment block, with an 80’ x 80’ amenity courtyard in the center. This scheme’s unit totals would be based on the project’s desired mix of unit types; a four story concept such as this would have 136 to 150 units, and require structured parking below. The FAR for these full block concepts will be above 3.0.

Aerial of a high-rise concept for a one acre site; in car-centric cities, the project would have to provide parking below the residential levels, as shown here. Construction costs are higher as post-tensioned concrete frames would be required. Note the pool deck located on the top of the parking levels.

Cities either evolve and grow, pruning deadwood and fertilizing new growth, or they die. And each city is its own unique organism, encouraging certain patterns of growth and life. Housing in cities is no different. What works in Paris or London might not work in Atlanta, which doesn’t have the density or transportation infrastructure of those cities. But the American South in general (and Atlanta in particular) is growing beyond its single-family suburban sprawl, with in-town neighborhood centers adding new growth in density. People want to live in these neighborhoods without losing the quality of the place to intense gentrification and exclusion of everyone except the wealthy. Is there an architectural answer to providing for that middle density, that middle income, that somewhat all-inclusive middle class? Is there a design for the city that has room for everyone?

Architecture: A Case Study of Our House

Under construction on land reclaimed from the kudzu.

I try to keep learning all the time. When I periodically pick up For an Architecture of Reality it always reminds me that I am learning my own tenets, and practicing them. To never begin with meaning (it will come). To dare to reveal. To dream out loud.

I took these lessons to heart with the one who has become the love of my life, and we built a house in 2001. We still live in it: it has grown right along with our family, slowly revealing its qualities year after year. It is small and big. Plain yet quirky. Inside defers to outside sometimes. Quiet and loud. Present and at times, an absence of presence. These are different tenets than Benedikt’s, but perhaps his are folded in there somewhere. Just being alive here has guaranteed meaning in our lives.

The inspiration for the design was an osmosis of places and times in our lives: intimate courtyards and rooms in Biot, France; imagined gardens green and wet with rain, cut flowers for the table; a nest, basically. The end result represents the moment where the design process had to end, pencils down, time is up: the wondering iterations had to stop if there was going to be a house to inhabit.

Our courtyard inspiration from our stay in Biot, France.

Courtyard Gate to our patio in Biot.

Walls and hillside in matching stone. Biot, France.

I see exaggerations in the design now: pushing the house to the north too emphatically to fit a courtyard to the south on the land’s skinny width; the house plan pulled long like taffy on the 460’ long lot; the rhombus of a studio above the garage: a square would not do. We are not square!

Sketchbook studies: Plan pieces.

Sketchbook studies: Plan never far from Form. Fish /City duality is interesting…

Sketchbook studies: The house in Section and words…

Sketchbook study: Pushing the house to make room for the courtyard.

And the folding, pliable form of the house: as if the design actions remain as evident motions in the architecture, with nothing smoothed over, regularized, made more efficient. Trapezoidal bedrooms should be fine, surely…

Inspiration: Peter Eisenman study for Housing Project in Germany, 1993. Folding the Pliant. This was where my theoretical head was at in the 90s.

Sketchup massing model of the house.

I had of course studied Ray and Charles Eames’ Case Study House in California in school: an artistic couple building a steel frame house with the post-WW2 industrial materials. The big bright breath of that living room. Studios for each of them to create. A breezeway between the two boxy frames.

Their house was not a precedent for me. But look at the similarities! The plans and sections of the two houses share thought-DNA, surely. How could I not recognize this back then?

Top: Our First Floor Plan: Big living room facing the woods.

Bottom: Our Second Floor Plan: All three bedrooms, an office, a Studio.

Eames’ House plans; Top is Second Floor.

Bottom: Eames’ First Floor Plan.

Site Section showing the Living Room stepping down the slope.

Eames House, Site Section below and Elevation above.

View of our house from the back, towards the courtyard.

View of the Eames house, from the back.

Our house as Google sees it.

Our house as Instagram sees it.

The house will have to grow with us, age with us, evolve with us. We may need that garage to become a studio apartment: we never thought about needing a master-on-main when we were 32. The roof is presciently ready for solar panels, and that combined with a couple Tesla batteries could keep us off the grid. It won’t be the easiest house to retrain, with its intransigent geometry and indie 21st-century origins, but we’ll keep folding ideas into it gently, like a cake batter, and bake them into our future.

Geometry of Meaning: the Sphere

Have you ever stared down at a spreadsheet of numbers, or up at a canopy of distinct leaves, and had a fleeting realization that a pattern had fallen into place, assuredly and satisfying like a German car door closing? Math aligns with geometry which aligns with your particular, individual point of view on this bubbling universe, and an organized pattern that apparently has no center or origin quickly reveals itself.

A certain recurring pattern has been winking and blinking at me from the periphery. It’s art and math and experiential and doesn’t look like it should work as a real construction.

I first noticed it in a set piece on a streaming show called Devs on FX/Hulu: our plucky, confused heroine encounters the walls of a building-sized AI computer, a computer that runs such sublime simulations as to force all the characters to question their free will. See her against the gold, scalloped walls:

Scene from inside the AI: Devs on FX/Hulu

Six-sided spherical scoops. Regularly irregular; rationally irrational. A form that represents unknown maths and terrifying, deterministic futures. The show is written and directed by Alex Garland, who made another sublime movie about computational consciousness in Ex Machina.

Scene from Devs, on FX/Hulu

I see the pattern again days later in a work by Olafur Eliasson, one of my favorite environmental artists slash designers. It is a wall called “Atmospheric wave wall” and it uses similar five-sided spherical shapes to re-produce the experience of looking at the windy surface of a lake. Perhaps it shows us the surface at all scales: our experiential one, and all cascadingly smaller nano scales, down to the vibrating thing that is only energy or will, below and within the pieces of all the named particles.

“Atmospheric wave wall,” Olafur Eliasson, Chicago 2021. Image from Colossal

Detail of “Atmospheric wave wall.” Image from Colossal.

The artist has this amazing quote about the piece:

“What we see depends on our point of view: understanding this is an important step toward realizing that we can change reality.”

The geometry originates in something called Penrose tiling, and is based on pentagons. Image from Wikipedia

As tiling squares produce an infinite and democratic grid of space, tiling a five sided shape makes unique evolutions. You can sense the mathy Islamic geometries in there. Spying the hem of God or Allah in the numbers. I love waking up to the idea that these blooming patterns compose the entire world, constantly dawning. A new aubade shaping us every morning.

Beyond tiling as a mathematical generator of spherical patterns, architecture has taken inspiration from pieces of spheres from the earliest domes to the fractured pieces of the present.

The Pantheon in Rome; a half dome containing a full sphere.

The shells of the Sydney Opera House could be described as wedges mined from an imaginary sphere.

Fuller’s tessellated dome in Montreal. Diaphanous presence of space.

Epcot Center in Disneyworld, Orlando. The sphere as a mysterious volume containing the future.

Amazon HQ in Seattle: The new workplace biosphere.

Richard Serra: Between the Torus and the Sphere, 2001. Geometry in the rough hands of a sculptor, assisted only by gravity.

Richard Meier’s Jubilee Church, Rome, 2003. Delaminated slices of spheres, peeled apart to let the light in.

Daniel Libeskind’s Imperial War Museum, Manchester. Shards of spheres useful perhaps only for their brokenness.

God may have been a part of the equation of the sphere back when: The Point at the center, where all extents of the reach are within His grasp. The sublime creeps over our thoughts like a thunderhead: the dome of the night sky and its scaffold of stars. But I think the sculptors, Eliasson and Serra, are using the equations differently, and find a different sublime. Their works include us, wherever we happen to encounter them spatially. Sure, there is math and structure and all the confidence displayed in that. But there is also variability, uncertainty, questioning, and a renewed wonder of it all.