the five points, revisited


Leon Krier always has an interesting point or two to make with regards to Le Corbusier, most likely due to Corb’s immense power over Krier’s earliest work and schooling.  In many ways, Krier’s career can be seen as one long extended dialogue with (and often against) the Modernist figurehead.  As part of that, Krier has recently talked about a resurgence of those five points against which Corb wrote his – and argued that these five points ought to form the core of a vernacular traditionalism, much in the same way Corb’s have loomed over the moderns.

So I figured I’d take a synthetic middle ground.  What happens if we take Corb’s five points and dress them up in traditional garb.  What then?  Piloti are given bases and capitals (and become columns); picture windows are gathered into long fenetre en longueur; the plan is libre (free of rooms en filade); the roof is flattened to host a garden; and the only point I’m probably missing is the free facade.  O well, better luck next time. . .


teenie. tiny. home.


Or is it just glorified trailer?  Oh, let’s not quibble over semantics, shall we?  You’re here for pretty pictures.  Well, what I have here is a small ‘home’, a tiny home, rather.

There is a whole market out there that is centered around this new class of detached homes for those without the budget for a conventional suburban home, or those who would seek to lessen their actual footprint on the earth in addition to their carbon footprint.  What I find interesting is the challenge of fitting all the normal homey things into a smaller package, wrapping that package around conventional building modules, and yet still fitting it into Department of Transportation standards for a ‘mobile’ trailer.

My thoughts ramble between two or three eight-foot cubes, all topped with pyramidal roofs and skylights, and jam-packed with foldable shelving, hidden beds, and all the other hoopla that comes with a ‘tiny home’.


coffee church


Sitting in a local coffee shop, I began to wonder the great ‘what if’, and sketched out how I would have solved the problem.  Starting with a square (shocker), I drew out a central nave, complete with side aisles and a high altar – a wall of single origin small batch coffees complete with a cash wrap.  Sculptural skylights cut into the ‘nave’, while exposed lamps hang along the bottom of the ‘aisle’ soffits, not unlike old theatre marquees.  Grab a cup.  Stay awhile.  Amen.

dogtrot variations


Two rooms with a passage down the middle – the typological dogtrot house.  Here, I’ve begun to play with the articulation of the central ‘trot’, articulating it with an English hammerbeam truss above.  Below, a slightly more refined study, with two different plan interpretations of the elevation at the top, as well as two different studies for the cupola at the central passage.