modules. shingles. tiny.






a kitchen in the round




a skylit studio







t’karregat revisited, or wood pyramids


I think through drawing; I interpret as I reproduce.  The drawing above perfectly capture this, where I set out to draw an accurate representation of an existing floor plan and ended up drawing what I wanted to see.  The project in question is Frank V. Klingeren’s T-Karregat Center in Eindhoven, of 1973.  The original is a system of steel truss ‘trees’ that serve as both structure and building systems, in some Reyner-Banham-dream-come-true, culminating in large pyramidal skylights that provide the majority of the light to an otherwise free plan interior.

My interpretation keeps the modular system, but lays it out in a rigor more reminiscent of early SOM (Mitchell Hall at the US Air Force Academy), and imagines it rendered in popular-once-again heavy-timber framing.  The drawings below investigate the basic modularity, the nine square, and centering.


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.






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.

two facade studies and a rotunda







a longhouse

