GAUTHIER ARCHITECTS

team:
Location :SoHo
Specs: 6000 sq ft

The 168T residence project was originally designed as a renovation to convert a 3-story multi-family residence into a 5-story single-family townhouse. The design aims to create a push-and-pull between the public space of the street and the private space of the home using the facade as a surface that negotiates and choreographs the elements of domesticity and street, public and private, structure and ornament through the use of terraces and setbacks. The resulting interior benefits from a great deal of natural light and the possibility of private outdoor space overlooking the SoHo block.

The client sought to maximize the allowable site FAR for the property, a condition that required expanding the building footprint. The larger open spaces of the balconies and roof support green roofs and take advantage of available tax exemptions, minimize the carbon footprint and expand oxygen production.

The balcony and terrace condition led to a series of questions about what other methods of expansion are available to the site and project. The space for the café program is provided through a grandfathered condition in the existing building. However, the necessary underground space of the theater required an extensive excavation and underpinning that travels down eighteen feet into the subsoil. The research and work to develop this expansion turned a small, fairly straightforward project into a complex structural one that provided more opportunities for communication through surface.

team: Kristina Kesler, Michela Chiavi, Kevin Field, Scott Nicholl, Lucia Eastman, JungMin Kim
Location :SoHo
Specs: 2500 sq ft

The Scene Theater was added to the program of the Residence upstairs. In order to create room for this space, it was necessary to go further below ground than the existing foundation which required extensive excavation and underpinning.

This experimental not-for-profit theater is intended to foster and contribute to the cultural activity of the neighborhood by engaging grassroots performance groups and experimental theater productions. The theater seeks to weave together digital and performance space in a marriage of technology and performance.

The theater object itself will become an integral part of the performance because the milled foam cellular walls allow a complete transformation of the space through sound and light changes. Each cell is programmed with ndividual laser-cut felt infill, high frequency speakers, and/or individual LED light fixtures. These technologies not only light the stage and deliver sound but also provide a programmable and changeable overall theater space that performs as a choreographed proscenium.

team: Michela Chiavi Kristina Kesler Lucia Eastman
Location :Upper East Side
Specs: 4000 sq ft

4,000 sq ft duplex apartment overlooking Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The exisiting apartment will be entirely gutted and designed as a blank canvas. The clients, who are art collectors and historians, wish to rebuild the apartment with historic quality details including original plaster work and reclaimed, antique floor planks. The apartment design will reflect the installation of an important collection of Soviet propaganda art.

team: Douglas Gauthier and Jeremy Edmiston; Primary collaborators: BudCo, Buro Happold Consulting Engineers, Henry Grosman and Ryan Associates.
Location :
Specs: 1500 sq ft

BURST*008 was built for the exhibition Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling at the Museum of Modern Art.

BURST*008 uses sophisticated digital design tools to create a simple-to-assemble, environmentally conscious house. Made with plywood, steel and glass, the house is raised off the ground and uses strategically placed vents and overhangs in order to maximize natural heating and cooling systems and minimize environmental impact. Built in 10 weeks, 4 off-site and 6 on the museum site, the Home Delivery project demanded an evolution of the award winning project, BURST*003. At MoMA, the BURST* name took on more than its original semantic origin, derived from the surface-applied “sunburst” flower graphic, to become a skylight and, more significantly, to become a means of delivery in which the structural ribs literally burst open on site before being lowered onto the structural moment frames that connect the house frame to the ground. Additional project evolutions in BURST*008 include a prefabricated SIP panel skin system that provides a highly insulated architectural structure.


BURST* is a prefabricated system of housing that functions like a kit of parts to produce homes that use building pieces to achieve individually tailored spaces and masses, and allow the architectural shape of each house to conform to the specifics of distinct project constraints. An alternative to mass-produced versions of domestic life that reduce prefab houses to differing arrangements of boxes, each BURST* has the potential for unique spaces and forms based on environment, site, orientation, and the wants and requirements of the owners. The BURST* prefabrication solution achieves this ability to adjust to the biases and wants of each project and each owner by using generative technologies to expand the range of architectural form for domestic and inexpensive construction.

BURST* is an adaptable design process which responds various sites, climates, owners and programs. The flexibility of the house derives from literally weaving two sections together- the natural ground plane and an artificial, manipulated plane. These two planes travel vertically and horizontally to comprise the ground, the floor and the walls. The BURST* uses only passive means to maintain temperature comfort levels. Depending on specific conditions for an individual house, the weave can open, close and reshape in order to allow or prevent warming sun and cooling breezes into the house. The environmental weave is reflected in the tension structure of the plywood ribs and SIP Panel skin, similar to a kite or an airplane wing, the tension structure’s high-strength and lightness combine precisely for a project with less than a 5% waste-factor. The bulk of the construction process is achieved digitally, where the geometry of the house and the individual pieces – structural ribs, walls, floors – are resolved and then sent to be precisely cut and numbered before BURSTING onto the site.


The structure and environmental mechanics of BURST* have been designed in collaboration with the New York office of Buro Happold Consulting Engineers.

team:
Location :Brooklyn
Specs: 4500 sq ft

team: Douglas Gauthier and Jeremy Edmiston Sarkis Arakelyan, Amber Lynn Bard, Ayat Fadaifard, Sara Goldsmith, Henry Grosman, Kobi Jakov, Joseph Jelinek, Ginny Hyo-jin Kang, Gen Kato, Yarek Karawczyk, Ioanna Karagiannakou, Chris Knapp and Tony Su. Buro Happold
Location :North Haven, Australia
Specs: 1500 sq ft

BURST*003 sits on a narrow lot of 7,800 sq ft, three hours north of Sydney, and five minutes from the ocean. The house has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, covered parking for two cars, an informal public space for living/dining/kitchen/play area, grass fields for cricket and bocce ball, and a clay half-court for basketball.

The climate in North Haven is temperal coastal and the house strategically uses this climate to passively control the temperature in the house year-round. There are no artificial heating or cooling systems. In the summer, the high and strong northern sun is blocked by the angles of the roof ovarhangs and the window slits. Cooling breezes from the water arrive from the northeast and are re-circulated through the configuration of vents, windows, and slits in the house. In the winter, the low sun is allowed inside and serves to warm.

BURST* is a prefabricated system of housing that functions like a kit of parts to produce homes that use building pieces to achieve individually tailored spaces and masses, and allow the architectural shape of each house to conform to the specifics of distinct project constraints. An alternative to mass-produced versions of domestic life that reduce prefab houses to differing arrangements of boxes, each BURST* has the potential for unique spaces and forms based on environment, site, orientation, and the wants and requirements of the owners. The BURST* prefabrication solution achieves this ability to adjust to the biases and wants of each project and each owner by using generative technologies to expand the range of architectural form for domestic and inexpensive construction.

BURST* is an adaptable design process which responds various sites, climates, owners and programs. The flexibility of the house derives from literally weaving two sections together- the natural ground plane and an artificial, manipulated plane. These two planes travel vertically and horizontally to comprise the ground, the floor and the walls. The BURST* uses only passive means to maintain temperature comfort levels. Depending on specific conditions for an individual house, the weave can open, close and reshape in order to allow or prevent warming sun and cooling breezes into the house. The environmental weave is reflected in the tension structure of the plywood ribs and SIP Panel skin, similar to a kite or an airplane wing, the tension structure’s high-strength and lightness combine precisely for a project with less than a 5% waste-factor. The bulk of the construction process is achieved digitally, where the geometry of the house and the individual pieces – structural ribs, walls, floors – are resolved and then sent to be precisely cut and numbered before BURSTING onto the site.

The structure and environmental mechanics of BURST* have been designed in collaboration with the New York office of Buro Happold Consulting Engineers.

team:
Location :Postmasters Gallery
Specs: 7 sq ft

Laser-cut birdhouses for American Kestrels, a local bird of prey.

Gallery show and Permanent Installation at Postmasters.

team:
Location :Harlem
Specs: 30,000 sq ft

The Universal Housing is a, award winning proposal for low income, sustainable, urban housing. This housing block is twelve stories high and promotes community through a range of programs that exist along a series of ramps within the building, comprising a useful and necessary public space. These programs and the series of ramps creates a community infrastructure woven into the domestic environment and make social activity a part of the building circulation. The retail space, pool, communal kitchen, community center, and two garden zones serve an intergenerational population of residents - students, professionals, families, elderly. This  domestic diversity is further promoted by different unit types: assisted-living units, studios, dorm-style rooms, and one- and two-bedroom apartments.

The Universal Housing maximizes the buildings efficiency - ie. public and usable space of the housing - to 95%. Typically, a building loses 20% of its space to circulation elevators, stairs, etc. It achieves this through using the circulation of the building as functional space and through the split-level apartment which reduces the need for elevator corridors to every two and a half floors.

Universal Housing won Honorable Mention in the 2003 New Housing New York Competition and was commissioned for the cover of January 2004 Metropolis.

team:
Location :Prague
Specs: 6000 sq ft

The Prague.002 Villa was designed for a family of four in the Prague 6 District of the Czech Republic. Located on a .80 hectare site within a preservation forest, the house was subject to strict environemental controls - limited areas of construction, no run-off contaminants, erosion prevention conditions, protection of indigenous trees and fauna, and protection of exisiting views. Partially as a response to these restrictions and partly as a design choice, the house sits nestled into the hill, responding the the existing slope and creating its own slope. The house has four bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms, a guest apartment, a gourmet kitchen, rec-room, dining and living areas, two offices, a Kino room, and roof terraces. There is also a separate garage and poolhouse that are embedded into the lower slope of the hill.

In addition to serving as home to the family, the house also serves as a display space for a collection of Socialist posters. Because of the fragile nature of the posters, their sensitivity to light exposure was crucial in the material choices. While they need light to be seen, any direct sunlight would fade and slowly destroy them. The architect's solution, then, was to construct the walls from a translucent onyx which would bathe the house in a gentle and warm light but would prevent harsh sunlight from reaching the artworks.

team:
Location :The Architectural League of New York
Specs: 2000 sq ft

This is a built project for new New York 3, the Architectural League of New York's annual exhibition of current work around New York. The project was designed as both a structure in itself and a display space to highlight three current projects.

The installation is constructed from pre-cut, angle-notched pieces of three-inch thick foam. Each piece or rib locks into another, creating a tensile structure that is wholly self-supporting. The grid-like structure of ribs at once transforms the existing and supports itself so as not to damage the exititng gallery space.

team:
Location :East Village
Specs: 300 sq ft

The Fulcrum stair was built as an outdoor addition to a second floor, garden-facing apartment in New York's East Village. The deck and stair give outdoor living space and garden access to the second floor residents.

The deck structure is a painted steel frame with perforated metal cantilevered over columns. The counterweighted stair pivots about a steel support and is activated by the weight of a body descending the staircase.

team:
Location :Times Square
Specs: 200 sq ft

team:
Location :Indiana
Specs: 10,000 sq ft

team:
Location :
Specs: 200 sq ft

team: Frank Barkow, Regine Leibinger, Oliver Neumann
Location :Berlin
Specs: 10,000 sq ft

This Youth Center is a double-height circulation space that renders the entire second level corridor a balcony from which the geometry of the folding roof may be seen and experienced. Recalling both the glacier-etched landscapes of the Berlin basin and the marked landscapes of a war-torn and, for many, a politically separated Berlin, the ground plane of the green areas of the housing is cross-hatched into a matrix of children’s activity zones.

The roofs of the southern bands of the building have a planted green roof of indigenous grasses; the Northern bands have exposed wood beams under a standing-seam
aluminum clad roof. The north façade has unstained tongue-in-groove Larch siding, and the remaining façades are of vertically banded, multi-colored, stained concrete fiber or glass panels over insulation and structure.

team: Frank Barkow, Regine Leibinger, Oliver Neumann
Location :Berlin-Pankow
Specs: 11,000 sq ft

Built as a collaboration in Berlin from a firstplace competition entry, the school and day care center’s circulation space collapses in on itself into a taut corridor breaching
the space at either entrance with double height openings. The building is a concrete masonry frame building with a north façade of unstained tongue-in-groove Larch siding, and the east and west façades of horizontally banded, multi-colored, stained concrete fiber or glass panels over insulation and structure.