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Forbes names the 200 residential architecture firms for 2024

2024-11-01T11:17:00-04:00

Ten months of work later, we present to you an architects list unprecedented in its scope and diligence, representing firms in 42 states plus the District of Columbia. These are the nation’s finest practitioners of the creation of “home,” and the residential specialists best suited to help you build the setting for your life’s most meaningful experiences—all vetted and at your fingertips.

The list includes some familiar names to Archinect readers. Past RIBA Stirling Prize winner Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Bestor Architecture, D.U.S.T, and Waechter Architecture were included. West Coast heavyweights Olson Kundig Architects, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, and Brooks + Scarpa were joined by the female-owned Santa Monica outfit BA Collective (which is currently hiring) and 25 others from California alone. Firms from northern New England and Louisiana were also well-represented on this year's list, which is the inaugural edition.

Forbes notes: "To help ensure that geographic inclusiveness, as well as the most equitable process of evaluation possible, we assembled a regionally diverse advisory board of leading experts on the American house. With their input and guidance, we then formulated a singularly rigorous methodology and system of evaluation, the latter giving rise to a new aspirational standard for residential design and construction, the seven-category Forbes Archite...

Take a look inside this Paula Rego Museum inspired infill home design in Mexico

2024-10-30T15:46:00-04:00

A new residential project in Mexico from Rogelio Vallejo Bores’ HW-STUDIO Arquitectos that combines domestic serenity with an excavation-like approach to infill housing is worth a closer look following the project’s completion earlier this summer.

The design for Casa Emma was inspired by the space inside Eduardo Souto de Moura's pyramid design for the Paula Rego Museum in Lisbon. Its captivating central feature is a central lightwell that works to channel natural light into various parts of the home, which is tucked away on an unassuming side street in the city of Morelia.

Photo credit: Cesar Bejar

Its small 431-square-foot plot restraints necessitated the inclusion of the skylight to resolve both space and ventilation concerns. The materials selected—a native Yucatan chukum tree resin plaster coating the exterior and interior with engineered oak wood finishes indoors—and voided form both call to mind thereafter an endemic type of Purépecha granary buildings called 'Troje.'

Photo cr...

A perfect cube chalet occupies a rural Canadian forest

2024-04-07T08:00:00-04:00

Montreal-based practice Maurice Martel architecte has completed a rural rustic home in Mandeville, Canada.

Set within a forest and bordered by a river, the Rustic Grade chalet is described as “the ideal mini-home to escape the hustle and bustle of daily life in the outside world.”

Image credit: Adrien Williams

The architecture of the chalet strikes a minimalist tone, taking a simplistic cube form.

The home is clad in a “meticulous choice of durable and maintenance-free materials,” with the form and lines of the cube contrasting with the organic nature of the forest.

Image credit: Adrien Williams

The number of openings is limited to improve energy efficiency, with the orientation of each window carefully chosen to maximize natural light while taking advantage of river views.

Image credit: Adrien Williams

The footprint of the home itself was also deliberately restricted, “embodying the quintessence of an economical dwelling wit...

Olson Kundig completes West Hollywood homes designed for ‘craft and material expression’

2024-03-05T11:09:00-05:00

Olson Kundig has completed a series of custom single-family homes in West Hollywood. Collectively named ‘The Houses at 8899 Beverly’ the eight homes seek to be “harmoniously linked yet individual” with architectural forms “combining natural materials such as wood, steel, glass, concrete, and stone.”

Concrete House. Image credit: Nils Timm

“These eight distinct contemporary homes are woven into the fabric of their vibrant West Hollywood neighborhood at the base of the Hollywood Hills,” said Kevin M. Kudo-King, co-Design Principal at Olson Kundig. “While each one has its own identity – just as the eclectic neighboring houses do – collectively, they are about craft and material expression.”

Bronze House. Image credit: Nils Timm

The homes form the final part of the wider 8899 Beverly developement which opened in 2022. The project centers on the Los Angeles International Design Center, a mid-century modernist build...

Coastal Nova Scotia home ‘emerges from rocky terrain,’ designed by Omar Gandhi Architects

2024-02-23T12:26:00-05:00

Omar Gandhi Architects has completed a house on Canada’s Atlantic coastline that “emerges from rocky terrain.” Named Rockbound, and located in Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia, the home was commissioned as a place of refuge for a busy client.

Image credit: Ema Peter Photography

Situated atop a rocky shoreline, the building was shaped to capture views of the ocean while sheltering the interior from winds and storms. A steel and wood frame was shaped to resist hurricane-force winds, while a material palette with naturally weathering characteristics is intended to “age gracefully” and “tell the story of its place in the landscape.”

Image credit: Ema Peter Photography

“The structure emerges from the rocky terrain, mirroring the coastline's contours, and its primary living spaces run parallel to the water, offering breathtaking panoramic views along the coast and across the bay to the iconic Peggy's Cove Lighthouse,” th...

Montreal home becomes a ‘playhouse for kids and adults’ by Indee Design

2024-02-14T11:47:00-05:00

Montreal-based interior designers Indee Design have completed what the studio describes as “a playhouse for kids (and adults!)” in the city. Named Atelier Chabot, the scheme saw the transformation of an existing duplex into a single-family home featuring curated furnishings themed around play.

Image credit: Caroline Thibault

“On a mission looking to change the lives of their family, the owners were trying to decide whether to take a trip around the world by sea or to purchase a home,” the team explains. “This project combines both of those dreams, which seemed to oppose one another. For these great travelers, the notion of travel became the common thread of this project, which inspired the idea of creating a space where the inner child can awaken within.”

Image credit: Caroline Thibault

While the beams and brick walls of the original duplex were preserved, the unit was otherwise overhauled to remove overly-confining partiti...

Designing for disaster in an increasingly fire-burdened California

2023-04-19T11:45:00-04:00

Each home was considered to be built to shelter-in-place standards, with ignition-resistant construction and materials—a cutting-edge approach for the time, though the standards have since been adopted into state and local codes. They are little fortresses of tile roofs, stucco walls, hardscape patios, and covered eaves. [The] heavy fortification gives the communities—both the structures and the people who shelter in them—an extra chance to survive.

The state is in a bind caused by its dire need to quickly enact affordable housing and the movement of populations into liminal wildland-urban interface zones, both of which are placing more people in the fight or flight predicament that’s leading to more innovations in residential design surrounding the concept of defensible space.

Experts point to homes in the Rancho Santa Fe neighborhood in San Diego as exemplars of fire safety that the rest of the state is still lagging to catch on to, hemmed in by costs that are making defensive evacuation plans harder to execute. “Shelter-in-place really was a theory,” local fire protection specialist Brandon Closs told the MIT Technology Review, “it’s still a work in progress.”

ACDF unveils Apple Tree House design in rural Quebec: 'A fluid work of art'

2022-12-30T14:44:00-05:00

Canadian studio ACDF Architecture has shared photos of their recent residential project in the country’s heavily-forested Lanaudière region.

Deep in the heart of rural Quebec, the home was designed for an urbanite family looking for an ultra-modern bucolic respite situated on a 250,000-square-foot plot with room to connect with each other and commune with nature.

Image: © Adrien Williams

The project was informed by the client’s deeply-felt connection to a childhood apple tree and relied on a relatively simple combination of glass and wood boxes that house different functions and are centered around a small open interior courtyard that showcases his arboreal inspiration.

Image: © Adrien Williams

“The home is designed for connectivity, and glances in every direction provide views across openings to other spaces,” the studio's principal and co-founder Maxime-Alexis Frappier said. “That being said, the boxes were designed to respect the need for privacy, and their...

AIA Home Design Trends Survey shows demand for larger homes remaining strong despite shortages

2022-07-01T10:00:00-04:00

The latest data from the American Institute of Architects shows a continued increase in a homebuilding trend that began in the throes of the pandemic and has not abated in the face of supply-chain shortages and several countervailing trends in the residential construction market.

According to the AIA’s newly-released Home Design Trends Survey, interest in larger homes has grown for a second consecutive year after remaining largely stagnant for a period of five.

Extract of the AIA Home Design Trends Survey. The full survey is available here.

ADUs and micro apartment designs saw slight decreases in demand but remain popular. Other trends, including aging-in-home options for seniors, saw increases as pandemic worries and a dramatic shift in working conditions caused a spike in demand for converted features like finished basements and garage spaces. The Q2 statistics also revealed a large number of blended indoor-outdoor areas being requested as well.

Extract of the AIA Home Design Tre...

Fran Silvestre Arquitectos presents an open, compact home that streamlines the construction and design process

2021-10-04T16:59:00-04:00

Valencia-based architecture firm Fran Silvestre Arquitectos has completed a compact, open, single-level home in Spain as part of a project that seeks to simplify and streamline the production of good design and construction.

Called NIU, the system integrates all of the necessary phases of constructing a home, from the architectural brief to the interior design, resulting in reduced timeframes, fixed prices, and minimum consumption. According to NIU, the homes are guaranteed to be delivered within three months of the date of purchase.

This featured project is the N70, a one-room, one-bath space, which is the smallest model of the NIU series. It is described by NIU as being “extensive, despite its compact size” and is envisioned as a space ideal for an individual or couple, or for use as a guest house.

Its connection with the landscape allows the home to blur the lines between interior and exterior. The home is divided into day and night-time spaces, which are situated around an op...

Haptic Architects' team wins 2021 Davidson Prize with biophilic home design

2021-06-10T19:18:00-04:00

A multidisciplinary team led by Haptic Architects has won the £10,000 first prize in the inaugural Davidson Prize, a competition calling for new ideas that rethink the design of the contemporary home.

Titled HomeForest, the winning proposal comes from a diverse team. In addition to those representing Haptic Architects, the team includes poet Lionheart, interdisciplinary designer Yaoyao Meng, digital designers Squint/Opera, and musicians Coda to Coda. As stated on the competition’s website, multi-disciplinary creative teams are actively encouraged, however, each must include an architect registered with the Architecture Review Board (ARB) or the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI).

The theme of the inaugural competition is titled “Home/Work – A New Future”. It is based on the way the Covid-19 pandemic has blurred the boundaries between living and work spaces. While remote working has become commonplace and even preferred, the theme highlights the fact that homes are...

Home Design Trends Survey shows healthy business conditions for residential architects

2019-07-12T14:37:00-04:00

The overall size of new homes peaked in 2016 for this cycle and for the last three years has continued to moderate, according to new survey results from the American Institute of Architects (AIA). The Home Design Trends Survey for the second quarter of 2019—focusing on home and property design—also found that homeowners continue to place a priority on accessibility features.

"With home sizes plateauing and lot sizes continuing to decline, it isn’t shocking to see where that additional focus is going," commented AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA. "Homeowners want more flexibility in their space, both inside and outside the house, and they want to use these spaces as they age."

The American Institute of Architects reports these business conditions for residential architecture firms for the second quarter of 2019:

Billings: 55.8
Inquiries for new projects: 57.1
Regional averages: Midwest (59.5), Northeast (59.5), South (56.1), West (50.2)

Find the full AIA Home Design Trends Survey here.

To get a better reading on the economic pulse of the U.S. architecture industry, make sure to follow our monthly Architecture Billings Index updates.

Has open concept design finally run its course? Here's what we've learned

2019-03-29T12:22:00-04:00

For decades, Open Concept, and the togetherness-loving, friend-filled lifestyle it was supposed to bring, has been a home buyers’ religion, the one true way to live. Go to Houzz, the home remodeling site, type in “open concept,” and up come 221,569 photos. Over on HGTV, DeRon Jenkins, costar of the popular “Flip or Flop Nashville,” will tell you, as he recently told the Globe, that an open floor plan “allows the love to flow.” But now, experts say, people are starting to openly yearn for walls.

Uninterrupted space. This is what real estate agents, interior designers, and almost every host on HGTV have promoted for the past decade. However, design experts are saying that people are beginning to miss walls. Homeowners realize they don't want to live in this "fantasy of uninterrupted views." Perhaps having walls throughout a house can allow for the return of, dare I say, privacy. Like most design trends, open concept design grew rampant and quickly adopted by designers, architects, and anyone looking to make an impression on spatial design.

In 2018, architecture and design critic Kate Wagner shared an insightful stance on open-concept interior designs. Her article in CityLab expressed reflection and opposition to this design trend that seemed to "seduce" the globe. Wagner shared, "overall, the open concept was a reaction against years of small, low-ceilinged living, which felt restricting and stuffy to a new ...

Kate Wagner's case against formal residential spaces

2018-07-17T18:12:00-04:00

Nobody is actually using their formal living and dining rooms. Families actually spend most of their time in the kitchen and the informal living room or den. Yet we continue to build these wastes of space because many Americans still want that extra square footage, and for a long time, that want has been miscategorized as a need.

McMansion Hell creator, Kate Wagner, makes a passionate case against wasting precious square footage (and associated resources) on formal living and dining rooms in our homes.

Her plea is backed by data from a recent UCLA study which suggests that entertaining rooms, instead of bringing families together, actually divide us: "There’s a reason why the UCLA study showed that the most-used common areas are the kitchen and the informal living room: People like to spend time together eating and watching TV, without the glare from those two-story great-room windows. Large, unused spaces designed for social functions foster isolation instead."

The open floor plan dissected

2018-05-22T14:43:00-04:00

A flowing, connected interior—once a fringe experiment of American architectural modernism—has become ubiquitous, and beloved. But it promises a liberation from housework that remains a fantasy.

In his piece for The Atlantic, Ian Bogost takes a closer look at the evolution and challenges of what has become a mainstay in American home design (and redesign) from Wright to Neutra to HGTV: the open-plan kitchen. Or, as Bogost calls it, a "prison without walls."

The Geffrye Museum has created an interactive tour of iconic London home design

2017-11-29T16:07:00-05:00

Hackney's Museum of the Home, Geffrye, has teamed up with Go Compare to offer an interactive tour through over 400 years of English urban homes. The museum, which will close in January 2018 for a two-year refurbishment, is set in an 18th century Grade I listed almshouse and explores home and home life from the 1600s to present. Inside, the museum features detailed displays of London, middle-class living rooms and gardens that are made available for the first time through their virtual tour to 'visitors' outside of London.

A living room in 1965. Photo by Chris Ridley.

The interactive allows one to explore the radically changing interior design tastes of Londoners from before The Great Fire of London up until the turn of the millennium. Some of the rooms on display include a a typical eighteenth century parlour from a Covent Garden townhouse, an Edwardian suburban drawing room, and a modernist townhouse living room among others. Going from room to room, one can see firsthand how Lond...

Use the AIA's visualized home design survey results to keep track of emerging trends

2016-01-04T15:28:00-05:00

The AIA recently revamped their AIA Home Design Trends Survey into a visual-friendly format for the 2015 findings, so this could be a handy reference tool for any home designers who want to stay on top of emerging trends that may come to the forefront in 2016. The new visual lets users quickly access charts and figures for each quarter in 2015, which focuses on a different area of home trends including "Neighborhood and Community Design", "Home and Property Design", "Home Features", and "Kitchen and Bath". The survey results also include the same business conditions questions for tracking purposes.

Check out the survey, archives, and more here.

RIBA Manser Medal 2014 Longlist for the Best New House in the UK

2014-06-24T16:58:00-04:00

The longlist is out for this year's RIBA Manser Medal for Best New House in the UK. Established in 2001 to honor former RIBA President and notable home designer Michael Manser CBE, the Manser Medal is awarded to the best new house design by a UK-based architect. This year's longlist showcases 23 UK-based private homes or major extension that exhibit innovation, sustainability, and style and were completed within the past year.

Check out a few of the longlisted projects below:

See the full list on Bustler.