When it comes to building a house for a billionaire, money isn't a constraint but the stakes can be very high. Here, architects, including those responsible for creating homes for the likes of Bill Gates and David Geffen, talk about the challenges of bringing unrestrained visions to life. FastCompany
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nice PR piece for why hiring an architect! seems that cutler, cywinski et al will land several new commissions each from this puff piece.
One thing Cutler will go into detail about is how the Gates residence incorporates sustainable practices. Cutler Anderson Architects takes an environmentally friendly architectural approach to its projects. Cutler oversaw the use of recycled timber to construct the Gates residence.
"The land is a major client. Designing a home is about choreographing the experience of connecting with the landscape," he says. "When you emotionally connect with the land, you fall in love with it. When people love something, they don't want to kill it. It's about changing attitudes, not just changing our technology."
Discoe has been using urban logs, that have been recycled, in all major construction projects and recently designed a cardboard zendo, which is like a tent for meditation purposes, for the Burning Man, the annual creative arts festival in Nevada. He is, however, critical of the current sustainability movement.
"It's a fun thing to talk about, but you can't pretend to care about sustainability if you drive a car and you fly in planes," he says. "The use of petroleum is reprehensible. While I was in Japan, I came across a small village. Everything they needed they got from a quarter-mile radius, no waste and no imports. That's truly sustainable."
how many sq. ft. is gates house? 40,000? do these people and their paid journalists think readers are idiots?
um, cutler really doesn't do anything besides lend his name to the door...
Ugh - if there's a less sustainable get-together rising up from the dregs of hippiedom than Burning Man it would have to be something in the vein of "Ram-your-supertanker-aground-over-baby-seals-a-thon". In the same way someone can completely ignore the additional resources that go into a grossly oversized house and call it "sustainable" is apparently the same part of the brain that allows you to overlook all of the petroleum you've burned to get to and all the plastic you're using (listen to my performance art on your iPod!) at this Burning Man and think that you are doing good thing for the planet because you use a latrine.
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