Cellophane House encompasses the architects’ beliefs in a holistic approach to design: allowing architecture to grow out of its opportunities and constraints. It is a material moment of equilibrium that surrenders itself to any and all entropic forces that may come its way. At its core, the project is no more than a framework from which a designer or client creates an enclosure using a virtually infinite palette of off-the-shelf entities, a veritable model of customization. Through simple modifications, the house can adapt to a range of site conditions, as well as to material, textural, and color options as required by the budget and tastes of the client.
Cellophane House, a four-story, single-family structure, makes no claims to permanence. The structural frame of the house is made entirely of off-the-shelf structural aluminum, upon which materials are collected rather than fixed. This allows the materials not only to retain their identity as discrete elements, but also to be disassembled instead of demolished, and eventually to be recycled instead of wasted.
A myriad of seamless sustainable strategies are remarkably integrated, inconspicuous, and unselfconscious. As designed for the exhibition Home Delivery at The Museum of Modern Art, the house has the ability to operate entirely off-grid.
The entire structure is modeled using building information modeling (BIM), a digital visualization tool that automatically and simultaneously tracks needed materials based on a set of required tolerances, a process also known as parametric modeling. The house is fabricated off site and its numerous components, both volumes and individual pieces, are hauled to the site by truck.
The Cellophane House acknowledges, if not insists, that architects need not reinvent infrastructure. It is the architect’s role to procure and edit the material options, acting as a bridge between the vast array of unconfigured building materials and the temporal, sustainable moment that happens when a house is assembled. That the firm received the coveted AIA Architecture Firm Award in 2008 reveals that such research increasingly engages a larger sector of the architectural profession.
Founded in 1984, KieranTimberlake Associates is an award-winning and internationally published architecture firm based in Philadelphia
Cellophane House, a four-story, single-family structure, makes no claims to permanence. The structural frame of the house is made entirely of off-the-shelf structural aluminum, upon which materials are collected rather than fixed. This allows the materials not only to retain their identity as discrete elements, but also to be disassembled instead of demolished, and eventually to be recycled instead of wasted.
A myriad of seamless sustainable strategies are remarkably integrated, inconspicuous, and unselfconscious. As designed for the exhibition Home Delivery at The Museum of Modern Art, the house has the ability to operate entirely off-grid.
The entire structure is modeled using building information modeling (BIM), a digital visualization tool that automatically and simultaneously tracks needed materials based on a set of required tolerances, a process also known as parametric modeling. The house is fabricated off site and its numerous components, both volumes and individual pieces, are hauled to the site by truck.
The Cellophane House acknowledges, if not insists, that architects need not reinvent infrastructure. It is the architect’s role to procure and edit the material options, acting as a bridge between the vast array of unconfigured building materials and the temporal, sustainable moment that happens when a house is assembled. That the firm received the coveted AIA Architecture Firm Award in 2008 reveals that such research increasingly engages a larger sector of the architectural profession.
Founded in 1984, KieranTimberlake Associates is an award-winning and internationally published architecture firm based in Philadelphia