Wisconsin Design

There are some designs that just speak for themselves. This Bouler Architecture one for a lakeside weekend house in Wisconsin simply took my breath away. Inspired by House M of our Living Machine design for a client in Tennessee, this house is modern without losing warmth. Don't you think a Malm would be perfect for this place?

Not a Box

The Oak Beach project is coming together with Loewen casement windows recently installed. The results prove that modernism doesn't have to be a box. In many ways, this beach house is the first built 'Living Machine' in that it is more modern than many of the other projects from Bouler Design Group, as well as being highly energy efficient, with several passive and active systems alternately reducing and producing energy.

Walking Windham

It was a lovely autumn afternoon at the height of leaf season when we walked the property outside of Windham. After visiting Windham's street festival that makes one feel as if he has fallen into Thorton Wilder's play Our Town, we spent the rest of the day scouting the best building sites for a weekend house on Bouler Design Group's parcel of property. Mary King of Village Greene Realty has been listing the parcel with Living Machine House H, so that gave us good reason to check out every leaf and rock, as if we needed a good reason beyond its untouched beauty.
The site has many natural features including a running creek and a sweet waterfall. Excited by the possibilities of the nearly ten acre site, my digital camera was humming with image after image. Some of my favorites were of rotting tree stumps and mushroom colonies. I love how nature evolves. It reminds me of the recent article in the science section of the New York Times which described how Thoreau's Walden is now being studied as a scientific account of the ecology of Concord, MA during the 19th Century. By comparing Thoreau's careful observations to the same terrain today, it's clear just how much variety has been lost in wildflowers alone. It makes me feel more passionate about integrating more eco-friendly features into our homes, as well as being sensitive to the untouched nature which surrounds it. What a fantastic panecea to the modern age to live softly in the woods.

Pre-Fab at the Museum of Modern Art

The "Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling" architecture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art not only gives a comphrehensive history of prefabricated residences, it actually assembled several on site so museum-goers can experience them. Perhaps most exciting was the Cellophane House, by Kieran Timberlake and Associates, a clear, modern box which used readily available materials and photovoltaic technology. There it is, a building off the grid, sitting in the heart of midtown Manhattan. True, the four-story residence is dwarfed by the buildings around it, but one can easily imagine it in different, and more bucolic landscapes. Perhaps prophetically, the newspapers today were abuzz with Mayor Bloomberg's plan to add wind turbines to city buildings as an alternative way to fuel Lady Liberty's torch. Imagine that! Already Roosevelt Island is powered by a water turbine situated in the East River. If Manhattan can be on the forefront of alternative energy, it could really propel architecture and the nation into a new era.
As for the rest of the show, it was a visually exciting place to be. From Sears and Robuck to Buckminster Fuller's pre-fab dymaxion dwelling machines, to more contemporary options (ie.,interlocking waterjugs for support walls, prefabricated modular cells)the show is able to offer possibilities of manufactured housing that's well beyond the double-wide mobile home. In an age where construction costs are prohibitive, providing people with aesthetically attractive, ecologically sound, and affordable alternatives seems like a goal we can all support.
In fact, it seems strikingly similar to Bouler Design Group's goals in the Hudson Valley. James Bouler and Nicholas Pfluger are developing a design division within Bouler Design Group called "The Living Machine." Inspired by Le Courbusier's modern design concepts, The Living Machine is an evolution from the shingle-style vernacular that is more prevelent on Long Island. Several of The Living Machine's prototypes are already animated and posted on YouTube-- see the links on the blog-- so you can get real feel for what it might be like to experience the interior and exterior spaces. Two models are already listed on available properties in the Hudson Valley with realtor Mary King at Village Green Realty in Windham, New York. The houses won't be prefabricated; however the design of the building takes into account efficient use of materials, passive and active energy systems, and labor saving structural designs to keep the cost manageable.
It's been exciting to watch the fast developments in architecture since our firm was founded ten years ago, and it's even more exciting to be involved in creating them.