Orchard East House by Wheeler Kearns Architects
Wheeler Kearns Architects designed the Orchard East house in Chicago, Illinois.
Full description after the photos….
Orchard East House by Wheeler Kearns Architects
A broad, introverted, opaque volume of private spaces floats above a fully transparent, extroverted space at grade that extends, below the canopy of the volume above, into the garden. This urban residence is a warm, intimate home for a family of four that can transform into a place of assembly as needed and has an integral connection between interior and exterior experiences.
Light and air courts, terminating in a series of reflecting pools, perforate the volume and extend vertically through the house to distribute reflected light, and activate the interior with rain and snow; further reinforcing the blurred boundaries of interior and exterior space.
A collaborative design process led to architectural and structural innovations that include vertically post-tensioned concrete thermal mass with forty foot cantilevers; pultruded fiberglass wide-flanges, filled with closed cell spray foam insulation, sheathed in aerated autoclaved concrete and pigmented cement stucco; thermally broken floor to ceiling glass curtain wall and sliding door system.
Visit the website of Wheeler Kearns Architects – here.
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thirdstone inc. [^] on 29 Dec 2009 at 11:54 am #
‘…integral connection between interior and exterior’ indeed! I recommend visiting their website to view additional photos and preliminary graphics of the Orchard East House project.
Although not consistent with ‘contemporist’ aesthetics, their ‘Lakeside’ project is a real gem.
http://wkarch.com/work/project/lakeside
And I’ve always loved their ‘Depaul’ project.
http://wkarch.com/work/project/depaul
JC on 29 Dec 2009 at 2:25 pm #
Very nice use of space. Love it.
There are a LOT of very tacky mini-mansions in that neighborhood, and this is a serene oasis.
AMcA on 01 Jan 2010 at 4:11 pm #
I know this place. A no-holds-barred budget home for a billionairess.
You all ought to see the fence: it’s made of freestanding bronze bars. There’s no top rail. I figure it was at least five grand a running foot.
Ken on 03 Feb 2010 at 11:31 pm #
Nice…if you want to live in an office building.
Looks very corporate and therefore inhuman..much like our corporate elite.