contemporary architect in Austin

The American Institute of Architects in Austin has awarded MJ Neal Architects a 2009 Design Award for the Wolfe Den. We started competing for these city design awards in 2003 and we’ve won every year except for 2006, when we didn’t enter.

You can see the winners for the last three years at the AIA site.

Please enjoy the new slide show below. It’s the selection that I’ve put together for the upcoming publication in Dwell and Dwell.com. There are shots that have already been posted here and there are brand new ones! Alex and Jamie look like movie stars:-)

Wolfe Den Slideshow

more about “the slide show“, posted with vodpod

stone, transitive verb

Inflected Form(s): stoned; ston·ing
13th century
1: to hurl stones at; especially : to kill by pelting with stones

stoned (slang) adjective
1952
1. Stupefied, excited, or muddled with alcoholic liquor
2. Stupefied, intoxicated, or otherwise influenced by the taking of drugs
3. (one I particulaly like) under the influence of drugs, under the influence of alcohol, drugged, ripped out, high, spaced out, tripping, turned on

These definitions sum up the week and what I’m going to do about it…

The post was going to start out, “So you want stone? Well here it is, all of you fake Tuscan-lovin’ sons of bitches…” But then, because of the week it’s been, the post has shifted to the fore mentioned theme.

Anyway, the house is for a small site in Barcelona that has a four story building close to one side of it and a two story retaining wall about a fourth of the way into the lot. Fortunately, a garden could be placed around the side and front on the lower floor of the house, to achieve privacy and give a sense of the exotic and intimate.

The house is simply organized around a pool/living area that opens onto a front garden. All interior spaces open onto the pool and are defined by rustic (rustico! Pepe) structural stone walls. The pool area has a wall of translucent and colored glass block. A traditional material that has been manufactured in Spain for, who could say, 80 years.

This wall allows a wonderful diffused light into all the interior spaces and controls the view of the multi story building. At the bottom of the glass block wall there is a low continuous ribbon of clear operable windows that look onto the small side garden allowing the eye to expand beyond the boundary of the wall. The problematic back yard, two stories in the air, was tied into the roof to make an extended garden and terrace. A green house on this upper level of land continues over the two story living/pool area to become a skylight.

Most of the sketches shown were done on the flight back from Barcelona.

It’s happy hour so see ya, what ever happened to those days of three for ones in Lubbock (that story will have to wait…).