Dwell的July/August 2018目录

MIX RISING URBAN POPULATIONS with climate-changed cycles of precipitation and drought. Add infrastructure stuck in the mid 20th century, overpumped aquifiers, and wetlands filled with development. What do you get? Unprecedented water scarcity. “The era of cheap water is over,” says Heather Cooley, director of research at the Pacific Institute, a think tank that emphasizes policy solutions for sustainable water management. Beyond conservation, there is a proven technology being used worldwide to expand fresh water supplies: desalination. Governments turn to it because the plants pump out city-sized quantities of fresh water quickly and reliably, says Cooley—but it’s a solution that can create other problems. For one, desalination is energy-intensive, which drives up costs and creates carbon pollution. Further, “Seawater is habitat,” Cooley says, “it’s not just salty water.” According to…

THE SMART HOME HAS A PROBLEM. It promises to create a better living experience, save us time and energy, and provide ultimate control and convenience. And then it takes you an entire afternoon to sync your alarm clock to your coffee maker. But as demand for home automation increases, builders and tech companies are innovating and adapting new ways to produce smart homes. “The majority of our homes will be smarter within five to ten years,” predicts Sara Gutterman, CEO of Green Builder Media, which partners with builders to develop prototypes of smart homes. “Look at the progress homebuilders like Lennar, KB, and Meritage have made already.” These companies and others are now offering preinstalled smart devices powered by Apple’s HomeKit or Amazon’s Alexa as packages or even standard in…

“It’s almost as though you peeled up the grass on the hilltop and put it back down on the roof.”DAN WEBER, ARCHITECT As they approach, visitors to Steve and Margaret Cegelski’s new guesthouse north of Santa Barbara might be momentarily confused. Their quarters are hidden from sight, tucked under the lip of a hill, with a green roof as camouflage. It’s not until they descend a concrete staircase dividing a sunken two-volume structure that they see their accommodations, not to mention the spectacular view of the coastline straight ahead. An intimate connection to the environment suffuses every aspect of this singular retreat, set amid a wildlife preserve and working cattle ranch defined by majestic bluffs, oak trees, and chaparral-blanketed slopes. “Imagine California a hundred years ago,” says project architect Dan…

“EVERYONE IS IN DISBELIEF THAT WE COULD HAVE A HOUSE LIKE THIS HERE.”PETER STREMMEL, RESIDENT Forty-seven years ago, Peter and Turkey Stremmel opened Stremmel Gallery, one of the first fine-art showplaces in Reno. They went on to exhibit work there by such luminaries as Wolf Kahn, Charles Arnoldi, and Phyllis Shafer. The same architect who designed the gallery, Mark Mack, designed their home, a cluster of colorful cubes in the mountains above the city. The couple treasured the retreat, but when they became empty-nesters, its isolation began to weigh on them. “We were a thousand feet higher than the city,” says Peter. “There were times when we were completely snowed in and it felt like The Shining.” So in 2013 they found a bluff-side double lot in a neighborhood called…

When Kate and Doug Lovell pictured their retirement, they knew it couldn’t be anywhere but on Lake Wanaka. Located in the high-altitude Otago region of New Zealand’s South Island, a three-and-a-half-hour drive from their hometown of Dunedin, the lake had been their vacation spot for years, a place where they could escape the grind with their boys. While they owned a place on the sheltered side of the lake, they longed for an open view and direct sunlight, even if it meant more wind. On a blustery winter day, the couple visited a section of land in a subdivision overlooking the lake, circled by snowcapped mountains. “We could barely open the car doors, it was so windy, but we got out, looked at each other and said, ‘Yes,’” recalls Kate,…

• 1979 Mary Barensfeld’s grandfather, a businessman, designs a white-walled, shingle-roofed cottage atop the foundation of a 1940s farmstead in a small town outside Pittsburgh. • 1998 Seeking more space, Barensfeld’s parents hire a local architect to create a new kitchen, bedroom, and family room beneath an elaborate roof structure, bringing the total size to 5,440 square feet. • 2016 With Yvonne Riggie of YR Architecture + Design, Barensfeld adds a pair of new wings—one housing a gym, master suite, and kitchenette, the other a dining room—that update the regional vernacular.…

I’m surprised that Dwell missed the obvious (to me) question regarding Jennifer Pattison Tuohy’s essay in the last issue [“Should We Stay or Should We Go?”]. The question is: How do we design houses to meet the environmental challenges they face? Each challenge mentioned in the article, whether wind, water or fire, can be overcome by designing for that environment. In each instance there is an opportunity to create elegant, economical, and useful dwellings designed to meet those challenges. Maybe Dwell should begin soliciting designers and architects for solutions. —Peter Danko,Peter Danko Design Inc. Editor’s Note: Architects and designers definitely play a role in meeting environmental challenges, and we regularly feature houses designed to withstand harsh conditions. However, some experts believe that, even with more resilient buildings, it may not be…

OWNING ONE’S OWN HOUSE—A dream of human beings ever since Cro-Magnons looked out of their caves at the retreating glaciers—has been sometimes more, sometimes less affordable. Currently, we’re in one of the less affordable phases. With construction accounting for almost 60 percent of the cost of a new single-family home, measures that reduce labor and simplify material needs may make the dream more accessible for many. Cue the 3D-printing evangelists. The 2010s have been ringing with the hosannas of houses extruded from a 3D printer in hours, sometimes many of them per day. The options seem limitless, with made-to-order versions in concrete, like Icon’s tiny house in Austin; ABS plastic and carbon fiber, like Branch Technology’s prototype home in Chattanooga; and recycled materials, like Chinese manufacturer WinSun’s five-story apartment building…

FEW CONCEPTS HAVE DOMINATED our collective imagination as stubbornly as the flying automobile. It’s an enduring fantasy—one that is born as soon as we’re old enough to give lift to our Hot Wheels. Now, we may finally be on the cusp of making our flying dreams a reality. This fall, Uber Elevate—the division of the ridesharing company that heads up research and development for its airborne ventures—is opening an Advanced Technologies Center in Paris and planning to invest $23 million over the next five years, with a goal of test-launching its aircraft by 2020. In Miami, a property developer is building a high-rise with a rooftop launch pad for residents’ future aerial commutes. And a handful of companies actually have flying cars in production. Prices and lead times vary, but…

When Vancouver residents Dale Steele and Dan Nguyen began looking for a pied-à-terre in New York, they were intent on finding a home away from home, not just an impersonal stand-in for a hotel room. “Even though it wouldn’t be our primary residence, we really wanted to have a place that felt like us,” says Dale, a physician. “When we saw places, we’d think, yes, we could live here, but it wouldn’t be a home.” That changed when Dan, a hair stylist who works with runway models during New York Fashion Week and other events, stumbled upon a sunny 585-square-foot studio with a small balcony in Chelsea. The space was tired, with a cramped kitchen and a sleeping area behind a three-quarter-height wall, but, says Dan, “I thought the light…

Interior designer Barbara Hill’s trove of postcards from artists reveals some incredible interlocutors—Sol LeWitt among them. In the early ‘70s, I began an art gallery in Houston called the Cusack Gallery (my name then). No one in Texas was showing the well-known minimalist/conceptualist artists of the time. I wanted to give them a platform. My friend asked, “If you could have anyone open your gallery, who would it be?” I said Sol LeWitt. So I got his number from information, called, and, to my surprise, he picked up. I asked him if he would come to Houston and make a show for my new gallery. He said, “I don’t see why not.” I thought someone was pulling my leg! He did my first installation, followed by Carl Andre, Hanne Darboven,…

WITH AUTOMATED CARS AND robotic assistants already a reality, the idea of using computer algorithms and artificial intelligence to design buildings doesn’t seem so farfetched. Some of architecture’s leaders are already employing a mix of these technologies, known as “generative design” or GD, which could soon transform the industry. At its simplest level, GD starts with a process—parametric design—in which designers enter a list of end-goals, or parameters, and software generates solutions to meet those goals. For example, if you want a building that is bathed in natural light, the computer might create designs with really large windows. It gets more interesting as the parameters get more numerous and complex and even start to include subjective goals, like comfort and well-being. One of the leaders in GD is Autodesk, the…

ALERTS TO NEARBY ATTRACTIONS you might enjoy; crosswalks that appear as needed; directions to the fastest way home during a big public event: If the first generation of smart cities focused on infrastructure, the next-generation smart city aims to leverage individual users’ feedback to create more livable communities. Think of your likes, location, and browsing history affecting not just your smartphone apps, but the world around you. Architect Carlo Ratti, who directs MIT’s Senseable City Lab, says that applying digital technology to the built environment enables a city to respond to its citizens: “We can imagine a city that adapts to human need, rather than the other way around—a living, tailored space that is molded to its inhabitants’ needs, characters, and desires.” But taking the technology that makes our phones…

Each time Mark and Laura Pine build a house together—this is their fourth from the ground up—they edge a bit closer to their Platonic ideal of home. The Pines weren’t actively looking to move, back in 2013. But when a rare double lot became available a few blocks from their home in Old Palo Alto, one of the most sought-after real estate markets in the Bay Area, they were thrilled at the idea of perhaps creating a more perfect home. “We were living in an Italianate-style house with a contemporary interior and beating back the desire to tackle a new project,” says Mark, an engineer-turned-investor and veteran of such companies as Dropbox and Facebook. “We had a list of sacred cows, as well as things that bothered us about our…

For any architect, designing a new home means grappling with the usual—and usually daunting—challenges: budget limitations, client expectations, delays, design dilemmas, misunderstandings. For Pittsburgh- and San Francisco–based architect Mary Barensfeld, a recent project meant the prospect of all those things, with a few additional factors layered in. Her clients were her parents, and the project was an expansion of her childhood home, a place infused with memory and complicated by history. “It’s an idea and it’s a place,” Barensfeld says. “It’s amazing how forceful it’s been in my life. I didn’t want to ruin it.” Barensfeld and her two sisters grew up in the rolling countryside north of Pittsburgh, where her grandfather bought a sweep of land in the 1970s and had a gambrel-roofed, colonial-style home built on the foundations…

28 Yellow Time Machine Architecture for London architectureforlondon.com Liddicoat & Goldhill liddicoatgoldhill.com General contracting by Produk Ltd. produk.co.uk Structural engineering by Heyne Tillet and Steel heynetilletsteel.com 28 Custom table by James Burleigh jamesburleigh.co.uk; pendant from Hand and Eye Studio handandeyestudio.co.uk; chairs by Hay hay.com 29 Tex ceramic hallway tiles and Interni ceramic bathroom tiles by Domus domustiles.co.uk; headboard by Jon Needham of Rochlin Bespoke rochlinbespoke.com 58 Land Before Time Anacapa anacapaarchitecture.com Willson Design willsondesign.com General contracting by Curtis Homes curtishomes.net Structural engineering by Ashley & Vance Engineering ashleyvance.com Civil engineering by Braun & Associates 805-688-5429 Jessica Helgerson Interior Design jhinteriordesign.com 60-61 Fernando chairs by Jayson Home jaysonhome.com; chandelier by Lindsey Adelman lindseyadelman.com; Le Bombole ’07 sofa by Mario Bellini for B&B Italia bebitalia.com; Chieftan chair by Finn Juhl finnjuhl.com; poufs…