PRD 845 / Studio Ma

Architect: Studio Ma, Inc.
Design Team: Christiana Moss, Dan Hoffman, Christopher Alt, Robert Des Rosiers, Jonah Busick, Brad Pfahler
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
Project Year: 2008
Project Area: 24,000SqFt
Project Cost: $3.5M
Contractor: UrbanEdge Builders
Client: Greenroof Development Company LLC
Civil Engineer: Evans, Kuhn & Associates
Structural Engineer: Rudow + Berry
Soil Consultant: Foree & Vann
Mechanical Engineer: Associated Mechanical Engineers
Electrical Engineer: Woodward Engineering
Landscape Architect: Levinson Studio
Photography: Michael Weschler Photography

Developed by Greenroof LLC and designed by Studio Ma, PRD 845 is an urban infill project in Downtown Phoenix , adjacent to the Roosevelt Historic and Arts Districts. A sensitive cluster of twelve condominium homes, this enclave is organized around two, private “mews” that mix cars and people in an intimate and compelling urban-type environment.

Unit sizes range from 900 to 2,200 square feet and are designed to accommodate an active, live-work life style with ground floor garage / studio spaces and large outdoor roof decks with views of downtown Phoenix and the surrounding mountains. The folded roof plane creates volumetric slots through the complex giving PRD its unique, “skyline” profile.

Carefully chosen building materials compliment the south-west desert environment and include an innovative rain-screen design wall design made of a low mass, corrugated, fiber-reinforced concrete panels on furring channels that allows accumulated heat to escape through a slot at the top of the wall.

PRD845 is the recipient of a 2008 AIA Merit Award, and 2009 Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Award.

Studio Ma is an award-winning architecture and environmental design firm delivering innovative, sustainable and unique designs to forward thinking institutions and individuals. Founded in Phoenix, Arizona in 2003, Studio Ma’s three partners, Christina Moss, Christopher Alt and Dan Hoffman foster a creative and growing practice centered in the essence of the desert southwest. The philosophy of the Studio is embodied by the concept of Ma, a Japanese term that acknowledges the dynamic relationship between objects and their surrounding environment. This concern extends their practice to multiple scales from the making of a residence to complex urban and natural systems.