BTW the stairs can be heated, and is directed in a manner that gives the shortest route up to the house, as living on 2nd floor. Its wrong if people think the intention was to build something spectacular and then put it on pillars on a cliffside. Is quite a site specific project and shows the strength and worth of the role architects can fulfill. The obvious place to build on this site was to build on the flat platou. In doing that there would be no outside area for the owners. By moving the house into mid air the owners “gained” a garden that otherwise would have been lost. The side effect of this pragmatic solution gives a spectacular effect to a “down to earth” project.

V. inspiring house. I love the angles.

Pherhaps the anger and boredom you read in my comment, is more due to the nausia architecture has caused for itself. If you don’t understand open source as a contemporary expression for all more decision making in society, it is pherhaps due to architectures institutional manner, -conserve, mystify and protect as an oposition to open source. Architecture and the business culture of Apple Macintosh is in many ways comparable. A way for architecture to remain unintelligent and create very limited inventions. In this context, both the presentation of this house (not nessecarily the house itself), and this blog to some extent, keeps me very bored. But it is beautiful !

How sober does archdaily make you feel ?

Well, though that is a rather incoherent monologue I guess I do grasp the fundamental point.

The process of design should be more accessible to whom? What are you referring to here? Accessible is a nice word, like sustainable, and both are really meaningless drivel.

Whatever does open source mean in the context of architecture? Open source what? It seems to me that building technology is substantially diffused and equally available to all. Frankly, I fail to see what your talking about here. It isn’t like there is a code base or patent art that is being jealously protected by a cabal of price-fixing architects.

Most architecture has always (since Vitruvius) been thoughtless and unintelligent. Largely it is an ephemeral process that fades with time. The historical fabric of a great metropolis is textured by the examples that survive and the failures are forgotten, torn down, or whatever. All the utopian thinking in the world is never going to change that fact.

“but it’s totally deaf when it comes to a lot of other work” is sort of a meaningless phrase. If someone does something good should they be listening to everything that is bad? Should no one make good buildings because not everyone can afford them and it makes the average joe feel bad to see a nice building?

Not everybody wants to celebrate. You seem pretty bent on putting class envy front and center in your arguments. Frankly, class envy doesn’t seem to have produced such great architecture in the past. Most buildings we “celebrate” are representations of the singular or collective ego.

Sorry, but I am mystified by your Scooby Doo reference. I suppose it is meaningful to you.

Terry Glenn Phipps

And about the work that comes out of this studio, it is not exceptional every time. They make good small-scale public buildings and private projects (like soooo many other architects do), and they do good details and it’s beautiful for architects and the people that have access to it, but when they work on an urban scale or with economic rhetoric they totally shit their feet…

Go to norway, they do nothing but celebrate good architecture. It’s what they want to be about, but their “marxist” (if that is what you want to call it) ideals are left in order to participate in this stupid global act of celebrating good architecture like this house.

Actually, the approach to siting (as has so often been demonstrated in the work of John Lautner) is the key to the entire approach. This approach is actually rather more economically viable than any alternative and renders and otherwise useless site exciting.

What I also find interesting is that this project turns the house around to face away from what I would have assumed was the best view. That gives the canyon downslope faced a very expressive formal opportunity that it otherwise might not have. It is, furthermore, indicative of the studios propensity to make very detailed and thoughtful solutions to each projects particular problems.

As for the economics, those comments demonstrate a poor understanding of architectural economics and the design economy in general. The bespoke suburban villa is not an architectural form that has ever been overly democratic. Even the best attempts at replicability from Wright’s Usonian houses on through to Eames’ use of industrial elements, have ended up elitist and fetishistic design icons. Perhaps in the first half of the 20th century one could be forgiven for believing that industrial processes would democratize good design and render it accessible to everyone. Now, in 2009 there is little excuse to believe in this fairy tale any longer.

Good architecture ought to be celebrated and not complained about.

Terry Glenn Phipps

In this case the architects have spent the appropriate amount of money on certain parts of the house. More money on structure for dramatics and less money on cladding. Seems appropriate in this case given the clients wanted a ‘spectacular’ house.

Norway is not the only country with these woes you talk about. Down here in Oz the same applies, as it does for the rest of the world. Plenty of clients have money to spend on a house for themselves but sadly the architects’ responses in most cases are not worth publishing. This is symptomatic of ill informed/uneducated clients and very mediocre architects. Rant over.

Beautifully elegant solution on an amazing site. I bet the clients are very happy. I would be.

I also disagree about the statement that architecture that is good, must be expensive, and I don’t agree that it requires talent to make good architecture. I think it requires serious research, systematic methods of implementation and vigorous discussions of value with the, -pooor, or rich, client.

Projects made by the wealthy people, are often easier to label “design” then “architecture”. Too much culture in some sense.

To Tyler : I refuse to be called a Marxist, if you at all want to contribute, then please make a rational argument.

I like how this house floats off the hill.

This is a very nice house, but it’s again one that makes me so sad after studying what other projects are realized in Norway. Why is there no general interest and will to experiment to a further extent with all these seemingly good architects ?