AIA Phoenix Metro Home Tour

If you are in the Phoenix area this weekend be sure to take in the AIA Phoenix Metro Home Tour tomorrow from 10am to 5pm. The tour will feature seven designs within the Phoenix area that vary in scale and range from contemporary to traditional styles, so there is omething for everyone. Included within this year’s tour is colab studio’s Cedar Street Residence which has been featured here on ArchDaily. After the home tour you may be inspired to take a look at some of the other great architecture in the city. Check out our Architecture City Guide Phoenix for ideas.
Tickets can be purchased online ahead of time or at any on the homes on the day of the tour. A portion of each ticket sold will be given to the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center (SAARC).
Reach 11 Athletic Sports Complex / colab studio

Reach 11 is a sports complex in North Phoenix comprised of 18 soccer fields and 4 baseball fields. A Call for Artists went out to provide large amounts of shade at four diverse locations within the large park. Visibly adjacent to the site, a raised earth-buttressed canal brings water 350 miles from the Colorado River to Phoenix as the city continues to grow. Expressing the audacity of the desert oasis, colab studio sought a way to describe this precarious scale of human intervention on the landscape. Comparing such an endeavor with weightlessness moments found in sporting events, 6,000 pound local stones can be quarried and set on posts in various configurations around the huge soccer tournament park, surrounded on 2 sides by the canal. Shapes mimicking mountains and water’s movement through canyons create a unique environment to dwell in deep shade.
Cedar Street Residence / colab studio

This is the home of Matthew Salenger, RA and Maria Salenger, AIA, the founders of colab studio. They had owned a fairly large suburban lot near downtown Tempe, Arizona for ten years. They had altered the house and site considerably over the years, experimenting with low-cost methods to change the way to live in suburbia. Over time, though, life occurred, and circumstances changed: The birth of a little boy, founding a full-time design studio of their own, family visiting more often, etc. So another change needed to occur- something more substantial.
Architect: colab studio, llc
Location: Cedar Street, Tempe, Arizona, USA
Project Team: Matthew Salenger, RA and Maria Salenger, AIA
Contractor: Build, Inc., Rich Fairbourn
Structural Engineer: JT Engineering, Inc.
Electrical Engineer: Woodward Engineering, Inc.
Project Area: 2,222 sqf
Project Year: 2010
Photographs: Bill Timmerman




