Courtesy of Garrison Architects

Garrison Architects approaches projects through a process of extensive research that responds to the current economic, cultural, technical and environmental challenges. The firm integrates this critical approach with a highly refined modernist aesthetic. The Koby Cottage exemplifies this process. The recipient of a New York AIA Architecture Merit Award, Koby Cottage is a guesthouse for families visiting their children at Starr Commonwealth, a nonprofit organization in Michigan that counsels troubled teens. The cottage allows families to come together in a private domestic setting surrounded by nature.

Project description, video, images, and drawings after the break.

Architect: Garrison Architects
Location: Albion, Michigan, USA
Project Area: 1100 sqf
Photographs: Courtesy of Garrison Architects

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© Jeremy Bittermann

Allied Works Architecture was founded in 1994 by Brad Cloepfil and has grown to 50 employees with offices in New York City and Portland, Oregon. They have designed buildings for the arts, creative workspaces, residences, education buildings, and urban designs. Receiving numerous awards for their designs, including a National AIA Honor Award for the University of Michigan Museum of Art.  Allied Works Architecture were among the five finalists for the Musée National des Beaux Arts du Québec, check out their proposal here. In 2009 they were selected to design the National Music Center in Calgary.

We will be featuring a handful of designs by Allied Works Architecture over the next few weeks, and decided to start with their award winning University of Michigan Museum of Art located in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  The building more than doubles the program and collection spaces of the original museum while restoring the Alumni Memorial Hall. The addition occupies one of the last buildable sites on the historic campus, completing the primary public facade of the university.

More photographs, drawings and project description following the break.

Architects: Allied Works Architecture
Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Associate Architects: Integrated Design Solutions
Project Team: Brad Cloepfil (principal), Thomas Robinson (project lead), Chelsea Grassinger (project architect) Allied Works Architecture, Paul Stachowiak (principal, Richard Newlin (associate sr. architect) Integrated Design Solutions
Project Management: University Architect’s Office, University of Michigan
Contractor: SKANSKA
Structural Engineer: KPFF
Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing & Fire: ARUP and Integrated Design Solutions
Lighting/Daylighting: ARUP Lighting
Curtain Wall: RA Heintges
Exhibition Design: Allied Works Architecture
Graphics and Signage: Pentagram
Project Area: 40,362 sqf (existing), 53,452 sqf (new)
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Jeremy Bittermann, Richard Barnes

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© Curt Clayton

The Bridge House horizontally nestles into its surrounding.  Located in Ann Arbor, Michigan and designed by Wilfred John Oskar Armster, the home blurs the lines of interior and exterior through window location, materials, and open air spaces.  Follow the break for more photographs and drawings.

Architects: Wilfred John Oskar Armster, AIA
Location: Trillium Lane, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Project Team: Sven Armster, Sarah Armster, Vered Mishkal, James Kuhn
Structural Engineer: Michael Horton Associates, Inc.
Photographs: Curt Clayton

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© MacDowell.Tomova

A young design firm led by Parke MacDowell, Diana Tomova and Boriana Tomova have shared their recently completed Wave Pavilion with us. Situated on the campus of the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, the pavilion functions as a gathering space and doubles as a didactic tool within the dialogue of digital fabrication.  Constructed from ½ inch steel rods, the pavilion intends to illustrate how the line can be “explicitly leveraged toward the nuanced description of space.”

More about the pavilion, including a quick construction video, after the break. read more »

© AIA

Hovering over the shores of Lake Michigan, the Douglas House was built by Richard Meier in 1971-1973 for Jim and Jean Douglas. The house is gently placed on a steep slope over the water, almost as if it is floating amongst the trees. As Meier stated about the house, “So steep is the slope to the water that the house appears to have been dropped into the site, a machine-crafted object that has landed in a natural world. The dramatic dialogue between the whiteness of the house and the primary blues and greens of the water, trees, and sky allows the house not only to assert its own presence but to enhance, by contrast, the beauty of its natural environment as well.”

More on the Douglas House after the break.

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Architects: Danny Forster
Location: Lake Omena, Michigan, USA
Project year: 2009
Project area: 250 sqm
Photographs: Danny Forster
Energy, Climate and Construction Strategies Consultant: Kiel Moe

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Architects: wHY Architecture
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Client: Grand Rapids Art Museum
Area: 125.000sqf
Construction start: 2004
Completion: 2007
General contractors: Rockford / Pepper Construction
Concrete contractor: Grand River Construction
Structural Engineer: Dewhurst Macfarlane and Partners
Environmental Engineer: Atelier Ten / Design Plus, Inc.
Lighting Consultant: Isometrix Lighting + Design
Curtain Wall Consultant: W.J. Higgins & Associates
Landscape Design: Design Plus
Photos: Steve Hall, Scott McDonald & Chris Barret

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