Check Out Architectural Record Online

I don't really know why I got interested in houses, especially modern and green houses, but I do know when: I was in college. I went to Purdue, and I spent a lot of spare time in the libraries looking for good books and digging out and going through old magazines. My favorite thing to do was to go up into "the stacks" in the HSSE Library. The stacks were five floors of old periodicals, filed neatly on massive shelves. The levels had low ceilings and narrow rows, and there were no windows, only bad fluorescent lamps. It was kinda creepy up there. I was always on the lookout for weirdos, but mostly I just ran across the odd grad student looking for a quite place to study, or once in a while some young couple making out.

I guess I was kind of a dork. Sadly, not much has changed! But there were bright spots. I came across Architectural Record, and soon started digging out all the "Record House" issues. And there I fell in love with modernist houses.

I still love checking out this mag, and the good news is you can see Record Houses online (at least a few years worth), and they also have featured houses in lots of neat categories like "California's Anti-sprawl," "Built Into Their Sites," and "Off the Beaten Path."

There's always something cool. Actually, I like the section on Unbuilt Houses the best. There are some really different designs. My favorite of the bunch is the "Distributed House" by OMA, which was designed for a beautiful island site in the Bahamas. To take advantage of the many different spectacular views available the home was programmed into many individual freestanding pavilions.

"The house’s diffuse site plan capitalizes on the many different views and landscape conditions on the island. A rolled-steel master bedroom rests on dunes and is connected to the beach with a bridge; a tower for children’s bedrooms on a hill provides sweeping views of the island; and a guesthouse overlooks the ocean and allows for autonomous hospitality. At the center of this group is a square-shaped dining room, which the architects liken to a “mini acropolis.” Its four counter-weighted walls easily open to transform the volume into a covered, outdoor eating area."

Sounds cool. Too bad it was never built! I always wanted to live in a "house" like that. I know what I want each room to do, what always spoils it for me is how do you put the rooms together in a way that makes sense. I guess that's what a good architect is for. Here are a few pics of the Distributed House concept:








There are more images online, plus lots of other neat houses, both constructed and never built. Give it a look. You don't have to be a dork to enjoy Architectural Record, and you don't have to dig around in dusty libraries either. There's a lot of great content online, and Borders (which was just a single campus bookstore in Ann Arbor when I was growing up there) is now a nationwide chain and you can usually find it on their shelves.

Image credits - Architectural Record site