Michael Bell ¦ Design
Chrome House ι Houston ι Texas ι The design
makes a domestic space out of a building that appears industrial, and
sits comfortably in a rapidly changing neighborhood that accommodates
both uses. . . .
This loft and
photography studio for a Houston couple was designed to serve as both a
residence and a place of business. The single structure also provides
an office for a small graphic design studio. The building site is a
typical Houston lot of fifty by a hundred feet in a part of the city
known as West End, which has been under gentrification pressure as it
is adjacent to River Oaks, an affluent residential neighborhood, and
the Buffalo Bayou as well as downtown. It is a mixed-use area, with car
repair businesses next to housing and structures that range from
bungalows to prefabricated metal buildings.
While
these kinds of juxtapositions are typical in Houston— there is no
citywide zoning—this region of the city is even more diverse and
fragmented.
By
using a prefabricated metal building system manufactured by Butler
Buildings (which featured lightweight materials assembled with simple
labor techniques), it was possible to construct more than thirty-five
hundred square feet of space on a very small budget.
Other
low-cost items such as sliding-glass doors and aluminum window sections
were also used, as were simple solar orientation techniques. The design
makes a domestic space out of a building that appears industrial, and
sits comfortably in a rapidly changing neighborhood that accommodates
both uses.
“Welcome
to the end of the American Dream: an aluminum-clad loft has replaced
home on the range,” writes the critic Aaron Betsky, describing the
project. “Metal shines in the Texas sun. A wall of doors opens to
whatever breeze might find its way through the sprawl of Houston.
Everything flows, shimmers, and shines; nothing sits still. The only
thing fixing you to a place is a grid of anonymous construction. You
are at once free and in limbo
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