Design intent can be tough to convey; it is comprised of any number of ideas and goals, and all of the implications of achieving them successfully. It can be tough for owners to express what your intent is if you’re not fluent in the language of building - and why should they be? I can’t speak the language of medicine, or astronomy, and no one is expecting me to.
Read MoreConcept Board
Modern Transformation Creates Zones for Privacy & Entertaining in Small Urban Home
Exploring the challenges and design approach of living in a small urban home in New Orleans!
Read MoreThe Flexessory House
The Flexessory House is a personal and professional response to how we think about urban infill development in New Orleans.
What makes New Orleans’ neighborhoods among the richest in character and memory in the world, a tourist attraction in and of itself? Its HOUSING STOCK.
What's so great about it? Two things – its ability to adapt to its surroundings and its ability to adapt to the needs of the people. So, really, one thing: resilience.
Houses here grow, adapt – they FLEX. Sometimes literally with the moisture content in the air. And they are still standing through hurricanes, design fads, and shifting demographics.
So what do we mean by FLEXESSORY?
FLEX-ing Skin
We took inspiration from the traditional Japanese ‘engawa’ space, a light-footed raised wood structure the building’s perimeter. This zone serves as a linear adaptation of the classic NOLA porch, providing shade, communal space, privacy and debris protection. Wood screens attached to this can flex open or closed to provide varying degrees of protection.
Shutters & Engawa Spaces
FLEX-ing Occupancy
Houses here have long, varied histories because they never ceased to be useful, even if just enough to not demolish. A house may have started as a stately four-bedroom home for a large upper-class family, and may have later been split up into a upstairs and downstairs unit, after which it might have converted a carriage house into a rear apartment. Later, after central air was added and the plumbing easily changed out since the floor is raised, it might find new life as a bed and breakfast, a law firm office, or might again serve as a large home for a well-to-do family. Or maybe it stays a four-plex with a carriage apartment, long after zoning laws have made such an arrangement unrepeatable.
About those zoning laws – across the country, zoning laws have historically attempted to pin down a property to a very specific and isolated use. Often, a single-family house is allowed an ACCESSORY use – often with many caveats and rules in place to keep that other use from becoming another dwelling. But demand for accessory dwellings lives on, often in bending or ‘hacking’ zoning rules and grandfathering, and for good reason. It allows for additional homestead income, while easing housing stock shortages for small families, college students or the elderly, and adding to the overall neighborhood value and tax base - wins all around.
Flex + Accessory (Dwelling) = Flexessory
The FLEXESSORY house is a contemporary approach to the traditional shotgun plan, offering more flexibility to a family living, growing and shrinking in the house; or for different kinds of families to subsequently inhabit the house. Within the footprint of a typical two-family zoned lot, the house offers several easily reconfigured plans to allow for various sized units for an elderly family member, a college student, a small family, a vacation rental.
And though it could be a single-family home, it makes too much sense not to use it in a way that helps put more families back in New Orleans, creating more value, and reinforcing the historic use patterns that can continue the centuries-long reputation of New Orleans neighborhoods as the best in the country.
Concept Board: The Modern Camp
No building type is more quintessential Louisianan than the camp. Weekend getaway, home base for hunting or fishing expeditions, family retreats; they serve different things to different people, and they take just as many forms.
Studio BKA is undertaking a fresh take on the camp, for a mysterious client who may or may not be Jason Statham from The Mechanic. A camp is an intersecting point for many types of Louisianans lives, and we are seeking to combine modern forms and materials with vernacular architecture, and also infusing sustainable values to study just how green a camp can get. With a program that includes generous entertaining areas with the capacity to host a large crew on holiday weekends, or a solo fishing weekend getaway from the NOLA grind.
Stay tuned for updates on how traditional Louisiana archetypes can blend with modern materials and styles and incorporate modern efficient building practices to preserve the beautiful coastal landscapes that gave rise to the concept of the Louisiana camp.