Hula Dog Farm
Kona, Hawai'i
5,400sf
$1.2M
Presented with an elephant grass covered slope facing due west toward Kona and the Pacific, we focus on the notion of "Flow", recognizing that air flow and lava flow and water flow are what make this place indelibly sensual and unique.
A series of parallel walls support the roof and divide rooms, allowing earth and water and air and plants to flow unimpeded through the house, and a reduced palette of stucco, wood, stone and copper keep the focus outward, on nature. An infinity pool makes the visual connection to the ocean, so that you feel like you are swimming out to sea. The result feels like living outside, clouds occasionally wafting through the house, the gentle sound of water and the rich smell of earth and plants and flowers a constant.
Design Architect: Roel Krabbendam
Interior Design: Polly Dithmer
Office of Record: Weigang, Marvick
Hula Dog Farm
Kona, Hawai'i
5,400sf
$1.2M
A series of dramatic skylights erupt through the roof, preserving the connection to the sky and to the sun, and insuring that the connection to the outdoors is kept visceral and constantly changing with the light.
Design Architect: Roel Krabbendam
Interior Design: Polly Dithmer
Office of Record: Weigang, Marvick
Massachusetts Residence
1800sf Renovation
$80,000
A gloomy 1963 tract home tucked into a hill in the deep woods of New England challenges us to find and capitalize on the available daylight. By removing walls, adding windows and skylights, using light colors and reflective surfaces and focusing the rooms on a huge and dramatically lit painting of the ocean, the house is radically transformed into a joyful and light-filled environment.
Architect: Roel Krabbendam
Interior Designer: Polly Dithmer
Massachusetts Residence
1800sf Renovation
$80,000
A gloomy 1963 tract home tucked into a hill in the deep woods of New England challenges us to find and capitalize on the available daylight. By removing walls, adding windows and skylights, using light colors and reflective surfaces and focusing the rooms on a huge and dramatically lit painting of the ocean, the house is radically transformed into a joyful and light-filled environment.
Architect: Roel Krabbendam
Interior Designer: Polly Dithmer
Massachusetts Residence
1800sf Renovation
$80,000
A gloomy 1963 tract home tucked into a hill in the deep woods of New England challenges us to find and capitalize on the available daylight. By removing walls, adding windows and skylights, using light colors and reflective surfaces and focusing the rooms on a huge and dramatically lit painting of the ocean, the house is radically transformed into a joyful and light-filled environment.
Architect: Roel Krabbendam
Interior Designer: Polly Dithmer
Massachusetts Residence
1800sf Renovation
$80,000
A gloomy 1963 tract home tucked into a hill in the deep woods of New England challenges us to find and capitalize on the available daylight. By removing walls, adding windows and skylights, using light colors and reflective surfaces and focusing the rooms on a huge and dramatically lit painting of the ocean, the house is radically transformed into a joyful and light-filled environment.
Architect: Roel Krabbendam
Interior Designer: Polly Dithmer
Weiner Residence
Garden Design
Winner of a 2014 Judges Award from the Arizona Landscape Contractors Association, this project weaves a serpentine labyrinth through a landscape of apertures in the ground plane (pool, seating area) and cold tolerant native plant species.
Sonoran Desert Home
Northern Pima County, Arizona
Unbuilt
A small arroyo provides the focal point for a rammed earth construction in the brutally hot and dry southwest. Dirt from the property is mined for the walls to minimize material hauling and reinforce the connection to the site, the heavy walls moderating the dramatic temperature swings between night and day. Every room extends outward to an exterior space, allowing the residents to both sleep and entertain outdoors. Interior spaces cascade down toward the arroyo, the open plan offering dramatic views to even the innermost parts of the home.
Sonoran Desert Home 2
Tucson, Arizona
Unbuilt
A slightly smaller version of the original Sonoran Desert Home, this residence nestles among the cacti just above a riparian area. Dirt from the property is again mined for the walls to minimize material hauling and reinforce the connection to the site, the heavy walls moderating the dramatic temperature swings between night and day. Every room extends outward to an exterior space, allowing the residents to both sleep and entertain outdoors. Interior spaces cascade downhill, the open plan offering dramatic views to even the innermost parts of the home. In this design, a sculptural trellis-like structure moves interior air, provides lighting and shades exterior patios.
Private Residence
Tamanrasset, Algeria
Unbuilt
Perched on a ridge outside of the central Saharan city, this home proposes a radically different approach to building and living in the truly extreme desert environment. Recognizing that earthen construction offers better environmental stability indoors than concrete, but wanting to break away from the short roof spans and small interior spaces that typically result, this structure proposes a thin concrete vault covered by stabilized sand. Interior spaces are freed to open outward, the wind is free to blow through the structure, and the vast vault punctured by lightwells and chimneys offers comfortable shaded outdoor space. Crucial to this conservative culture, an upstairs room offers entertainment space without violating the privacy of the home below.
Chavez Residence
Carrizo Springs, Texas
Unbuilt
With this small, budget constrained home for a couple looking forward to retirement, we were asked to imagine something traditional in appearance but modern in function. Our simple riff on thick adobe walls and sleeping porches maintains the open quality of a contemporary environment without overtly proclaiming its modernity. Inside, light shelves reflect daylight onto the ceilings, and light finishes insure a daylight filled space, Here, the narrow footprint of the house avoids any need for skylights to reinforce the daylighting strategy.
Colder Climate Prototype
Inspired by bear dens and bird nests, igloos and "A" frames, we imagine a different kind of cold climate house. The proposition that life in cold climates vacillates between a desire for hibernation or insulation from the outdoors (bear den), and full immersion in it (bird nest), suggests a structure offering a continuum between both. The feeling that fire plays an important emotional role suggests focusing both den and nest on it.
Compact like an igloo, but structured like an "A" frame curled around a courtyard, the home actually became a kind of eye to the sky. Emphatically rejecting the traditional approach of minimizing windows to create gloomy caves, the large triple glazed glass expanse concentrates almost all glazing to the south, and requires blinds to control glare and blankets to control heat loss, but offers the possibility of lying in bed at night and staring up at the stars.
Design Architect: Roel Krabbendam
Homes
Project Experience:
Single Family Residences:
Barnstone Residence, Newton, MA
Dershowitz Residence, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Dithmer Krabbendam Residence, Boston, Massachusetts
Glimcher Residence, Chestnut Hill, Masachusetts
Hula Dog Farm, Kona, Hawai'i
Kapor Residence, Brookline, Massachusetts
Krabbendam Residence, Acton, Massachusetts
Marcus Residence, Cambridge, Massachusetts
McMahon Residence, Newton, Massachusetts
Storey Katz Residence, Barnstable, Massachusetts
Hula Dog Barn, Kona, Hawai'i
Unbuilt Residences:
Chavez Residence, Carrizo Springs, TX
Ben Sebgag Residence, Tamanrasset, Algeria
Higby Barn Conversion, Woodstock, Vermont
Rammed Earth House 1, Tucson, Arizona
Rammed Earth House 2, Tucson, Arizona
Cold Climate Prototype
Multi-Family Housing
The Esplanade, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Housing for Women with Children, Tucson, Arizona
Shelter for Women with Children, Tucson, Arizona