SVS House

View of basement skylight.

Project details

• Project Name: SVS House
• Project Type: Housing
• Principal Designer/s: Julio Salcedo
• Design Team: Francesco Gennarini, Jeremy Reed, Mauricio Estelleras
• Contractor/s: F.L Davis & Co
• Date of commencement of project: 2004
• Date of completion of project: 2004
• Location of site: Branch Lake, Maine
• Site Area: 20000 sq. ft.
• Built-up Area: 1600 sq. ft.
• Cost of Construction/Execution: $270,000

Interior view toward entrance.

The SVS house at Branch Lake is one of two prototypes being built on four lots. The design for the SVS house explored a "generative / generic" mode of design. My understanding and interpretation of this mode of design is derived from my previous research Peter and Allison Smithson's unrealized project of 1959 as well as a reinterpretation of some contemporary European practices.

There was a demand from the program for flexibility and multiple performances. The house is intended to vary widely in its occupation and potential uses: From a single artist to a large family. The house in time will grow to the lower level as well. There was an additional demand to subscribe to a 'total energy consumption' standard, a $100sf construction cost and local building techniques, namely the balloon frame. This conditional overlap afforded research into flexible designs and local technologies. All of these predicaments are indeed the territory of a "generative / generic" mode of design. This mode relies both on configurative techniques derived from a "genus" or essential element/s as well as the manipulation of the pervasive building types.

View of facade from road access.

The elements of the configurative systems were deployed as follows:

• At the smaller habitation scale, there were two matrixes of program-filled-solid and paired voids.
• At the larger scale, there was a manipulation of the standard balloon framing envelops and expected morphologies.
• At a cultural agency level, the "generic" plays up its alignments with previous late modern housing types, namely the ranch model.

View of interior from entrance.

The SVS does not rely on figurative compositional techniques but rather draws from the richness of adjacencies, alignments and overlaps to generate its program performance, its spatial intricacy and ultimately its architectural appearance.

Credits

• Text by Julio Salcedo
• Photographs by Fabian Birgfeld, Courtesy of Julio Salcedo Design