Of Possible

In upstate New York, a retreat by Brooklyn-based studio @of_possible offers a restorative antidote to the site’s previous inhabitant, shaped by rocks, fieldstone and glacially deposited boulders that define the landscape. Led by founder and architect Vincent Appel, the brief was to create a guesthouse that could be regenerative and healing. A walkthrough of the site revealed a historic stone wall, likely built by farmers in the late 18th century from rocky glacial soil, setting a direction grounded in what was already there. In the spirit of that wall, the building is perched atop large Ice Age-era boulders, known as glacial erratics, forming the structure’s ‘legs’, each selected for the right stance and presence. The design is clarified through contrast, a small, efficient footprint of just under 1,000 sq ft, made from timber and rock rather than steel and glass, deferring to the site while sitting in dialogue with the existing house. Inside, the retreat unfolds across a compact plan that includes two bedrooms, offering a quiet, considered space for rest and retreat. Unlike most houses, entry begins from beneath, scaling a discreet stainless steel staircase to the front door, shifting the experience from ground to dwelling. See how this retreat reworks the relationship between architecture and landscape via the link in bio or at wallpaper.com. 📷: @arorygardiner 🖊: @anna_fixsen

There is no way to know the potential or conceptual weight of a material by only drawing it. You have to carry it, stack it, carve it, and break it to know what it feels like and what it can do. Or, you have to go find someone like Tom and follow him around his quarry to learn what is possible. This post is about Tom and his Vermont Verde Serpentine. Tom bought the old and storied quarry south of Barre, VT in 2006 after a lifetime in stone work across the United States. This is a quarry that was first opened in 1920 and is one of the few quarries on earth with high quality marble-like green serpentine. The geologic lens that forms the quarry is deep which makes it challenging to operate. It is also in Vermont and has limited weather dependent seasonal operation. This is a material that looks like marble but is nearly as hard as granite with low absorption and high flexural strength. Mies van der Rohe chose its French/Italian and Greek cousins, “Alpine Green and Ancient Green Marble” for the Barcelona Pavillion. Tom chose it as an iconic part of North America’s construction and architectural history. Since 2006 he has operated the VT Verde quarry for craft oriented production of unique architectural and sculptural projects. The Vermont quarry happens to have a high concentration of pyrite. Mystics are attracted to its protective, confidence inspiring, healing, and good fortune properties. Depending on the block, the pyrite looks like full golden chocolate chip chunks or dusted throughout the stone creates a bronze iridescent glow. Thank you Tom.

Let the drawings be drawings, renderings be renderings, models be models, photographs be photographs, buildings be buildings, and architects be architects. Each element of the architectural process has its own lineage, discipline, and craft. These elements are architypes that are both inherited into the architectural process and manifest through it. Remaining in awe of the discrete knowledge within these disciplines is a precondition for the most successful collaborations and adventures into, across, and through synthesizing of their mediums. A prior name of our studio was “Medium”. “Dia” had already been ingeniously claimed by Heiner Friedrich, Fariha Friedrich, and Helen Winkler Fosdick for their art foundation. “Dia” comes from the Greek word for “through” and precisely evoked the nature of their creative institution. Dia would be a great name for an architecture studio. The word “idea” comes from the Greek word for “form” or “pattern” derivative of the verb “to see”. I do not know if it is uncanny alliteration or if the words are etymologically related, but in our imagination the words “idea” and “dia” sum up to mean “through form or patterns there is seeing” and through how we see, we create the world. The various architypes of architectural representation are mediums through which we encounter ideas and learn how to see a project. Despite their sometimes mercurial realism (i.e. in the case of a photorealistic rendering), they remain like mercury to an alchemist — a first matter, a bridge between spirit and body, a way to move through states of being, and beyond a symbol of transformation a crucial ingredient in the creation of the alchemic philosopher’s stone. The Greek messenger god was Hermes and his Roman name was Mercury. These gods were tricksters, travelers, and messengers. This is a useful mythology to keep in mind as we position ourselves relative to the creation of more recent god-like characters in our world — AI, the information it returns to our prompting, and in turn how we see the world into being. ¹Mercurial rendering by @DarcStudio_

Architecture is an assembly of many technologies. As the rate of innovation and sophistication of these increases, the probability of architecture collaging the production of other industries seams to increase. The collage in architecture holds a special status as a design strategy. Entire design languages have emerged charismatically crafting aesthetics of collage. However, the aestheticizing of technological milieu can slip into an aimless commodification of architecture and distract from elemental innovation. Technologies have an arc to the rate of their innovation (e.g. Moore’s Law). Sometimes as a technology approaches a late period in its life cycle the rate of innovation declines. Instead of revolutionary increments of improvement, smaller increments of refinement, and even regression set in (e.g. Law of Diminishing Returns, S-Curve, Feature Creep, Complexity-Fragility Trade-off). Eventually “improvements” risk complication and exposure to liabilities. The Findling is elemental out of economic and philosophical necessity. Each building component is essential and reduced as far as possible. For example, all glass windows are simply glazed directly into wooded jambs. No glass is operable. This dramatically reduces cost and maximizes sight-lines. Egress and fresh air are provided by opening insulated and gasketed shutters that are simply part of the wall. These cost less to make and provide greater insulation and air sealing value per dollar compared to high performance windows. Another example is the roof which is simply bitumen sheets. Seams are reinforced by wrapping battens in bitumen over each seam location. This coincidently nods to a more technologically advanced metal standing seam roof. The result is an architecture of the essential, elemental, reductive, intuitive, natural, and whole. Everythign is intrinsicly related to the whole and nothing can be removed as excessive. ¹ Model ²⁻³ Shutter details ⁴ Window detail ⁵⁻⁷ Window installation ⁸ Plan #Architecture @Of_Possible ⁠ #Construction @alulawoodworks #Models @castillo.fab ⁠ #Photographs @jakebalston ⁠#Images @DarcStudio_ ⁠ #Highperformancematerials @475.supply

Architecture is an alignment problem and the result is on a scale that can be described with limits at a minimum viable product on the one side and maximum viable product on the other. The design process aligns a constantly evolving set of variables that change from project to project and over time within any given project (i.e. budgets, material and labor availability, emotions, ideas, schedules, ambitions, etc.). The amount of energy invested in design establishes the degree to which “solving” this alignment problem can be optimized. With limited energy the design process trends towards a linear approach to problem solving. As energy and resources increase, the design process can become more iterative, recursive, and able to test upper and lower limits of solutions. The Findling is an example of a maximum viable product. In the spirit of differentiating the building as much as possible from its neighbor on the property, we attempted to make it entirely out of wood. An earlier design iteration was heavy timber structural framing with connections to the boulders inspired by Ethan Stebbins @stebbinsdesign . Even the hinges, door handles, sinks, nails, and every single component except for the glass and boulders was to be wood. We were more than a million dollars over budget. The project was redesigned with a more common light frame assembly. Pushing the idea of the all-wood building so far and past the budget was not a waste during design. Ideas were encountered. Feasible all-wood details for sinks, windows, shutters, the rainscreen, roof, and other elements were discovered. To create a project intentionally positioned between minimum and maximum viable product is only possible with a highly iterative and recursive design process that closely involves everyone including clients, builders, authorities, engineers, supply chains, manufacturers, etc. through design. A client request for a minimal or maximal viable project has equal potential provided you arrive there intentionally. #Architecture @Of_Possible ⁠ #Construction @alulawoodworks #Models @castillo.fab ⁠ #Photographs @jakebalston ⁠ #Insulation @Rockwoolna ⁠ #Highperformancematerials @475.supply

The Findling The architecture needed to be topologically distinct from the other house on the property. There is no front door. Instead of entering from the side of the building one enters directly into the middle of the plan from underneath. This fundamentally changes your relationship with entering. The home surrounds you upon entry with the hospitality of an embrace — the fundamental primitive gesture of a hug resting on the most basic approach to organizing stones on the land. During an early site visit we noticed the topography at the edge of the woods sloped ten feet at a similar pitch to a comfortable stair. Atop this slope was an old stone wall. The idea of floating the building on glacial erratic boulders was inspired. The question of how to place a stair on this hillside and transition between the outer world and inner world was the next step. The result is three primary building elements: the stones it rests on, a simple metal stair between grade and entry, and the almost entirely wooden home above. The stair is stainless steel to withstand the harsh environment. On the one hand it needed to be sturdy, safe, and comfortable. On the other hand, it needed to be something curious and unique. No detail could appear too familiar. There was an incredibly tight budget. An adventurous local metal fabricator was found. The stair was designed to be assembled from water jet cut steel sheets and simple bent parts. Each part was cut, labeled, and as much as possible prefabricated with the remaining parts bolted together on site. A custom perforated pattern was cut for drainage. Raised bars were added near the nose of each tread for traction. Simple metal helical pile footings support the stair. A sinuous railing without pickets was designed to invite a further departure from the familiar. ¹ Model ² Section ³ Detail ⁴ Axonometric ⁵ Structural analysis ⁶ 3D model ⁷⁻⁸ Framing ⁹⁻¹⁰ Stair installed #Architecture @of_possible ⁠ #Construction @alulawoodworks #Model @castillo.fab #Photographs @jakebalston ⁠#Images @darcstudio_ #Highperformancematerials @475.supply @rockwoolna ⁠ #Masonry @cgstoneinc #sitevisit @nsbuilders #Helicalpiles @technometalpost

The Findling "We are a landscape of all we have seen.” - Isamu Noguchi The home is sited partially within a woodland edge. Half of the home rests over a New England stone wall built between 1770 and 1830 when the land was cleared for farming. Stone walls like this are features of New England’s cultural landscape and are found deep in new growth forests of the region. They are now historic relics scavenged for new field stone walls throughout the country. In the late 18th century when the wild forest on this landscape was cleared the shallow rocky soils were no longer bound together by roots. Without roots holding the soils in place each winter to spring the freeze-thaw cycle would push rocks to the surface. Imagine being a farmer of this land in the 18th century and each year the land has a surreal greeting for you: new rocks pressing through the surface of your field as if it were growing stones! Those farmers must have had a sense of humor as they cleared their fields of stones each season and stacked them into walls. Two 5’ tall boulders were found on the property and placed on concrete footings in line with the original stone wall. Two much larger boulders over 10’ tall were found at a quarry nearby. These range in weights from 20,000 lbs to over 60,000 lbs. To prevent the stones from migrating on their footings, a 1” diameter stainless steel pin was set 18” into the concrete footings and the bottom of the boulders. At the top of the stones bearing plates for the steel frame were bolted to the boulders with threaded rods. The single pin at the base of each stone alowed them to be rotated for the most appropriate orientation. Natural stones have a stance. Intentionally positioning them in relation to the landscape and building above gives the architecture a posture and friendly nature. ¹ Physical model ²⁻⁴ Placing the boulders from the site ⁵⁻¹⁰ Placing the boulders from the quarry #Architecture @Of_Possible ⁠ #Construction @alulawoodworks #Models @castillo.fab ⁠ #Photographs @jakebalston #Highperformancematerials @475.supply #Masonry @cgstoneinc #Rigging @radiuscraneandrigging #Sitevisit @NSBuilders @motifmediaco #Inspiration @noguchimuseum

The Findling How can architecture be made of a place, of the land, or of something else? “Of” is a word worth reflecting on for architecture. As the preposition “of” provides linguistic access to relationships such as parts to a whole, measures and scale, people to groups, people to other things, an indication of origin or derivation, and cause or reason, architectures “of” have these relational values as well. There is some intrinsic, emotional, alchemic, and esoteric value given function through the relational creativity occurring when making architectures “of”. For The Findling, the home needed to be of this place and it needed to be the alter-ego of another house, The Pond House, on the same property. While The Pond House was built on concrete and steel boldly cantilevered over water and proudly visible from all sides around the pond, The Findling rests on 500 million year old+ glacial erratic boulders found on the property and from a nearby quarry. The building “floats” not over water but over the rugged landscape resting on these boulders. It is both grounded and untethered as is the ambition for the clients’ relationship to their memories of this place. Where do these ideas come from? On the one hand the moment in design when we noticed the stone wall was when we encountered the idea of using boulders for the foundation. On the other hand, we have in our memories feelings of awe discovering seemingly out of place glacial erratics hiking through these woods as children, and more recently that same feeling of wonder from the work of artist Allan Wexler and his relational explorations between art & design. Those memories have been waiting to become a project. Memories like these are themselves "findlings" in the creative process upon which ideas can be built. ¹ Physical model ² “Footing” 2012 by @allanwexlerstudio ³ Absurd Thinking Between Art and Design by #Architecture @Of_Possible ⁠ #Construction @alulawoodworks #Models @castillo.fab ⁠ #Photographs @jakebalston #Insulation @Rockwoolna ⁠ #Highperformancematerials @475.supply #Masonry @cgstoneinc #Sitevisit @NSBuilders @motifmediaco

The Findling “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke The clients for The Findling, two accomplished psychoanalysts from Manhattan, called us with an unusual and beautifully abstract request for a new home on their property in upstate New York. Previously, they had a difficult experience on this property with another home many years ago. They asked if we could design a new home and a process that would heal the wounds and trauma from their prior experience. In a conclusion that only two psychoanalysts and people with open hearts could come to, they asked if we could create an architecture that would over time allow them to restore their relationship with this place which is so precious to them. In every way possible the new home we were to design needed to be the opposite of the other house on the property — a modern home cantilevered over a pond. Their plan was to live in the new home we were to design and eventually retire to the pound house. The new home would then become a guest house where their children could stay when visiting. The architecture needed to be an alter ego to the pond house. The essence of this brief was not only to discover an architecture of alterity — but to be custodians of a process through design, pricing, and construction that would be a restorative antithesis to their previous experience building the house on the pond. ¹ Physical model ² Plan ³ Sketches made during the first meeting with the client. ⁴ Glacial erratic boulders ⁵ Site in fall ⁶ Site in spring #Architecture @Of_Possible ⁠ #Construction @alulawoodworks #Models @castillo.fab ⁠ #Photographs @jakebalston ⁠#Images @DarcStudio_ ⁠ #Insulation @Rockwoolna ⁠ #Highperformancematerials @475.supply @proclima_de #Masonry @cgstoneinc #Rigging @radiuscraneandrigging

@45WhiteOak "A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasurable again. The model is the measurable part." – Louis Kahn Architectural models (typically) truthfully recreate the proportions of a building and elements of a design that can be measured. Unless a model studies relationships between elements with no scale, models normally at least communicate proportion which is independent of scale. But what about the “unmeasurable” that Louis Kahn is referring to? What about those attributes of a building that are dependent on the scale of the actual building? Can the unmeasurable be captured in an architectural model as well? Can it be done with any truth compared to an actual building? Similar to actual buildings, models can create a tension between imagination and reason. In this way models can evoke a range of unmeasurable emotions. Models are inherently relational objects in this way. They have inward relationships between their own features and they have outward relationships to their audience and their environment. Depending on the information a model contains or omits and its composition, a model behaves in relationship to its audience first by the degree to which it is open or closed to interpretation — to what degree is it comprehensible or incomprehensible? Does it draw you in so you place yourself within its inner world or does it place an idea in your imagination outside of itself? #Architecture @Of_Possible ⁠ #Crafted @NSBuilders ⁠ #Developed @NickSchiffer ⁠ #Modeled @castillo.fab #Imaged @DarcStudio_ ⁠ #Photographed @jakebalston #Branded @Slash.Creative ⁠ #Whiteoak @MaderaSurfaces ⁠ #plaster @trowelincplastering

@45WhiteOak "The model is not to be copied, but to be understood and interpreted." – Auguste Rodin "The model is never a copy; it is a machine that produces other machines, functioning as the basis for creativity." - Gilles Deleuze When a model lives in an architectural studio it is “always on”. You can’t avoid it, you can’t turn it off, you can’t hide from it (unless you put it in a crate and store it away somewhere). The ideas present in architectural models are always out in the open in front of the studio. While buildings themselves go on to become characters in peoples’ lives, models become characters in the life of the studio. Models of projects outlive their own design process and go on to be part of other future design projects. They carry a lineage of ideas and knowledge along with them to grow upon, move beyond, explore differently, or evolve with other ideas. The individual design process for any given project can be similar to a Darwinist evolution of ideas that evolves over time to more capable and better adapted solutions. The multiple design processes within a studio across many projects are similar to a coevolution of species evolving in relationship to one another. Keeping models of prior projects around keeps ideas alive and present in the company of new design projects. #Architecture @Of_Possible ⁠ #Crafted @NSBuilders ⁠ #Developed @NickSchiffer ⁠ #Modeled @castillo.fab #Imaged @DarcStudio_ ⁠ #Photographed @jakebalston #Branded @Slash.Creative ⁠ #Whiteoak @MaderaSurfaces ⁠ #plaster @trowelincplastering

@45WhiteOak "Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority." - Francis Bacon Models are a great measure of truth. When our knowledge of the world aligns with the reality of the world, there is truth. Physical architectural models have a special status as relational objects in the design process because they allow for this alignment in ways that drawing and image making cannot. Models level the playing field of understanding. The architects, engineers, clients, their children, and their friends all perceive models with their full faculties of spatial awareness. Second only to the building itself, a model aligns us with the truth of a project. Sometimes models are made during the design process and sometimes after. They can range from the literal to the abstract. On the one hand models are physical constructions bound at the very least by being made of material. On the other hand, models are unbound by the full constraints of the actual building they model. This is their novel power. Unbound in this way, models have freedom to bracket information in and out of focus. As such, they function as form of architectural creativity testing ideas, adjusting their presence, and as material objects of understanding and interpretation. #Architecture @Of_Possible ⁠ #Crafted @NSBuilders ⁠ #Developed @NickSchiffer ⁠ #Modeled @castillo.fab #Imaged @DarcStudio_ ⁠ #Photographed @jakebalston #Branded @Slash.Creative ⁠ #Whiteoak @MaderaSurfaces ⁠ #Tegl @Petersentegl ⁠