College students within the Studio 804 design-build programme on the College of Kansas took cues from farmstead vernacular to create a main house and accent dwelling unit referred to as 722 Ash Avenue.
Named after its handle, the residence is positioned within the metropolis of Lawrence in northeastern Kansas. It was constructed as a speculative challenge, and the home was bought upon completion.
The challenge was created by Studio 804, a design-build programme affiliated with the structure faculty on the College of Kansas.
College students within the graduate-level programme spend a 12 months designing and establishing a challenge, with a deal with “sustainable, inexpensive and ingenious constructing options”.
Abutting a path that runs alongside the Kansas River, the Ash Avenue house sits in a transitional space in North Lawrence, the place city circumstances start to offer approach to agricultural fields.
“North Lawrence is understood for its high quality soil, massive timber, curb-less streets and random-size parcels earlier than it breaks into bigger farms farther from the city heart,” the crew stated.
“The rumble of freight trains and farm vehicles within the shadows of the towering grain elevators are solely blocks away.”
The crew took cues from the area’s farmstead vernacular to design the challenge, which encompasses a string of gabled volumes on a slanted, rectangular lot. The volumes are positioned at totally different angles, giving the house a dynamic look.
The 2 entrance volumes comprise the primary residence, which has one storey and totals 1,442 sq. toes (134 sq. metres). The rear quantity is a 516 square-foot (48-square-metre) ADU with a floor stage and a loft.
The principle residence and ADU are linked by a small quantity that acts as a shed, offering house for the storage of lawnmowers, gardening instruments and different gear.
The buildings have timber frames, and their partitions and roofs are clad in steady siding product of phenolic resin, a sturdy materials.
“We had been after one thing that will maintain its color and never fade in our scorching summer season solar,” stated Dan Rockhill, the professor who leads Studio 804.
Inside, one finds polished concrete flooring, painted drywall and IKEA cabinetry with fronts and counter tops product of Richilite – a composite materials product of resin-infused paper.
The principle residence has an easy format.
The road-facing quantity accommodates an ethereal kitchen and front room, the place the ceiling rises to 18 toes (5.5 metres) at its highest level. The quantity behind it holds two bedrooms and a rest room.
Connecting the 2 areas is a hall with a inexperienced wall full of philodendron vegetation.
The ADU accommodates versatile rooms that allow the constructing for use as visitor quarters or as a rental property, thus producing earnings for the home-owner.
“It additionally helps the town of Lawrence’s targets of elevated density near downtown, somewhat than continued sprawl into the countryside,” the crew stated.
The challenge – which earned LEED Platinum certification from the US Inexperienced Constructing Council – has numerous sustainable options, together with a extremely insulated constructing envelope and a 4.9-kw rooftop photo voltaic array.
“The buildings use know-how and commonsense design to scale back the constructing’s footprint and guarantee the house owners’ low-energy use and prices,” the crew stated.
Based in 1995, Studio 804 has accomplished 29 tasks, all in Kansas. Others embody a Passivhaus-certified house clad in yellow cedar and topped with a gabled roof, and a residence product of salvaged supplies equivalent to reclaimed metallic and wooden from railroad trestles.
The pictures is by Corey Gaffer Images.
