Architects: PARA
Location: Syracuse, NY, USA
Architect In Charge: Jon Lott
Project Team: Jon Lott, Hilary Pinnington, Paul Kneeply
Area: 1125.0 ft2
Year: 2014
Photographs: Nathan Rader, Courtesy of PARA
From the architect. The Haffenden House is a writing studio with a garage/breezway at ground-level, library and writing space on the second level, and a curved/soft reading room on the third level. The project finds itself within the subur- buban realm, referencing Gianni Pettena’s Ice House from 1972, as a blank spot within the repetive image of “house.”
In the rear yard, the fabric solution is used on the interior as a curtain, offering the owners the flexibility to control the relationship of privacy within their context.
The poet’s studio uses a translucent silicon-impregnated fabric skin for a lightfilled writing room without the visual distraction of the suburbs. Inside the blank box, between the second and third levels, the section uses a bowl-shaped division, maximizing indirect light for the second level and avoiding any association with the landscape on the third.
