Steel construction. What comes to mind? Large ‘I’ beams, long trusses, and industrial buildings, right? But there’s so much that can be done using steel in architecture. While steel construction has been around for a while now, it isn’t widely accepted as the go-to material for building houses here in India. While there is a lot that steel has to offer, one of its most significant advantages is its faster construction speed. Take the Empire State building, for example, the 102-story tall building was constructed in just thirteen and a half months! That’s impressive even by today’s standards! Let’s take a look at 10 houses that used this cold, industrial material and built aesthetic and inviting spaces from it.
1. Kaufmann House by Richard Neutra | Steel Houses
Widely considered one of the most important houses of the 20th century, this modernist house was designed as a vacation home for a family in California. Its most distinctive feature is the highly polished steel fascia, one can almost feel the harsh Sun being reflected off from it. The stone and steel complement each other, both being these rigid materials placed against the Californian landscape. Interestingly, this was the same client who, a couple of years earlier, had commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build a home and that project was the Fallingwater House.
2. Cavalcante House by Bloco Arquitetos
This house was built in the Cerrado region in Brazil. The architects have paid attention to not having much disturbance to the natural environment of the site as it was near a National park. The site put a bunch of constraints in terms of its construction and the final design of the house took shape accordingly. Due to the hot climate in the area, prefabricated steel frames were used which only had to be assembled on-site, thus saving the laborers from having to manually construct on site. This project is an excellent example of how prefabricated steel can save up time and costs involved in the construction of buildings.
3. Glass House by Philip Johnson | Steel Houses
Built as his weekend retreat in Connecticut, this project is widely considered the architect’s “signature work”. It is a great case study to learn about proportions and symmetry in design. While it primarily only uses steel and glass, a cylindrical brick shaft protrudes from the roof, breaking the symmetry of the form of the house. The steel columns supporting the roof almost fade away and the boundary between the built and unbuilt is blurred. The reflections formed by the glass wall add to this effect and compliment the charcoal-painted steel beams.
4. Steel Study House II by Archipelontwepers
Designed for a family in Leeuwarden, a town in the Netherlands, the house provides stunning views of the Sea. The architects used prefabricated steel members to make up the pergolas and the blinds, making the space almost entirely open. Another smart decision was to have all the members painted in white, which perfectly compliments the blue of the Sea and makes the house appear lighter too. This was an experiment by the designers in prefabricated buildings and they plan on exploring it further in their next projects.
5. Stahl House by Pierre Koenig | Steel Houses
Designed by Pierre Koenig, in the late ‘50s, it uses sleek, steel columns and glass walls to provide panoramic views of Los Angeles from Hollywood Hills. The project was a part of The Case Study Houses program, an initiative by Arts & Architecture magazine to showcase modern ways of constructing houses in the post-war era. It focused on modern, horizontal, and clean aesthetics to showcase steel as a cost-effective option for building houses. The two-bedroom house appears to be very lightweight which was made possible with steel construction.
The project gained widespread popularity after Julius Shulman, one of the most well-known architectural photographers in the United States at that time, photographed it. The iconic black and white photograph would later become a major part of pop culture, showcasing the Stahl House as the house of fantasy.
6. Smriti 57 by Group Seven Architects
This 5,050 square feet residence in Juhu challenges conventional building construction materials and proves how steel can be beautifully expressed too. Designed as his residence, Architect Nitin Killawala took the opportunity to use steel as an alternative to R.C.C. which seemed an obvious choice to build a house. The result was this stunning house with its beautifully expressed structural system. All of the six-floor plates are supported by four, 450 mm diameter steel columns on the corners which provide them with a more open and flexible plan. It is the perfect example of “structural aesthetics”.
7. Glass House by Ângela Roldão Arquitetura
Envisioned as a tree house, this private residence in Brazil is a cozy escape from the fast-paced city life. The site is a part of a natural reserve, so it has lots of vegetation, streams, and trails. The black steel frame of the house perfectly contrasts its natural and organic environment. It is based on a grid of 20 and 40 feet to reduce wastage resulting from the cutting of the steel members. It feels like an assembly of cantilevering planes in the woods, made possible by using steel sections.
8. Sala Zen by Volume Matrix Studio | Steel Houses
This project from Ayutthaya, Thailand is a perfect example of beautifully crafted spaces using steel members. It carefully showcases these members, on the exterior facade, where they show how the structural members work, while on the interior it conceals them. This makes for very interesting views of the built spaces depending on where you are in the house.
9. Cigarra House by FGMF
The house is clearly defined into three blocks, one made from concrete and the other two from steel. The volumes created by the steel frames sit on top of the concrete structure and cantilever almost twelve feet over the space below. The design of the steel frames is similar to that of a shipping container in the sense that it has four columns on the corners and beams connecting them. Only in this case, additional steel members are used as ribs to give the structure more strength. The result is the lush space that these volumes have created.
10. Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe | Steel Houses
No discussion on steel houses is complete without mentioning this project by the German-American architect. Considered to be one of the most important works as part of the “International Style”, it was commissioned as a one-room weekend retreat in Plano, Illinois. It uses eight, steel columns that support the entire structure, making them both structural as well as features on the facade of the house.
As the site comes under the Fox river floodplain, so to protect the house during floods, the floor slab was raised five feet above the ground level, however, the house has flooded four times over the past 70 years. It is now maintained and owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the U.S. and is open to the public for visits. Despite the damage over the years, it has become an architectural icon. Interestingly, a copy of the Farnsworth house was created for the 2016 film, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice as Bruce Wayne’s residence. A perfect choice to portray the house of a billionaire because that is the perfect example of luxury, hidden away from the world.
Another really interesting project done using steel is the Mumbai Artists Retreat by Architecture Brio. Even though it was meant to be a community space rather than a private residence, it is a great example of how steel can be used to make inviting spaces.
This project was envisioned as a “tropical shed” and built on a coconut palm plantation, it uses steel framing to lift the built space off the ground. One of the design decisions was to have minimal disturbance on-site during construction and so some steel members were pre-fabricated and transported to the site where they were then assembled using nuts and bolts.
CITATION
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- Anon, (n.d.). Cavalcante House | Bloco Arquitetos – Escritório de Arquitetura em Brasília. [online] Available at: https://www.bloco.arq.br/en/arquitetura/cavalcante-house/ [Accessed 9 Sep. 2022].
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