ATLANTA, GA- Haus Gables, a new groundup residential project designed and developed by architectural designer Jennifer Bonner, director of MALL, has recently completed construction in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia. The 2,200squarefoot home challenges the domestic interior through materiality, color, and form. It is one of only a handful of residences in the country made of crosslaminated timber (CLT), an exceptionally strong wood material produced by gluing together layers of lumber that alternate in direction.
Project Name: Haus Gables
Architect Name: MALL
Photography Credits:
Exterior images at night as well as the aerial photo – Tim Hursley
The interior images and daytime exterior photo – NAARO
Project Credits:
Architecture and Interior Design: Jennifer Bonner / MALL
Structural Engineers: AKT II (Hanif Kara), Bensonwood, PEC Structural Engineering, and Fire Tower
General Contractor: Principle Builders Group CLT Manufacturer: KLH USA
For this singlefamily home adjacent to the Atlanta Beltline, a cluster of six gable roofs are combined to form a single roof. In an attempt to rework spatial paradigms of the past, such as Le Corbusier’s free planand Aldof Loos’s raumplan, Bonner offers the roof plan as a way to organize architecture. Here, the roof plan establishes rooms, catwalks, and double height spaces in the interior by aligning these spaces to ridges and valleys in the roof above. In this case, the floor planis a result of the roof.
From a curbside view, an asymmetrical and unfamiliar form replaces the traditional gable elevation house, as if the usual form were clipped. Strange profiles emerge on all four elevations as the six gable roofs are cut at the perimeter’s massing. Other slight alterations to the ordinary include roof pitches which are much steeper than those found in industry standards. “The underbelly of the gable roofs creates an airy, lofty space filled with ample natural light in what is actually a small building footprint,” says architectural designer Jennifer Bonner. The house, which sits on a 24footwide plot, has a width of 18 feet, the same size as a singlewide mobile home. The uncharacteristically slim home generates ideas for the applicability of the roof planto denser urban environments.
All exterior and interior walls, floors, and roof are made of solid CLT panels, a material widely used in construction overseas but is new to the US market. Customcut, hoisted into place, and assembled in fourteen days’ time, the CLT in Haus Gables enables a solid house that eschews stick frame construction. Structurally inventive, the panels also promote a monolithic view of the material from the domestic interior.
Haus Gables further engages in the conceptual exploration of materiality through a series of fauxfinishes that clad the exterior and parts of the interior. Bonner reworks the old tradition of fauxfinishing in the American South, historically stemming from an inability to afford precious materials and the subsequent desire to “fake it,” as well as utilizes a more contemporary technique of “color blocking” currently found in pop culture. Of the contrasting materials, Bonner said, “When building a house entirely out of CLT, I wanted to offset the image of a wooden interior with faux finishes. These fake materials are colorful, bold and deceiving.”
On the exterior, two sides of the house are covered in faux bricks made of stucco dash finish of glass beads that produces a glittery effect. Inside, black terrazzo is not pouredin place and polished, but applied as a thin tile, while oriented strand board (OSB) is replaced by ceramic tiles in the image of OSB. Marble finishes in the bedroom and adjacent bathroom are made of unlikely materials, including vinyl and cartoonish drawings, rather than the oftdesired, real Italian marble. Areas of grey concrete, yellow vinyl marble, and black terrazzo line some walls much like wainscoting, with several long views through the house allowing for a colorblock effect. These faux finishes seem to indicate spatial divisions, when in reality they do not correspond to the actual boundaries of any room.
The interior is further activated by a range of furnishings from female designers who boldly utilize material, form, and color in their work. Bonner selected work by Ray Eames, Jessica Nakanishi of MSDS Studio, Stine Gam of GamFratesi Studio, Anna Castelli Ferrieri for Kartell, Annie Hieronimus for Ligne Roset, Patricia Urquiola for Glas Italia, Laurel Consuelo Broughton of WELCOMECOMPANIONS, Aino Aalto, and Ragnheiður Ösp.
With the use of unconventional materials and an unusual roof design, Haus Gables is an exploration of new ways that spatial organization, form, and material might function in a home.
Located in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood, adjacent to the Atlanta BeltLine and a 5 minute walk from Krog Street Market Designated exterior spaces, including a 130 squarefoot terrace integrated into the volume of the house and an deck extending to the back yard An early pioneer of the use of Cross Laminated Timber (CLT), an exceptionally strong wood material, in the United States Parts of the exterior and interior walls covered in novel fauxfinishes Rooms, catwalks, and double height spaces in the interior are aligned to ridges and valleys in the roof above, such that the floorplan is a result of the roof Furniture from female designers including Ray Eames, Jessica Nakanishi, Anna Castelli, Ragnheiður Ösp, and more CLT Installation Specialist: Terry Ducatt Wood Products Specialist: 7 Seas Group USA Civil Engineer: Crescent View Engineering Mechanical Systems: Emily McGlohn Associate Architect: Olinger Architects Facade Research: Alex Timmer Landscape Design: Carley Rickles Photography: NAARO, Timothy Hursley Interior Products: Coverings Etc. (EcoTerr tile); Stone Source (Ornamenta Artwork tile); RPS Distributors Vives Ceramica (StrandR tile); Rabern Nash (Johnsonite and Forbo tile) Wall Assembly: VaproShield, VaproMat, Kooltherm K20 Insulation (Kingspan Insulation) Subcontractors: Cool Roofing Company, Natural Plastering, Inc., RayPaul Coating, Inc. Furniture: Switch Modern (Kartell, Glas Italia, Stark); DOM Interiors (Casamania); Design Within Reach (Herman Miller), A+R (HAY); Yliving (MUUTO); Hem Design Studio; Ligne Roset; Bend; Blu Dot; Floyd; Artek; WELCOMECOMPANIONS.
MALL
MALL is a creative practice for art and architecture founded by Jennifer Bonner in 2009. MALL stands for Mass Architectural Loopty Loops or Maximum Arches with Limited
Liability—an acronym with builtin flexibility. By engaging “ordinary architecture” such as gable roofs and everyday materials, Bonner playfully reimagines architecture in her field.
Born in Alabama, Bonner is Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of the Master in Architecture II Program at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. As a recipient of Emerging Voices Award (AIA/ Young Architects Forum), Progressive Architecture (P/A) Award and Next Progressives (Architect Magazine), her creative work has been published in architectural trade journals including Architect, Architectural Review, Architectural Record, and Wallpaper, as well as more experimental publications including a+t, DAMN, ART PAPERS, PLAT, Offramp, and MAS Context. She is author of A Guide to the Dirty South: Atlanta and a recent guest editor for ART PAPERS. Bonner has exhibited work at the Royal Institute of British Architects, National Building Museum, WUHO gallery, HistoryMIAMI, Yve YANG gallery, pinkcomma gallery, Istanbul Modern Museum, Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway, and Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Jennifer Bonner
Born in Alabama, Jennifer Bonner founded MALL, a creative practice for art and architecture, in 2009. MALL stands for Mass Architectural Loopty Loops or Maximum Arches with Limited Liability—an acronym with built-in flexibility. By engaging “ordinary architecture” such as gable roofs and everyday materials, Bonner playfully reimagines architecture in her field.
Jennifer Bonner is Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of the Master in Architecture II Program at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. As a recipient of the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers, Emerging Voices Award (AIA/ Young Architects Forum), Progressive Architecture (P/A) Award and Next Progressives (Architect Magazine), her creative work has been published in architectural trade journals including ARCHITECT, Architectural Review, Architectural Record, Metropolis and Wallpaper, as well as more experimental publications including a+t, DAMN, ART PAPERS, PLAT, Offramp,and MAS Context. She is the author of A Guide to the Dirty South: Atlantaand a recent guest editor for ART PAPERS. Bonner has exhibited work at the Royal Institute of British Architects, National Building Museum, WUHO gallery, HistoryMIAMI, Yve YANG gallery, pinkcomma gallery, Istanbul Modern Museum, Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial.