Boxy Bridge is a multi-story urban infill house located near the town center of Fayetteville, Arkansas. The architecture emerges from unique interactions between a compact and highly constrained site, a diverse local context, and the client’s demands for both a private enclave and extensive interior/exterior connections.
Project Name: Boxy Bridge
Studio Name: SILO AR+D
Project Size: 2100 ft2
Project Budget: $300000
Completion Date: 2018
Building Levels: 2
Location: Fayetteville Arkansas, United States
Photography: Aaron Kimberlin
Located adjacent to an active 1950’s era fire station, Boxy Bridge is surrounded by a tightly woven eclectic mix of residential and commercial buildings of varied style and type. The topography falls dramatically in elevation toward the south and west from the site, adding a layered and vivid character to the context. In response to the dramatic slope and the neighborhood scale, rather than a monolithic form, Boxy Bridge was conceived as an ensemble of stacked volumes whose proportion and organization address the dynamic distinctions between the site’s edges. The northern and western edges are largely opaque to create a visual and acoustic buffer. In contrast, exaggerated carved openings create transparency and define entries from the street on the east to the south facing courtyard.
Built for an active retired couple who intend to age-in-place, the clients desired spaces of refuge from the busy urban environment in their daily lives, which dictated the organization of the main living spaces and cloistered master suite on the entry level. Conversely, as frequent entertainers, the courtyard, roof deck above the garage, and upper level salon offer terraced indoor and outdoor communal spaces with access to expansive views as one ascends in section.
The material strategy reinforces the spatial logic of the architectural approach. The upper level volume containing a guest suite and communal living areas is clad in dark corrugated metal, acting as a “bridge” between two lower white-metal-clad masses that house the master suite and garage spaces, respectively. The main living spaces on the entry level are conceived as interstitial zone that moves freely in plan and section that connects the urban edge of the site, to the courtyard, framed by a garden wall. The quality of these interior spaces is expressed on the exterior through the articulation of interlocking forms and material transitions that create sense of movement between the volumes and surfaces.
This economic house (2,100sf/ $300,000) was constructed using a conventional residential palette of products and materials as well as normative construction methods.
