MOS Architects

Element House

MOS Architects . photos: © Florian Holzherr . + Element House

The argument goes that Form is a System and Shapes are, well, shapes. The two are disciplinary fr-enemies they act like friends from time to time, part of the same clique, but in private they trash each other. Systems people are pedantic technicians, neurotic puppet masters of geometry. They obsess over means. They talk too much about process. They claim to like Schoenberg.

Whereas, the Shape people describe themselves as cool, easy, and graphic. They are interested in an immediacy of effects. They live in Williamsburg. Systems are typically plan based. Shapes are elevations, or silhouettes. Systems are conceptual. Shapes are commercial. Systems like repetition and difference. They use patterns, trajectories, and magnitudes. Shapes prefer singularity, they use fillets to round corners and reinforce the shape. Systems are centrifugal. Shapes are centripetal. Systems get excited by the allure of computation. They play with Catia, Processing or Grasshopper, mumbling intensely about discretizing surfaces. Shapes prefer Photoshop and Illustrator. They use pens. Systems frustrate pictorial imagery, through their emphasis on process. They gaze at their feet. Shapes relish the pictorial. They swoon for photos. Systems produce their own ground. Shapes don’t like anything that disrupts their shape.
This little house in the middle of nowhere, it is indifferent to all of the above.

Architects: MOS Architects
Location: New Mexico, USA
Design Team: Michael Meredith, Hilary Sample, Ashley Bigham, Jason Bond, Ryan Culligan, Gideon Danilowitz, Michael Fa-ciejew, Steven Gertner, Jason Kim, Kera Lagios, Ryan Ludwig, Gabrielle Marcoux, Meredith McDaniel, Elijah Porter, Michael Smith, Mathew Staudt, Marrikka Trotter
Area: 1500.0 ft2
Project Year: 2014