House 23.2

Designed by Omer Arbel, 23.2 is a house for a family built on a large rural acreage outside Vancouver in the West Coast of Canada. There is a gentle slope from east to west and two masses of old growth forest defining two “outdoor rooms” each with a its own distinct ecology and conditions of light; the house is situated at the point of maximum tension in between these two environments, and as such acts at once to define the two as distinct, and also to offer a focused transition between them.
The design of the house itself began, as a point of departure, with a depository of one hundred year old Douglas Fir beams reclaimed from a series of burned down ware- houses. The beams were of different lengths and cross sectional dimensions, and had astonishing proportions - some as long as 20 meters, some as deep as 90 cm. It was agreed that the beams were sacred artefacts in their current state and that they would not manipulate them or finish them in any way.
Because the beams were of different lengths and sizes, the architect needed to com- mit to a geometry that would be able to accommodate the tremendous variety in di- mension, while still allowing the possibility of narrating legible spaces. He settled on a triangular geometry.
He folded wood triangular frames made of the reclaimed beams to create roof which would act as a secondary (and habitable) landscape, drapping this artificial landscape over the gentle slope of the site. Folds were manipulated to create implicit and explic- it relationships between indoor and outdoor space, such that every interior room had a corresponding exterior room.
To maximize ambiguity between interior and exterior space, he removed definition of one significant corner of each room by pulling the structure back from the corner it- self, using bent steel columns. Also large accordion door systems were introduced in these open corners so that the entire façade on both sides of each significant corner could retract and completely disappear.

Omer Arbel, born in Jerusalem, is a Vancouver-based, 34-year-old architect and designer. He is the founder of OAO, an award-winning architectural and design practice, and Creative Director of Bocci, an innovative manufacturer of industrial design objects, furniture, lighting and architectural building technologies. His latest projects include the designs for the 2010 winter Olympics medals and award-winning interiors for Ping’s Café, a Japanese restaurant in Vancouver and a design installation at the prestigious Spazio Rosanna Orlandi during Milan Design Week 2010.
Arbel’s projects cover a broad range, from luxurious private residences, such as the recently complete 23.2 house, to bespoke lighting installations such as the 28 chandelier, to the innovative yet accessibly priced electrical wall units of the 22 series. He is also the winner of the Ronald J. Thom award 2010.

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