Topo House
Topo House | Johnsen Schmaling Architects
2014 Recipient | AIA Housing Award
Echoing the dramatic surface deformations that occur when wind blows over the crops and grasses of the surrounding prairie, the building skin – a high-perfomance ventilated rainscreen system with concrete fiber panels – is organized by 190 individually shaped, black-anodized aluminum fins of interrelated contracting and expanding shapes. Depending on the time of the day and the angle from which they are viewed, the fins create a constantly changing veil whose shifting geometry subverts the volumetric simplicity of the house itself.
The house is built around a palette of sustainable and highly durable materials to make this a “house for life,” featuring an envelope that is designed to endure the continuous onslaught of the Midwest’s severe weather conditions and extreme temperature fluctuations. Copper, concrete, and anodized aluminum dominate the exterior palette, allowing the house to age gracefully. The structure itself was engineered to the stricter standards of the commercial building code in anticipation of the area’s increasingly violent, tornado-strength storms.
2014 Recipient | AIA Housing Award
Echoing the dramatic surface deformations that occur when wind blows over the crops and grasses of the surrounding prairie, the building skin – a high-perfomance ventilated rainscreen system with concrete fiber panels – is organized by 190 individually shaped, black-anodized aluminum fins of interrelated contracting and expanding shapes. Depending on the time of the day and the angle from which they are viewed, the fins create a constantly changing veil whose shifting geometry subverts the volumetric simplicity of the house itself.
The house is built around a palette of sustainable and highly durable materials to make this a “house for life,” featuring an envelope that is designed to endure the continuous onslaught of the Midwest’s severe weather conditions and extreme temperature fluctuations. Copper, concrete, and anodized aluminum dominate the exterior palette, allowing the house to age gracefully. The structure itself was engineered to the stricter standards of the commercial building code in anticipation of the area’s increasingly violent, tornado-strength storms.
