Olson Kundig’s Sawmill house is the only custom residential project honored with a 2018 AIA COTE Award; it was also a 2017 AIA Housing Award winner. To view a complete list of this year’s award-winning projects, see the announcement on the AIA website.
From the American Institute of Architects:
AIA and the Committee on the Environment (COTE) announce this year’s recipients of the COTE Top Ten Awards, the industry’s premier program celebrating great design and great performance. Now in their 22nd year, the Awards highlight projects that meet COTE’s rigorous criteria for social, economic, and ecological value.
Since 2014, past Top Ten recipients have been invited to submit post-occupancy data and narratives to be recognized with a single COTE Top Ten Plus award each year. In 2017, these separate tracks merged: The ‘Plus’ designation now denotes projects with exemplary performance data and post occupancy lessons.
Sawmill
Architect: Olson Kundig
Location: Tehachapi, California
Project site: Greenfield (Previously undeveloped land)
Building program type(s): Residential – Single-Family detached
Photo credit: Gabe Border
Photo credit: Gabe Border
Photo credit: Kevin Scott
Photo credit: Kevin Scott
Photo credit: Kevin Scott
“The team is commended for their site-specific analysis, as evidenced by the decision to let rainwater recharge the water table rather than collect it. If a single-family dwelling is to be built in a desert climate, this is how to do it.” ~ Jury statement.
Set in California’s harsh Mojave Desert, Sawmill offers a new model for the sustainable single-family home. The residential sector in the U.S. continues to be the highest consumer of energy; today more Americans reside in single-family homes than any other housing type. In 2016, 750,000 new single-family homes were constructed—more than double the number of multifamily units. More than any other building type, creating a new model for the single-family home has the potential to dramatically shift the energy landscape in the US, demonstrating that high design can also be high performance,
Sawmill is a net-zero single-family home that operates completely off the grid. The client brief called for a self-sufficient home that maximized connection between architecture and nature, and between family members inside. Riffing on the tradition of tents around a campfire, the house is comprised of three wings connected by the central hearth in the living area. A 12-by-26-foot window wall retracts with the turn of a wheel, transforming the outdoor patio into the fourth “tent” around the fire. Tough as nails, Sawmill’s durable materials will withstand the harsh climate, where fires are a major hazard in summer and winters are extremely cold. The design approach was driven by a scavenger mentality, seeking always to do more with less, including using salvaged and recycled materials whenever possible. Sited to minimize disturbance to its remote environment, Sawmill acknowledges that while the desert is harsh, it is also fragile. Historically, the valley had been used for mining, ranching and logging – hence the name “Sawmill.” Recognizing this past exploitation of the site, the homeowners wanted their house to give back to the land, rather than take from it. Sawmill stands as a testament to high design as an environmental ethic—a building that connects people to place.
Additional information:
Project attributes
Year of design completion: 2013
Year of substantial project completion: 2014
Gross conditioned floor area: 3,458 sq ft
Gross unconditioned floor area: 808 sq ft
Number of stories: 2
Project Climate Zone: Title 24 – Area 14
Annual hours of operation: 4,400
Site area: 1,677,060 sq ft
Project site context/setting: rural
Cost of construction, excluding furnishing: $166.7/sq ft
Number of residents, occupants, visitors: 6
Contractor: Bruce Shafer
Corrugated metal roofing: Steelogic
Engineer: Phil Turner
Engineer (energy): WSP Flack + Kurtz Gizmo
Engineer (structural): Monte Clark Engineering
Master welder: James Riddle
Photographers: Kevin Scott and Gabe Border
Jury
Michelle Addington, Dean, University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture, Austin, Texas
Jennifer Devlin-Herbert, FAIA, EHDD, San Francisco
Kevin Schorn, AIA, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, New York
Julie V. Snow, FAIA, Snow Kreilich, Minneapolis
M. Susan Ubbelohde, LOISOS + UBBELOHDE, Alameda, California
Jury comments
This house captures the phenomenology of living in the desert with the use of simple, frugal, reclaimed materials. The concept and composition are elegant yet straightforward. This is an excellent example of the potential beauty in a holistic passive approach. The house is completely off grid with a light environmental footprint.
The team is commended for their site-specific analysis, as evidenced by the decision to let rainwater recharge the water table rather than collect it. If a single-family dwelling is to be built in a desert climate, this is how to do it. The house, through its breathtaking simplicity, provides a calm but very smart connection with this profound and sometime hostile place.