Artscreen Box
The solid and glass panels on the upper portion of this building are screened by a massive architecturally scaled photograph printed on woven vinyl mesh. This innovative application of this technology developed for use as exterior advertising, provides a diffuse light for the interior office space, a seductive glow at night and a palate for collaboration with artist Joni Sternbach. Ms. Sternbach’s photograph of a serene ocean ripples inverts expectations of ground and sky, which becomes an uncanny and stunning gesture synthesizing art and architecture. Set into a rural hillside of Columbia County in New York’s Hudson Valley, this atelier and guest house is a clean modernist form clad in a richly textured exterior envelope.
The base of the building, bermed into a site that slopes down an 8’ incline, is constructed of cast-in-place concrete wrapped with a rough hewn lumber woven in a horizontally lapped configuration. The result is a complex interplay of light and shadow on a rich, tactile material.
The upper portion of the building has expansive banding of glass units inserted between a series of wood frames sheathed with cement board. This simple and inexpensive system of panelized construction has become a prototype for other larger-scaled institutional and residential projects.
