The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and The Chicago Athenaeum just announced their annual selection of ‘Europe’s emerging young architects and designers‘, and we are honored to have been selected as one of the highlighted firms. From the press release:

A total of 61 architects and industrial designers from architecture and industrial design and manufacturing firms across Europe were selected by a jury of architects that convened in Chicago June 2009.

An exhibition of work by the 2009 Laureates opens at Contemporary Space Athens (46-48 Megalou Vassiliou, Rouf-Athens, Greece) on Wednesday, September 16 and continues through November 1. A more formal exhibition and presentation takes place at the symposium, “The City and the World,” in Florence, Italy the second week of November 2009.

The “Europe 40 Under 40” program was initiated by The European Centre and The Chicago Athenaeum to spotlight and identify the next generation of European architects and design professionals who will impact future living and working environments, cities, and rural areas in Europe and around the world.

In 2008, hundreds of architecture and design submissions for 2009 were received by The European Centre from across Europe (both Members States of the European Community and Accession States). “The jury selection and process was extremely difficult,” states Ioannis Karalias, Museum Vice President, The Chicago Athenaeum. “The jury was presented with hundreds of excellent projects and designs from skyscrapers and large-scale urban planning projects to the highest quality industrial design for commercial and consumer use. It was difficult to narrow the number down to simply 40 design firms (60 designers and partners of design firms in total).”

Form Magazine just included Bercy Chen in their ‘5 to watch‘ issue.

We canvassed more than 100 architects and industry experts, asking them to nominate firms that embodied emerging talent.  After sifting through the candidates, we narrowed the list to five, examining their design philosophies and developing portfolios.  Keep an eye on their work; you’re bound to hear these names repeated over the next decade

Full article available here (PDF)

As we mentioned in the previous post, Red Bluff borrows from the oldest housing typology in the Western Hemisphere, the Pit House.  One of Red Bluff’s most dramatic architectural moves involves a 7 foot deep excavation which nestles the residence notably in the landscape, making it a modern version of this timeless dwelling.  Like the Pit House, Red Bluff will benefit from using the earth’s mass to maintain thermal comfort throughout the year.  The following sections illustrate the similarities between the Pit House and Red Bluff as they sit in the ground.

Pit House Section

Red Bluff Section

While the essence of Red Bluff is conversant with the Pit House, the process of refining the roof form has largely been influenced by a craft as time honored as this primitive dwelling; the art of origami.  One of the foremost authorities on the practice and theory of origami is American Physicist, Dr.Robert J. Lang.  According to him, “there’s a very simple problem that origami solves: whenever you have a big flat shape that has to get small.”  From the early design sketches, you can see Red Bluff’s roof form develop from an elongated, flat, rectangular shape into a couple of triangles that fold up from the landscape with grounded edges which act as the “creases”.

Refined Roof Angles

With this subtle folding of the landscape, an idea that combines origami with earth work, the possibility of a roof garden is born.  The following renderings show how the roof garden might look with various native flowers diagrammed by season.