CATALYST ARCHITECTURE | Design_By_Place: Design_By

Place based Northern Arizona home design 'roots' to its site through the use of natural stone and heavy wood timbers.

APRIL 23, 2014

This place-based custom home was designed to fit into the landscape of northern Arizona and the Prescott National Forest. Based on the architectural legacy of Mary Colter and National Park Service style, the concept for the home was that of an old lodge that had been renovated for a modern-day residence.

The home is rooted to its place through the predominant use of the natural materials found all around it- native stone and wood- for the columns, exterior wall finishes, and rustic wood beams that support its main roof. The Great Room itself features a full stone fireplace, a tongue and groove wood ceiling, and heavy wooden trusses overhead. A full height glass wall with 7' high telescoping glass doors opens to a generous wrap-around deck, blurring the lines between the interior and exterior and further connecting the home to its site.

Metal Architecture Magazine highlights the interpretive aspects of Catalyt's San Luis National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center

APRIL 5, 2014

"A metal roof, combined with a rough timber frame and tall windows, was a natural fit for the refuge and the agrarian roots of the Central Valley region," Ackerman says. "The inverted roof design over the administrative wing of the facility is symbolic of the wings of a bird in flight, which interprets the refuge's role as a vital migratory stopover point along the Pacific Flyway for large concentrations of waterfowl, shorebirds and other waterbirds."

"According to Matthew Ackerman, LEED-AP AIA, principal of Catalyst Architecture, the firm specializes in "place-based interpretive design," which means the architecture interprets, or "tells the story" of a place from its cultural, historic and/or physical characteristics. For this project, the firm interpreted a number of different aspects of the refuge through the architecture, leading to the choice of metal as an exterior cladding. "The architectural legacy of the Central Valley is largely one of agrarian buildings," Ackerman explains. They especially looked at a lot of the old barn structures that had tin metal roofs and metal siding. "We noticed that metal was a really common building material for the older barn structures in the region, just as the old wooden timbers were."

-Marcy Marro, Editor Metal Architecture Magazine

Read more here

Color in Place-Based Design

MARCH 26, 2014
Did you ever get the feeling about a building that it somehow 'just belonged', or that its placement on the site– its form, materials, or even colors were somehow 'just right'? Or perhaps once inside, have you ever experienced that a building's interior spaces were connected to its surrounding landscape in such a way that the inside and outside just seemed to 'flow' between one another?

Many of the living, working, and playing environments we're tasked with designing are intended to explore this connection between the natural and man-made realms, between a building and its site, between architecture and 'place'- and that's true whether that place is physical, cultural, historical, and/or all of the above. This is the essence "place-based" design- and it drives almost every commission we undertake. To do this, we often start by immersing ourselves in the project's setting– its culture, history, surrounding land forms, existing vegetation, and even the colors of the land and sky itself– in order to "tell the story" of the place for which we're designing.

We strive to weave these observations throughout our design work for both the building and site development. This isn't necessarily a novel school of thought, or a new approach to architecture– anyone who has studied or experienced the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, understands that some of his best designs seem to flow effortlessly from the landscapes for which they were conceived.

We are currently making our final color and finish selections for an exciting new project in Los Alamos, New Mexico– a 6,000 sq.ft. Nature Center for the Pajarito Environmental Education Center (PEEC)– which will serve as an educational destination for the study of the canyons, streams, plants and wildlife of the Pajarito Plateau. Earlier on in our process we used our observations of the northern New Mexico environs (its plants, animals, and landscape) to guide the architectural form of the project. Similarly, we are now looking to the colors of the Pajarito Plateau to inform the project's final material and finish selections in order to tell the story of this uniquely beautiful place.

The image above shows the plateau in its fresh bloom of spring, peppered by pines and snowflakes– yet dazzling in color, from bright yellows to deep greens and warm coppery oranges. We trust that our observations and resulting finish selections will help make the completed nature center an authentic inhabitant of its landscape– blurring the lines between interior and exterior, between the natural and man-made, as a way of paying homage to its native environment– the source and reason for its existence.

Los Alamos County Nature Center
Catalyst Architecture | Specialists in Energy-Efficient Place Based Design

Earthship Architecture Comes of Age

JUNE 10, 2012

Originally developed by NM architect Michael Reynolds, Earthship Architecture has come along way over the years. The basic premise though remains the same– recycling modern society's discarded natural resources– old tires, soda cans, glass bottles, etc. in order to create durable, inexpensive, and beautiful architecture that is as energy saving, as it is resource efficient.

Earthship homes are typically designed to heat and cool themselves, passively using natural ventilation and thermal mass construction techniques to provide stable, comfortable indoor temps. Earthships are generally off-grid structures, minimizing reliance on electricity and fossil fuels.

Earthship homes are designed around these 5 concepts:

thermal/solar heating & cooling
solar & wind generated electricity
built with natural & recycled materials
on-site water harvesting & food production
contained sewage treatment

To learn more about Earthship Architecture, go to http://earthship.com.

Sweet dreams are made of this...

Santa Ana NWR Visioning Masterplan

MAY 25, 2012
Our place-based interpretive design work for the Santa Ana NWR Visioning Masterplan draws upon numerous elements unique to this Lower Rio Grande Valley refuge.

These include the broad gentle arcs of the visitor center's site development- recalling the Rio Grande river and its characteristic 'resacas' (remnants of the river's previous locations on the valley floor); the organic exterior column design that references the marsh plants, cattails, and low-land hardwoods of the Rio Grande valley; as well as the soaring curved roof lines of the Visitor Center building itself, which echoes the exceptionally diverse avian presence at the refuge, unique to this internationally recognized birding destination.

Sustainability features for the proposed visitor center structure include a 35 kWh photovoltaic array, natural daylighting opportunities, locally harvested timbers, and deep overhangs for solar management and building cooling.

Located on the US/Mexico border 10 miles southeast of McAllen, Texas, the facility has been conceptually designed as a net-zero energy building– capable of earning a LEED-Platinum certification from the USGBC.