colab studio, llc

Renovation of a 1954 bungalow home in Tempe, Arizona. A tight budget necessitates simplicity, efficiency. A large central courtyard.    A flexible, transformable house. The existing house: Gutted. Three new walls positioned. Four mobile wardrobes added, each with a built-in door. Bedrooms may be created or taken away as needed. Re-used steel frames and decking create new entry and patios. The addition: Mobile millwork separates the great room (kitchen, dining, living) from studio. When entertaining, the millwork moves east to create a 1000 SF dining/living space. If the studio grows,...

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Appreciating the unloved; environmental seeing & learning, natural and otherwise: A park has been dedicated to a woman who befriended the homeless, loved low desert “scrub” (common creosote), and organized the neighborhood to rebuild a local desert park. Four sculptures are created by perfecting greatly enlarged miniscule parts of creosote flowers, leaves, seeds, and buds. Bronze sculptures appear along a tertiary but heavily utilized desert path through the park. Text is added describing amazing attributes of the plant, such as its ability to produce 30 million flowers in a life span,...

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A seemingly banal lift station is transformed into a beautiful architectural detail through the addition of a water-jet-cut steel cornice.  Rather than make the lift station simply recede further from view, the station broadcasts his valued use to its community.  The cornice is comprised of patterns derived from water, as well as imagery comparing desert and water based flora, that will cast shadows along the walls throughout the day.  These constantly changing shapes will change hour to hour, day to day, to create an ever-changing artistic display.  At night, eight LED lights cast patterns...

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A 1954 building’s only public space, a roof terrace, was badly damaged in a storm and must be rehabilitated. A historic restoration is not desired by most residents. Working with countless existing idiosyncrasies (utilities, structures, layout), a carefully articulated system of asymmetrical linear patters is developed to harmonize all elements. New surfaces are treated as applications, leaving gaps to absorb sound and expose the existing structure at opportune moments. The design is meant to focus on the vast views. All work must last for 50 years, withstanding daily direct western Arizona sunlight....

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Expressing the audacity of our desert oasis: Shade structures are required at four diverse locations within a large park. The visibly adjacent, raised earth-buttressed canal brings water 350 miles from the Colorado River to Phoenix as the city continues to grow. We sought a way to describe the precarious scale of human intervention on the landscape. Comparing such an endeavor with weightlessness moments found in sporting events, 6,000 pound local stones can be quarried and set on posts in various configurations around the huge soccer tournament park, surrounded on 2 sides by the canal. Shapes mimicking...

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Beginning with the question of how to make all 300 million US citizens feel like a cohesive community, we decided to study how people in the US Armed Services work together to get through tough situations while each individual maintains a balance between giving themselves to the group versus keeping a sense of personal identity. The project contains three levels of existence; individual, communal, and universal; which are physically and visually connected throughout the main space with the airport’s USO. 15 installations of typical house-shaped stainless steel boxes are placed flowing from outside...

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A previous client is in need of expansion, and desires the ability to move forward with a new master plan. The conceptual master plan and renderings of potential new buildings have been created to engage the community in discussion and to assist in fundraising. Existing courtyards are strenghened, and new ones created by placing buildings at strategic locations. Views are maintained, while the campus is made more efficient for parking, pedestrians, utilities, and functions.

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To create a direct connection between community members and their new community center, personal objects either donated by individuals or photographed by the artist will be collected, transformed, and attached directly to the building. At the most visible part of the building, the glazing will display a graphic series of doors, one within each of 20 bays, expressing the building as a portal to change. On each door, a graphic image of transformed personal objects will be placed as an abstract “wreath” or welcome sign. At the building’s three entrances, indentations within the exterior walls...

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As our own needs had changed, we spent 2007 exploring opportunities for a new living space. These are designs created for three of the sites we considered. An urban site with a buildable area of 30x45 feet produced a 3-story townhouse. This plan connected the front and back yards through the living spaces with a studio floating above the public zone. 3 bedrooms facing the street are clad in flush sheets of glass. A desert oriented site looks at bold abstract forms and playing with ideas of privacy as well as complex arrangements of symmetry and asymmetry. A more suburban site on a busy...

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Working with the community, the creation of a public venue was to take shape in a city with very little public space. Hired to create artwork at a new light rail station, it is decided to add a public venue adjacent to the station. The design incorporates infrastructure at the station to enable the local community to sell goods and produce. The venue would also function when a market is not taking place by providing landscape, shade, and seating in order to make the option of public transportation more inviting. The polished stainless steel canopy reflects the activity of the market to the busy...

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