‘Solo Houses’ Skip Client Constraints in Favor of Architects

[ Filed under Ultramodern & in the Architecture category ]

The customer is always right, but what about the client? As any practicing architect known, clients can be wonderful collaborators or painful barriers to the creative process – hence this series of homes commissioned outside the normal designer/resident duality.

The Solo Houses project starts with a specific region and set of properties, then unleash a select set of young and talented architects given relatively free range (though, of course, a still-limited budget) to work  with the context and landscape to create something suitable and unique.

Chilean studio Pezo von Ellrichshausen Architects is one of the first design groups on board, tackling an area south of Catalonia with a perched concrete podium that rises up out of the landscape. Surely not suited to every would-be buyer, it requires someone whose needs match it after the fact but, perhaps, does not feel the desire to be deal with designing or building.

Though certainly not for those light on cash, this series represents a fascinating trend away from conventional relationships in the realm of residential architecture. The results are almost more like collectibles for connaisseurs than traditional habitats – a chance for some, perhaps, to own the work of famous architectural creators before their fame comes to fruition (like speculation in the art market).