Miner Road House

Miner Road HouseFaulkner ArchitectsOscar Riera Ojeda Publishers, March 2020Hardcover | 8-1/2 x 11 inches | 200 pages | 182 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-1946226341 | $49.99Publisher's Description:Dense observation of the landscape, climate, culture, and existing uses and patterns of the site were worked out in conversation with the client’s mission to mitigate environmental challenges; Faulkner Architects brings together site and home both phenomenologically in the design and technologically through sustainable features and practices.Technically a remodel, the house utilized the footprint of the existing house as a basis for a new floor plan. An existing fireplace was wrapped in concrete to serve as a major structural element anchor-ing the new architecture. This avoided additional grading and left the hillside open and natural. It also placed the new home directly under the shade of the old oaks, in intimate relationship with the trees surrounding it.This award-winning home is located on an eight acre, ex-urban property at the base of the Oakland Hills near San Francisco Bay. Formed of concrete and wrapped with Cor-ten steel panels, the net zero energy residence is an elegant, low maintenance response to its context which is draped in rich green foliage and majestic native oak trees. Referral Links:dDAB Commentary:Best I can tell, Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers has been putting out building monographs in various series for at least twenty years. The oldest one I have is from 1999, a slim volume devoted to Vincent James's Type/Variant House that was part of the "Single Building Series," which had at least eight titles. I'm not sure if there were other series between it and the recent "Masterpiece Series," which is made up of nine recently published and forthcoming books. One I have is devoted to Faulkner Architects' Miner Road House in California, a house that actually shares some traits with the VJAA house in Wisconsin: L-shaped plans, treed sites, metal exteriors, and wood interiors. Both are impressive modern houses that might also illustrate Ojeda's own architectural preferences when it comes to residential architecture.I wrote about the house and book a couple weeks ago for World-Architects, so I won't go too much further into them here. But I will say that the structure of the book works very well. It follows the order of an architectural project: after some brief words on the house come sketches, which are followed by presentation plans and models, then construction photos, and finally professional photographs of the finished house. It's a logical order whose visual narrative slowly reveals more of the house's design and its realization. Given that each book in the series has the same cover, minus the variations of the cover photograph and title, I'm guessing this internal structure is also consistent. (Actually I'm not guessing, as the book on Joseph N. Biondo's House Equanimity that I have is basically the same.) A consistent format is necessary to create a cohesive series, but the selection of projects that fit into the series is also important; if the buildings don't deserve full-length books, the series crumbles. The two books I have in the Masterpiece Series bode well for the whole, which is mainly made up of houses but will eventually veer into cultural buildings. Spreads: