HW
honor award unbuilt
Grid House Moto Design Shop The Grid House was designed specifically to address and propose a solution to the issue of off-street parking in an urban environment. Philadelphia’s residential neighborhoods are typically composed of row houses, often between 16 to 18 feet wide. To accommodate parking in this condition, the traditional solution has been to add a street-facing garage to the ground level. As many Jacobs-educated planners would
agree, this devastates street life as a the garage severs all pedestrian interaction and eliminates “eyes on the street.” The Grid House proposes a solution to accommodate a care while enhancing the home’s interaction at street level. In the Grid House’s solution, the façade maintains a two-level car lift and deployable wood screens animation the building’s façade. The lower level of the lift serves as the car platform while the upper level of the lift contains a planted garden/lawn. When lowered, the car moves to the cellar allowing the ground level to be reclaimed with a front lawn/garden space, giving back open green space to the street level. When raised, the car returns to street level and the garden connects to the second floor master bath/spa. Just inside the lift area, glass partitions fold away creating an open breezeway
between the front and rear gardens. The wooden privacy screens can be deployed at either level allowing the home owner to create a private spa experience upstairs or an open first-floor living space.
Owner/Developer: Field 4 LLC Illustrations: Roman Torres