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Davis Owen

Syracuse University

Part-Time Faculty Consideration

Professional Experience

Hiding in Plain Sight

Rose Cliff is an addition to two existing buildings: a 19th century masonry tavern, and an early 20th residence. The existing structures create an “L” in plan; our addition completes the missing quadrant.

In this project, the “hiding” concept is manifold. It defines our approach to massing and material, as well as the project’s unwillingness to reveal the organizing aspects of its interior. The tension between the inner and outer expression of the house is most present on the east elevation. The windows and roof gable suggest that the project will obey an internal symmetry, similar to the common 2-over2 organization. Instead, the plan reveals that the

interior is organized in thirds. Sectionally, this creates a “house within a house.” The diagram of the house’s east elevation is scaled to 2/3 proportion to create a bedroom on the second floor that maintains this diagram. Within the 1/3 void, a stair connects the two levels of the addition. From the interior, the gabled ceiling creates the impression that the project’s symmetry has been maintained, just in 1/3 and 2/3 divisions.

Rose Cliff is currently under construction and is slated for a late 2024 completion.

Rose Cliff | Flint Hill, VA | 2023 | In Construction

01. Main Bedroom

02. Main Bathroom 03. Second Bathroom 04. Second Bedroom 05. Stairs To Long Hall

Study

07. Existing Stair

08. Guest Bedroom

Second Floor Plan

Davis Owen

Long Hall Section

Davis Owen

East Elevation of Addition

19th Century Tavern Renovation

Davis Owen

Long Hall Construction

New Passage between Existing Buildings

Sonoran House

Tucson, AZ | 2024 | In Design Development

For their house in the Sonoran Desert, the client wanted a home that could age with them, involve minimal maintenance, and could accomodate a nurse or future home health aids.

Our design seeks to reduce disruption to the site while maximizing the flexibility of a single floor plan. The climate in Tucson can reach extreme temperatures. By wrapping the building around a small semi-enclosed courtyard, the project creates year-long shaded overhangs into the building.

By working with the exisiting grade, we created an open-gable roof that touches the site at the north

end of the building. This creates a large elevated terrace that is typologically consistent with adobe/ stucco buildings in the desert southwest. While the roof creates a continuous gabled extrusion, the main spaces of the home are not guided by the same logic. Rather, courtyards around the perimeter interrupt the plan, forming moments of shaded respite and framing views of the Catalina mountain range.

This project is currently in Design Development. Construction is anticipated to begin by the end of 2025.

Massing Study

Davis Owen

Study Model

East Elevation Study

01. Living Room

02. Kitchen 03. Study

Main Bedroom 05. Guest Bedroom

06. Guest Bedroom

07. Garage

08. Courtyard

Davis Owen

Steel and Concrete

Home in a Paper Factory

Paper House | New York, NY | 2022

A couple approached us with a desire to design a home for their growing family. They had outgrown their current apartment, and they knew that more storage space would be necessary. They also sought a generous space to entertain guests. The apartment occupies a double unit in a former paper warehouse. Previous renovations of the unit had exposed the building’s timber structure, and we sought to maintain the appearance of this material as much as possible.

In defining the concept for the project, we were not interested in a strict program diagram. Such an imposition seemed counter to the open structure of the building, and it would not address the needs of their work and home life.

Instead, we sought to consider the interior architecture as a set of eidetic moments, highly recognizable forms that conjured ideas of use as well as memory. The appearance of these forms was exaggerated in the space, distinguishing them in form, color, and material. We designed each intervention in ways that reduced the sense of their assembly or construction. Rigor in form and detailing was prioritized over exuberance. Collectively they key to functions of the home: a seat, a kitchen, a hearth.

Paper House was published in the Fall/Winter 2024 Issue of AN Interior.

Davis Owen

Owen 01. Office

Entry

Dining

Living Room

Fireplace

Kitchen 07. Bath And Laundry

Main Bath 09. Closet

Bedroom

Floor Plan

Banquette and Entry

Davis Owen

Millwork

Main Bedroom and Closet

A Family Restaurant

Haewah Dal | Long Beach, CA | 2019

Haewah Dal is a restaurant in Long Beach, California. The restaurant’s name translates from the original Korean as “Sun and Moon." It refers to the folding screen Irworobongdo, a painting of five mountains, the sun, and the moon that sat behind the royal throne during the Joseon Dynasty.

Two aspects of this painting were interesting in developing the concept for the project. First, distance in the painted scene is foreshortened, with objects scaled in relation to the picture plane. Architecturally this resonated with the perspective effects of Los Angeles shopping strips. Viewed strictly from the parking lot, the flat storefronts can only be seen

in strict one-point perspective. Block to block, this creates a variegated elevation with ultimate obedience to the street’s geometry.

To complicate this relationship, we took inspiration from a second quality of the painting: the 5 peaks. The similarity in scale between the peaks makes it difficult for the viewer to gauge their distance and primacy. For our interior, we constituted the peaks as a series of arches, each shearing deeper into the space of the project. The realized effect is an accordion of spatial depth from an initially flat elevation. A grid of lighting heightens the sense of collapsing depth by providing a scale reference for the relative size of each arch.

Davis Owen

01. Patio

Station

Dining

Chef’s Table

Kitchen

Stairs To Office

Warewash 09. Walk-In Freezer

Storage

Floor Plan

Davis Owen

Teaching Experience

Design Discovery

This project focuses on engagement at two scales and temporalities: at the building scale, a ‘permanent’ manifestation of welcoming and community involvement; at the room scale, a space to house evolving and ‘temporary’ interactions. Students are tasked with the design of a Center for Civic Engagement that must foster a range of demands— from one-on-one conversation to town-hall style assembly, from cultural exchange and knowledge sharing to a space for debate. The proposals will need to combine a porous or leaky boundary/envelope of indoor/outdoor spaces with fixed program and construction. The ambition is to speculate through the lens of an architect how a built structure can reflect,

strengthen, and shape the relationships, resources, and resilience of a given community. Students will be challenged to re-think and re-imagine both the interface between architectural rooms and the varied definitions of ‘publics,’ ranging from those passing by, passing through (or intermingling with) the building, to frequent visitors, and to staff.

Harvard University, Graduate School of Design | 2017 | Course Instructor

Davis Owen

JP Melanson

Justin Jones

Brick: Thick/Thin

Harvard University, Graduate School of Design | 2017 | Teaching Associate

This studio explores a material paradox that the discipline of architecture has constructed around the idea of brick and its status as a contemporary building material. The notion of thickness has been replaced by a desire for the opposite: transparency and thinness. Research reconsiders archetypal brick detailing techniques such as battering, corbelling, buttressing, vaulting, piercing, and racking and forms an iterative process of digital surface-making and hands-on prototyping.

The studio shifts to the design of the Taller Metropolitana de Bogota (TAMBO), a regional design center and creative live/work incubator, in the historic center of Colombia’s “City of Brick.” As one of South America’s most culturally progressive and economically maligned cities, the informal nature of Bogota’s material industries is out of sync with an emerging creative industry. La Macarena becomes the site of confluence between historic architecture, modernist plans of urban renewal, and contemporary programs of material production.

Yuting Zhang

Jennifer Shen