• Nasher Sculpture Center
    Nasher Sculpture Center
  • Loblolly House
    Loblolly House
  • Rich Mix
    Rich Mix
The wide variety of surface finishes and colours available, such as anodizing or coating, ensures that the high aesthetic demands made by architects can be fulfilled and the application potential of aluminium can be extended even further. Such processes also serve to enhance the material’s durability and corrosion resistance, as well as providing an easy-to-clean surface. Maximizing the transparent areas of windows through the use of slender frames can also contribute to optimizing such solar gains. This increase in natural lighting is definitely beneficial for the occupants’ comfort and well being, while it also reduces the need for artificial lighting, contributing significantly to the building’s sustainability.
The construction sequence of the Loblolly House from the driven timber piles through the engineered timber chassis to the grad blocks that are placed within the structural aluminium scaffold
© KieranTimberlake
The aluminium frame behind the detail of the cladding that was inspired by the Loblolly Pines on this wooded shoreline

Loblolly House

Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, USA

by KieranTimberlake

The thousands of parts which make up a building are collapsed into a few dozen off-site fabricated assemblies that are simply attached to an industrial aluminium frame on-site.The aluminium frame is bolted together as opposed to welded, creating a structural system for the house which can be disassembled without affecting the capacity of beam and column components to be reconnected.

Located on a barrier island off the coast of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, Loblolly House seeks to deeply fuse the natural elements of its site to architectural form. Positioned between a dense grove of loblolly pines and a lush foreground of saltmeadow cordgrass and the bay, the architecture is formed about and within the elements of trees, tall grasses, the sea, the horizon, the sky and the western sun that define the place of the house. Timber foundations minimize the footprint and provide savannah-like views of the trees and the bay, and the staggered boards of the east Façade evoke the solids and voids of the forest.

Loblolly House proposes a new, more efficient method of building through the use of building information modelling (BIM) and integrated component assemblies. The aluminium frame, comprised of Bosch Rexroth aluminium framing, is bolted together as opposed to welded, creating a structural system for the house which can be disassembled without affecting the capacity of beam and column components to be reconnected. The bolted scaffold serves as a frame into which off-site fabricated kitchen, bathroom and mechanical blocks, and floor and wall cartridges are inserted without the use of permanent fasteners or wet connections. Upon disassembly cartridges and blocks are removed as whole units and column/beam scaffold sections are unbolted.

The Loblolly House preserves embodied energy with the easy disassembly and reassembly of its essential elements. The disassembly and redeployment potential is evident in the detailing and quality craftsmanship of the energy intensive scaffold, blocks, cartridges, and service spines. This ensures a design-for-disassembly strategy, where the components with the highest embodied energy can be disassembled and redeployed with a minimal loss of energy.