Architect targets Atlanta for striking, ‘missing’ house project

Architect Jennifer Bonner made headlines several years ago when she completed a modern single-family home project in the Old Fourth Ward, Haus Gables, that was described as a modern masterpiece but also polarizing for its facade devoid of entrance door and its bold and unavoidable geometry. .

Regardless, Haus Gables was one of the first homes in the country built with cross-laminated timber, or CLT, panels, and it remains a source of pride for Bonner and many ATL architecture enthusiasts.

Five years later, Bonner is looking to replicate this general style (and a faster, more cost-effective CLT construction technique) on a larger scale in Atlanta.

Bonner, director of MALL company, moved to Portland but is back in Atlanta this week to meet with homebuilders and developers who can implement a cost- and space-conscious concept she calls “X Houses.”

The speculative infill development, which calls for 10 stand-alone homes of about 2,000 square feet each, could be considered cheaper, “missing middle” housing on small “leftover” parcels across the city, according to Bonner. While each home would be self-contained, the roof design allows each property to work together to create what Bonner calls a shared, cooled environment.

Tri-level floor plans require three bedrooms and flex space for the home office. The “camel humpback” style would incorporate exaggerated overhangs and a private terrace left open to the roof. The site plan also includes a parking section and shared open spaces.

For 10 homes six feet apart, the plan calls for each full lot to be just 150 feet by 260 feet, which is equivalent to about eight NBA basketball courts.

Bonner has assembled a team that includes landscape architect Carley Rickles, co-founding partner of MRS Studio, real estate consultant Sam Pepper and industrialized construction partner Modly. Before her visit to Atlanta this week, she held preliminary discussions with property owners about bringing X Houses to 205 Holtzclaw St., which currently operates as a studio complex in Reynoldstown with frontage along the Eastside Trail of BeltLine, but nothing is set in stone, according to Bonner. .

Bonner said the lessons learned during the design and development of Haus Gables allowed him to extend that project’s prefabricated mass timber techniques to an entire community, as a way to reduce overall construction costs and create a shorter construction schedule, in addition to environmental respects. advantages and unique aesthetics.

“The overall development is planned in two phases,” Bonner wrote to Urbanize Atlanta via email. “The first phase will include the construction of five homes as well as a common open-air parking structure, and (the second phase would see) the construction of the remaining five units.”

The project, she said, would in some ways mirror Barbara Bestor’s Blackbirds residential project in Echo Park in Los Angeles, or Jonathan Tate’s affordable housing development in New Orleans called Saint Thomas at Ninth.

Bonner, originally from Alabama, says she is currently considering moving with her family from Oregon, either to Atlanta (where Haus Gables was their personal home before it was sold) or to Los Angeles. She founded MALL in 2009 and the company’s stated goal is to create projects that “hack typologies, take creative risks, reference popular culture and invent representation.”

In the gallery above, find more context and images relating to X Houses, and in the comments section below, feel free to think about where this concept might fit.

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