Barkitecture 2012 - Photos of the Luxe Doghouse & Garden Competition Entries

above: the Bau Wau Dog House by Ripple Design Studio

Luxe Interiors + Design and Seattle Design Center hosted Barkitecture last week —a luxury dog house construction and garden competition presented by Keller Supply Company and Kohler Co. Take a look at the entries below.

Team Engle:



above: Tyler Engle Architects’ team: a clever two-piece structure on a rail that enabled expansion of the covered space and the opportunity to cool or warm the doghouse from the sun. The interior space could be illuminated with natural daylighting through frosted glass at the far end. Hints of “dogtrot” houses from the SE parts of the US. Team: Tyler Engle Architects, Krekow Jennings – Builder, Dana Hamel – Designer, Ken Philp – Landscape, Decorative Metal Arts, California Closets, Moira Holley - Realtor.

Team Aome:



above: AOME Architects’ team: their entry was a romantic dog castle, complete with a moat and draw bridge. This dog house was well-built and featured a number of clever details. It would require a small dog with such a small entry, but what a grand entry for a miniature poodle! Team: AOME Architects, Charter Construction, Carl Williams – Designer, Nussbaum Group – Landscape, Seattle Stair & Design, Pental Granite & Marble, Dean Clausen - Realtor.

Team DeForest:



above: DeForest Architects’ team: A contemporary box with a host of operable features. As with several other entries, this doghouse was capped with a green vegetative roof. I’m not sure how well the siding would hold up to the weather in the Pacific Northwest, but a colorful, adventuresome, and carefully crafted design. Team: DeForest Architects, Roberts Wygal – Builder, Steven Hensel – Designer, R. David Adams – Landscape, Studio C, Stacy Logan Rugs, Connie Blumenthal - Realtor.

Team Demetriou:



above: Demetriou Architects’ team: A fanciful and sculptural home for a playful dog. There was a quite a bit of utility built-in to this creation, such as an automatic dog feeding and watering system. The interior lighting was nicely done, as was the green roof and rain water harvesting system. Team: Demetriou Architects, Bender Custom Builders, Barbara Hyde Evans – Designer, Dar Webb – Landscape, Savvy Cabinetry, Michael Folks Showroom, Melanie McCarthy - Realtor.

Team Castanes:


above: Castanes Architects’ team: this entry had quite a bit going on, an expansive butterfly roof for rainwater harvesting and shade, colorful and sculptural walls, a massive live-edge wood platform, and large casters for portability. The single steel column support for the roof was nicely done and seemingly under-appreciated by the hundreds in attendance. Team: Castanes Architects, Odyssey Builders, MusaDesign – Designer, CEM Landscape, Robert Allen/Beacon Hill, William & Wayne, Scott Wasner - Realtor.

Team Graham Baba:



above: Graham Baba Architects’ team: The entry was similar to Tyler Engle’s with two moving elements. With GBA’s, the dog house rolled out from under the canopy while the canopy on TEA’s rolled on a track away from the stationary dog house. Graham Baba’s dog house sported a nicely crafted steel frame with a salvaged lumber roof and side walls. The entire side of the dog house hinged open to form a deck. This was one of the most utilitarian of the entries. Team: Graham Baba Architects, Toth Construction, Graciela Rutkowski – Designer, Berger Partnership – Landscape, Cascade Joinery, Metal Solutions, Schumacher, Chris Doucet - Realtor.

Team Ripple:



above: Ripple Design Studio’s team: This entry took a different approach to the meaning of dog house. This was a creative and carefully crafted indoor dog bed. The screen wall is built of Ipe wood shaped like dog bones with bamboo cabinets on each end to store food, water, and leashes for the small urban dog. Team: Ripple Design Studio, Prestige Custom Builders, Gregory Carmichael – Designer, Brooks Kolb – Landscape, Baker Knapp & Tubbs, Lee Jofa Kravet, Sam Cunningham - Realtor.

Team AKJ:



above: AKJ Architects’ team: This was the other traditional entry. As with AOME’s design, there were a number of creative and nicely detailed elements, like the leaded-glass dog bone windows and bone-shaped pillow inside. The lighting was nicely done. Team: AKJ Architects, Peak Builders, Six Walls Interiors – Designer, Ragen & Associates, The Sliding Door Co., Duralee, Melissa Camp - Realtor.

Team Silk:



above: Stuart Silk Architects’ team: Team Silk designed this dog house for two dogs with two levels. The visually-strong butterfly roof was designed to capture rainwater for the wter dish and an entry water feature. This home featured many of the qualities we seek in our own homes these days: an open floor plan, flexible and adaptable to changing conditions, natural daylighting, and strong visual connections between the interior and exterior spaces. They won a few awards for this entry. Team: Stuart Silk Architects, Bellan Construction, Holly McKinley – Designer, Cambium Landscape, Keller Supply Co., Windows, Doors & More, Carrie DeBuys - Realtor.

Team Balance:


above: Balance Associates Architects’ team: As with other entries, Balance produced a design with a green roof and operable side panels. The operable doors to their dog house doubled as weather protection and shade for the interior spaces. The Balance team’s entry had one entire wall constructed as a gabion of tennis balls. Team: Balance Associates Architects, Logan’s Hammer – Builder, Nancy Burfiend – Designer, Scot Eckley Landscape, Yellow Mountain Stoneworks, Chown Hardware, Dennis Paige - Realtor.



descriptions and several of the images courtesy of Nathan Good Architects PC ; other images courtesy of Seattle Design Center and Luxe Source

Re-engineering Jewish Tradition. The Design Winners of Sukkah City, 2011.

above: one of the ten winning submissions, 60 degree Sukkah by Filip Tejchman of Brooklyn, NY, and Cambridge, MA

Some of my readers may recall a post I wrote last year on Sukkah City, a design competition held in New York that proposed redesigning a Sukkah, a traditional shelter created for the Jewish Festival Of Sukkot.

Building and expanding upon New York’s Sukkah City 2010, Sukkah City STL proposed a re-imagination of the Sukkah, an ancient and temporary structure used by both nomads and harvesters. The jury selected work that defined and defied boundaries using ancient law and the contemporary experience of shelter. The design winners are below.

Emery McClure Architecture, Lafayette, LA - Tené



Act3 (Ben Kaplan), Trivers Architecture and STL Beacon, St. Louis - Storycubes


Sean Corriel, New York - Thru-motion


Lea Oxenhandler and Evan Maxwell Litvin, Philadelphia


Alexander Morley and Jennifer Wong, St. Louis - Exodus



Casey Hughes Architects, Los Angeles - Sukkah Collective


Christine Yogiaman, Forrest Fulton and Ken Tracy, St. Louis - Gleaned


John Kleinschmidt and Andy Sternad, New Orleans - L’Chime Sukkah


Bronwyn Charlton and Linda Levin, St. Louis. - Heliotrope


Learn more about each of the designs here.

WHAT: Sukkah City STL: Defining & Defying Boundaries
WHEN: Oct. 18-22
WHERE: Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis, near the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building
COST: Free and open to the public

The Jewish Feast of the Tabernacle, Sukkot, begins at sundown on Oct. 12, 2011, and ends at nightfall on Oct. 19.

Support for Sukkah City STL is provided by the Charles and Bunny Burson Art Fund at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

Sukkah City: 12 Radically Re-Imagined Traditional Jewish Shelters For Sukkot.

above: a modern sukkah, Fractured Bubble, by Henry Grosman and Babak Bryan was "Fan favorite"

Thanks to Ren and her wonderful blog, Lady of The Arts, I have learned about 'Sukkah City', an international design competition which took place last week in New York to re-imagine Sukkahs, the temporary shelters or dwellings built during the week-long traditional Jewish Festival Of Sukkot to commemorate the homelessness that occurred during their 40 years of wandering in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt.

It's not easy to describe a Sukkah, so I'll let this video by Liz Nord do it for you:

Traditional sukkahs:


624 people from 43 countries entered the competition. The 12 temporary structures that were chosen as the winning designs by a very impressive jury (listed later in this post) were constructed in Union Square Park’s South Plaza and were displayed publicly on September 19th and 20th (one of them, P.YGROS.C, collapsed immediately after construction). Here are the 12 winning concepts.

Gathering by Dale Suttle, So Sugita, Ginna Nguyen:

LOG by Kyle May and Scott Abrahams:

Blo Puff by Bittertang:

P.YGROS.C / passive hygroscopic curls by THEVERYMANY / Marc Fornes with Jared Laucks:

In Tension by SO-IL:

Sukkah of the Signs by Ronald Rael, Virginia San Fratello:

Star Cocoon by Volkan Alkanoglu:

Single Thread by Matter Practice:

Shim Sukkah by tinder, tinker:

Repetition meets Difference | Stability meets Volatileness by Matthias Karc:

Time/Timeless by Peter Sagar:

Fractured Bubble by Henry Grosman and Babak Bryan:

See all of the impressive entrants from 43 countries here.

Reality Disappoints?
While the concept of Sukkah City is fresh and exciting, some of the more common criticisms of the event were that the discrepancy between the impressive renderings and actual built structures were fairly great-- the completed buildings were disappointing when compared with the imagined concepts.

The Gathering Sukkah as imagined and as realized:


"Log" was one of the few designs that remained faithful to the original rendering:


The blog Human's Scribbles has great good side-by-side comparisons of the renderings with the completed structures.



The two day display culminated with Mayor Bloomberg announcing “Fractured Bubble,” a design created by Henry Grosman and Babak Bryan of Long Island City, Queens, as the “People’s Choice” winner:



The following photos from the event are courtesy of Benjamin Norman for the New York Times, who published this article on the event:

above: a panoramic view of the event

above: peeking inside the Shim Sukkah

above: the Blo Puff sukkah, a far cry from the original rendering

The process and results of the competition, along with construction documentation and critical essays, will be published in the forthcoming book "Sukkah City: Radically Temporary Architecture for the Next Three Thousand Years."

The jury consisted of these impressive designers, illustrators, architects and writers:
* Michael Arad
* Ron Arad
* Rick Bell
* Allan Chochinov
* Matias Corea
* Paul Goldberger
* Steven Heller
* Natalie Jeremijenko
* Maira Kalman
* Geoff Manaugh
* Thom Mayne
* Thomas de Monchaux
* Ada Tolla
* Adam Yarinsky

Next year, Sukkah City will expand from New York City to cities all around the world. If your community would like to be part of Sukkah City 2011, please contact them at sukkahcity@gmail.com.

To learn who was behind this, the sponsors and more, visit Sukkah City.