The Gradient House
Winston-Salem NC
Winner, SECCA's HOME/House International Affordable Housing Competition

"Gradient House" is Blostein/Overly's winning entry to the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's "HOME/House Project." This affordable house superficially takes its cues from the paradigmatic “glass house”, the epitome of high culture at the beginning of the twentieth century. In contrast to the perceived unlivability of the glass house, here transparent materials engender new models of inhabitation. With the Gradient House, the layering of materials from both an interior and exterior experience promotes a fluctuation in focus between space/activity and the skin itself. These material effects combined with compaction of the infrastructure of the house into a “system wall” allow space and skin to flow and mutate; program is no longer compartmentalized. This molded system wall embeds many amenities of the home into one unit including plumbing and stub-outs, electrical runs, closets, and other built-in cabinetry. It is fabricated using a full-scale CNC deposition machine and, by varying the material qualities of the piece throughout its production process, will support conventional construction as well as home equipment such as the refrigerator and stackable washer/dryer. This project has been exhibited at the National Building Museum, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, University of Washington, Contemporary Art Museum of Virginia, Atlanta’s Museum of Design, Weisman Museum in Minneapolis and the Contermporary Art Center in Cincinnati. It has been published in HOME House Project (November, 2004) and ArtNews (May, 2004), and is one of five being considered for construction as part of an alternative community in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Download the project fact sheet (pdf)