Revolutionizing Residential Design: Willis Pember's Ur2 House

Embracing Outdoor Living with Innovative Design and Technology

The Ur2 House, short for urban rural duplex, is a project developed for an empty nest couple. The couple occupies one unit, while the second unit was sold to finance the project. The design competition, hosted by the client, led to the selection of Willis Pember as the architect. The project's main goal was to reexamine the typical developer duplex typology that mirrors units regardless of the situation.

The house is organized around two geometries, layered horizontally. The ground floor responds to the street edge and the necessary programmatic requirements, while the second floor seeks to connect the living levels with the panoramic views beyond the street. A central water court creates a compressed entry experience and interior circulation for each of the units. The central water feature, the most figural plan element, de-emphasizes the architecture as an object-figure.

The project was realized using a steel frame structure with metal shingles and concrete exterior finishes. The interior features concrete floors, plaster wall finish, maple casework, and steel and wood stairways. The design also incorporates a system of telescoping site walls that establish a hard property edge, connect the living spaces to the distant landscape, and screen middle scale suburban noise.

The project started in 2004 as an invited competition and was under construction from 2007-2008. The design research focused on the relationship of water, light, and architecture to animate interior settings and increase awareness of the site's phenomenological aspects. The main challenge was to fulfill the client's program within the constraint of an oddly shaped, triangular site, while addressing traffic noise and creating unit separation.

The Ur2 House allows the landscape field to impress itself upon specific architectural configurations. It is counter-positioned to create a specific engagement and contingency within the landscape, allowing the enclosure to mediate between landscape and interior settings. This innovative approach to residential design earned the Ur2 House a Silver A' Architecture, Building and Structure Design Award in 2018.