HAUS – GABLES

Engineered as a superstructure, where all exterior and interior walls, floors, and roof are made of solid Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) panels. Custom cut, hoisted into place, and assembled in twelve days’ time, the CLT represents a solid, real image of a house that skirts around stick frame construction. While structurally inventive, it also promotes a monolithic view of material from the domestic interior. Yet, a series of faux finishes clad the exterior and interior in opposition to the real representation of the house. Black terrazzo is not poured-in-place and polished, but arrives as a thin tile, while oriented strand board takes on the image of OSB in the form of a ceramic tile. Marble finishes are made of an unlikely vinyl and cartoonish drawings rather than the desired, real, Italian marble. It is the combination of real-and-faux that productively divides rooms on the interior. On the house’s exterior, a synthetic stucco is used as a finish material and inscribed with a custom brick stamp. Faux-brick wraps the entire house concealing any view of the CLT.  Sited in the American South, the project undertakes an old tradition of faux-finishing. For Southerners, there is a history of not being able to afford precious materials and a subsequent desire of “faking it.”