Pointed at the Sun

摘要

"How big a house do you want?" asked the architects. "About 2500 sq. ft.," replied the client. "OK, we're pretty sure we can get that down a bit," countered the architects. It wasn't the response that Arianne Dar, the client, expected. But the suggestion wasn't out of character from the architects offering it. The firm of David Arkin and Anni Tilt, a husband-and-wife architectural partnership in Berkeley, Calif., is known to push the boundaries of sustainable building. For them, that means using materials that are in it for the long haul, catching the sun's energy and putting it to work, creating spaces that can be used for multiple purposes, and most important, designing a house that is no larger than it needs to be.