Located on the Pacific coast of Guatemala near the small city of San Jose, this beach house engages with its ocean-side site and the local climate. The house uses traditional materials of the region in a contemporary manner and with ecologically sensitive goals. Wooden screens protect outdoor rooms and the mass of the house from summer solar gain, while opening up spaces to views and the prevailing winds. Through a series of passive design techniques and the house’s organization, the building responds to its particular climate in order to increase the comfort of its residents while reducing its energy consumption. Only sleeping rooms will have air conditioning, the rest of the house will be naturally ventilated. Other environmentally sensitive considerations have been made, including the use of wooden doors that are recycled from old villas in the region. The contemporary forms of the house are rooted in analysis of the site views, patterns of light and wind, and connections between enclosed and outdoor spaces. Rooms open to central courtyard spaces as well as the verandahs for increased light and ventilation. The house cascades towards the beach through a series of elements, including a lap pool, cabana, and children’s pool.

This series of posters were developed and produced based upon an excerpt first designed for the book Color Space Style by Chris Grimley and Mimi Love. The larger of the series showcases significant works of modern furniture design. Following that, a series of smaller studies are being produced that look at a single piece of furniture set against a geometric background. The influence of Swiss poster design, the use of Helvetica, and the minimal graphic treatment is a subtle nod to our 'neutral' roots. The poster is available for sale here.

This house is one of three located in a ten-acre family compound north of Cairo in an area known as Al-Thawra al-Khadra, or “The Green Revolution.” The district is formed from reclaimed desert land near the Sixth of October City. Commissioned by an Egyptian living in London, the house is to be built as a retreat within a large olive grove. It surrounds two formal courtyards that are carved from the larger masonry block. When viewed from the surrounding olive grove, the building appears as a solid, monolithic form, one that complements the language of the arid local landscape. A scrim with greenery wraps portions of the exterior wall. This screen folds inward at the main entrance and forms the boundaries of the entrance courtyard. The rooms ringing this outdoor space will benefit from the lushness of the screened light provided by this green surface.

over,under’s relationship with Rockport Publishers began in 2003 with Mark Pasnik co-authoring two books, Elements and Materials as part of the Architecture in Detail series. This series has sold over 30,000 copies worldwide and has been published in several languages. More recently, over,under has developed and designed a new series for the press—Contemporary Design in Detail. The first two books in this series, Sustainable Environments and Small Environments, were completed in the spring of 2007. Chris Grimley has also co-authored and designed Color Space Style, a guidebook to interior design that was published in the fall of 2007.

Commissioned to overhaul Wentworth’s admissions material, over,under was charged with remaking the institute’s image. The resulting graphics program abstracts Wentworth’s existing colors and crest to form a recognizable, yet fresher and bolder identity. Production has included over fifteen separate pieces, ranging from posters, invitations, bookmarks, and banners to departmental brochures, applications forms, and general profile books. The project also involved providing photography services, editorial content development, and printing oversight.

Commissioned and published by ArchitectureBoston, this proposal for rethinking Boston City Hall provides a study to counteract the city leadership’s interest in moving and abandoning the existing seat of government. The design creates vibrant counterpoints of light and liveliness to City Hall’s monumental framework. It proposes a series of tactical modifications to the building’s lowest and most public levels: clarifying way-finding; improving views, light, and sustainability; occupying abandoned spaces; and increasing the building’s openness to the city. A new canopy structure reshapes the building’s arrival sequence from the public plaza and Congress Street. Inside, the study suggests enclosing the central courtyard to improve the building’s sustainable performance. This change also permits exposing the concrete trusses of the public-services concourse below. Daylight from the atrium would stream downward into what is presently a dark hall. Light globes, colorful wall panels, and illuminated information screens would create an animated atmosphere.

Since its inception, etcetera media has been branded, photographed and marketed by over,under. In addition to work on etcetera's website, over,under have developed a custom design solution for their webstore, and colloaborated with owner Kelly Smith to design, build and intall their booth for the New York International Gift Fair. Photography for the Stockholm bag was rencently featured in Metropolis magazine.

Directed by Mark Pasnik and Chris Grimley, pinkcomma exists outside Boston’s power circles, yet strives to make design more pivotal in the city’s political discourse. The gallery’s role is activist in nature, promoting works that may be at times politically unpalatable or financially untenable, unpopular or unacknowledged. It has hosted the Rethinking City Hall exhibit, the inagural event for Design Nearby (a showcase for local designers), and Parti Wall, Hanging Green (an exhibition and installation of ten emerging design firms in Boston). The gallery has been reviewed in the Boston Globe, Boston Phoenix, The Architect, and Architectural Record.

This design for a cat habitat was prepared pro bono for the Animal Rescue League of Boston and sold as part of a fundraising event. Conceived as a series of spaces for sitting, playing and catnapping, it is formed of a wood volume lined with a series of iridescent laminate interiors. Felt inserts by etcetera media line both the seat and the bed.

In his role as a faculty member at Wentworth Institute, over,under principal Mark Pasnik has been collaborating with two other faculty on a project to restore environmental health and civic life to an urban block known as Ujamaa Square in Treme. The entire neighborhood was damaged by both the storm itself and contaminants deposited in the soil by the floodwaters. This project involves the design and construction of a remediation landscape and renovations to a building to house the environmental center. The educational garden, which students have constructed, doubles as a small civic park. This outdoor environment will provide places to observe the various remediation methods available to residents. The project has been awarded a 2006 Boston Society of Architects Research Grant.

In addition to working on printed material for the new School of Architecture at Northeastern University—which has encompassed lecture posters, brochures, and promotional material—over,under, working together with the Educational Technology group at Northeastern, developed a new website for the School of Architecture. The site utilizes a custom Content Management System and CSS to form both the content and the navigation tools. Taking the metaphor of a broadsheet, information is pulled to the front page of the site as necessary and is refreshed frequently in order to keep the site current. Links are repeated on each page of the site, in a belief that redundancy in interface development allows for custom navigation solutions on the user end. over,under also designed an admissions brochure and lecture posters for the School of Architecture, re-branding the image of the program in relation to the website. Northeastern Architecture

This proposal investigates the use of microturbines to convert Philadelphia’s existing stormwater sewer system into an energy source that will power new activities within the city’s urban voids. To complement the underground turbines, the project introduces over-scaled tulip-like structures within the voids. These collect water and harness the wind for ecological purposes. They demonstrate a strategy for implementing an endless variety of locally scaled civic or community programs powered and encouraged by the turbines and the invisible aquatic infrastructure.

This website provides a clear presentation of the imagery of design work by this Boston-based architectural office. A project done while working at Machado and Silvetti, the decision was made early to have the images as large as possible, and to have as many as needed per project. The firm’s previous site capped images at eight per project, and they were presented in a series of frames that made updates difficult. In this new site, project images form the main recognizable navigational feature. The thumbnails in both the project sections and those that are used in the slide show give direct graphic feedback to the user. The work of the firm is presented as comprehensively as possible, spanning the thirty years of the practice. Simultaneously, the site displays the work at as high a resolution as possible given screen configurations. The site was recognized as the Site of the Week by the CommunicationArts portal DesignInteract. www.machado-silvetti.com