ALLARD RESIDENCE
Saint Louis, Mo

Located in a typical city lot, this house responded to a very strict budgetary limitation combined with a modest program and great expectations from the client and architect. This tension between the logical and the possible, the banal and the invisible, the explicit…..and the green, in short , these two “scales” of description and action ( also in our case, the two histories of a project, a dwelling) intermingle constantly , negotiate their own territories, claim as much as they can- insisting , in fact, that their presence is the necessary background for human activity. There are two scales ( why not try to place a big space in a small house), two colors , two materials, two gestures (east towards the morning, west in the afternoons…) . Still, I believe the place allows for excesses, discoveries, variations- suggesting that richness and complexity can be produced with modest means and materials.