Cardboard Box Architects

Blog

  • The Last Box of the Season

    Evening, and the studio has gone quiet. A late sun slants across 14 sleeping architects and one sleeping parcel, a modest thing that arrived this morning containing a single pair of socks.

    We have not yet decided what to make of it. It has a clean fold, a stable base and a surprising amount of ambition. Perhaps it will become a villa. Perhaps a boat. Perhaps it will stay a box, and the box will be enough. The great lesson of this practice is that a space need not be anything at all to be occupied entirely.

    We climb in. We turn once. We close the door that is not a door. Good night.

  • Next Year’s Pipeline: Seven Projects and a Nap

    Looking ahead to the new year, the studio has seven commissions in hand. They include a library for a retired librarian, a townhouse for three sisters who do not agree on windows, and a floating pavilion for a bathtub.

    The most ambitious is the Grand Canyon Atrium, a 3 metre tunnel assembled from 41 sections of heavy board. It will be funded by a consortium of tins. Our schedule is tight, but we will make it work by delegating everything to interns, who will in turn delegate it to the dog. Photography begins in spring. Naps begin immediately.

  • Awards: The Golden Flap

    The Golden Flap, our industry’s highest honour, was awarded on Friday evening at the Hollow Oak Community Hall in the presence of 130 cats and one confused janitor. The Best Residential Box went to Studio Ottoman for their ‘Corridor of Smugness.’

    Our own entry, the Hargreaves Residence, received an honourable mention and a small participation sardine. Sir Reginald accepted it with grace, which is to say he walked out mid speech to sit in the winner’s box. The trophy, a gilded flap on a stick, was later found under a sofa. We take no position on how it got there.

  • Acoustics: The Purr as Room Tone

    Every space has a note. In a concert hall it is an elegant hush; in a tiled bathroom it is a hysterical ring. In a well designed cardboard dwelling the note sits near 25 hertz, and it is the sound of a purr.

    We tune each box by resonant testing: a resident sits inside, begins to purr, and we measure the walls. Cardboard dampens the high frequencies, which is lovely, and amplifies the low rumble, which is better. A properly tuned den feels like being hugged by a very small, very expensive engine. Our test cat, Percival, has reached 28 hertz and is considered a national treasure.

  • The Dog Park Pavilion We Lost

    In September we entered a competition to design a shade pavilion for the Sycamore Fields dog park. Our submission was a masterwork: a cardboard dome with 61 portholes, a sliding hatch, and a rooftop for loitering above the dogs.

    The jury, composed entirely of dogs, awarded the commission to a competitor who proposed ‘a tree.’ We have studied the winning scheme closely. It is, indeed, a tree. We concede its structural advantages and its good smell, but note, with some bitterness, that it has no mezzanine. We have petitioned for a rematch. The dogs have replied by barking at the envelope.

  • Obituary: The Wardrobe Box, 2019 to 2026

    It is with heavy hearts that we mark the passing of the Wardrobe Box, a studio fixture since its arrival from the Larkspur Removals depot in the spring of 2019. Standing 1.2 metres, it housed more naps than the archive can count.

    Its final days were spent in dignified slump. A corner softened, a flap drooped, and on the afternoon of 6 October it quietly folded into itself like a fine, brown accordion. It leaves behind a tape roll, three scratches, and the smell of cardboard that has loved well. A memorial will be held at the recycling bin, where it will be reborn in due course.

  • Halloween Installation: The House of Many Holes

    For the season we have constructed a haunted house of spectacular poor taste. Visitors enter by a low tunnel, pass through a corridor of dangling streamers, and emerge into a chamber containing one (1) dried leaf, moved by a hidden fan.

    Early reviews are mixed. ‘Disturbing,’ said a visiting pug. ‘Where is the food?’ said a visiting goat. We consider both responses a triumph. The House of Many Holes opens 25 October at the Pellham Road depot, with timed entry every 15 minutes and a mandatory 4 minute stare at a pumpkin we have named Gerald.

  • Site Visit Diary: The Lindqvist Duplex

    08:10: arrive, inspect, sniff the foundations. 08:40: nap in the foundations. 09:30: the contractor, a small and anxious hamster named Doug, presents the schedule. We eat the schedule.

    11:00: structural review, conducted by sitting upon the roof. The roof sinks 6 centimetres, which we judge ‘expressive.’ 13:45: a courier arrives with another box, which is promptly absorbed into the design as a garden shed. 15:20: client weeps, in what we believe is joy. 16:00: all depart. The duplex remains, slightly flatter than the drawings, and wholly loved. Doug has requested a reference letter.

  • Lighting: The Laser Dot as Design Tool

    Every school of architecture teaches that light must be sculpted. Ours teaches it must be chased. The red dot, our most versatile fixture, has no mass, no cost and no mercy.

    We now use it to establish circulation paths in new builds. Where the dot goes, the cat follows; where the cat follows, there must be a corridor. On the Lindqvist job, a single 90 second dot sequence generated three hallways, a vestibule and a minor injury to a lamp. Light is never merely illumination, as the old masters knew. It is a leash held by something that cannot be caught.

  • On Fees: Why Our Rate Is 40 Treats

    We are frequently asked why our design fee is a flat 40 treats, regardless of scale. The answer is that scale is a human preoccupation. A box is the size it is, and so is our contempt for budgets.

    Of the 40 treats, 22 go to concept, 11 go to supervision (watching), 5 go to material research (sitting in prior boxes), and 2 are retained as a handling charge for the architect who must be coaxed down from the curtain. Variation orders cost extra, as do revisions made after the client has moved in, napped, and developed opinions. Invoices may be paid in tuna, but we prefer the oil.