WALL UNITIZER HWKN
Hey let’s hear it for architecture that does stuff.
The Wall Unitizer by HWKN is architecture that gets involved, it addresses a specific problem and responds to it as a whole. Not an architecture that contains possibilities for unforeseen events, but one that anticipates, and whose total form and being is the response, not an incorporation of it.
A young family moving into a 4,000sf apartment went and did something out-of-the-ordinary. Instead of going to Ikea and populating their new space with many disparate elements, they chose to ask architects to do, well, what I as an architect would hope people would ask me to do. In the words of the architects,
Instead of a collection of pieces, the Wall Unitizer accommodates the disparate programmatic functions of the space by reaching from the wall to create seats, counters, desks, storage and display spaces’.
Derived from a grid based on conditions pre-existing to the apartment as well as from the specific tasks and uses that theb’wall’ would incorporate, this architectural incursion takes hold of the space within the great room, bringing dynamism and activity as well as order to what would otherwise (probably[who knows, they might be a very neat family]) be a messy, cluttered space. The grid pushes and pulls from the wall at areas of focus and necessity. At the foyer, the Wall Unitizer terminates (or grows out of, depending on one’s direction) in the form of a bench for putting on shoes that becomes a table with mirror for last minute and forgotten items such as appearance, change or mail.
Courtesy of HWKN