Nest Micro-Housing
An urban micro-housing exterior by GRO Architects featuring a rigorous grid of protruding window modules that add deep relief and shadow play to a prefabricated panel facade.
- What we like about this project
- The projecting square window collars create an illusion of heavy waffle-like depth on a lightweight panelized facade.
Materials
- metal-panels
- glass
- aluminum-frames
Visual identifiers
- projecting-window-frames
- grid-facade
- micro-housing
- grey-composite-panels
- recessed-penthouse
Style tags
- contemporary
- rationalist
- modular
Visual tags
- urban-infill
- residential
- grid
- modular
- contemporary
- street-edge
- Geometry
- Symmetrical facade grid featuring a 9-bay regular horizontal division across 5 middle residential stories, capped by a recessed glass penthouse and grounded by a transparent commercial ground level.
- Facade system
- Metal panel rainscreen with protruding prefabricated window surround modules and structural glass storefront at base.
- Structural guess
- Steel or concrete frame with non-loadbearing exterior rainscreen cladding.
- Spatial scale
- Mid-rise urban micro-housing scale, roughly seven stories total with human-scaled retail at street level.
- Lighting
- Bright direct daylight casting crisp top-and-left shadows across the projecting window surrounds.
- Atmosphere
- Crisp, structured, and orderly urban presence under bright daylight.
- Environmental context
- Dense urban street with overhead utility lines, adjacent brick and contemporary infill buildings.
- Spatial experience
- From the street, the gridded facade reads as an orderly urban module, with deep projecting frames that establish a rhythmic relief against the flat grey background.
- Composition rhythm
- Rigid orthogonal grid with uniform square modules repeated across vertical and horizontal axes.
- Style reading
- Contemporary rationalist residential infill
- Program
- Micro-housing apartments with ground-floor commercial space
- Perspective
- Exterior Facade
- Discipline
- architecture
- Materials
- metal-panels, glass, aluminum-frames
- Visual identifiers
- projecting-window-frames, grid-facade, micro-housing, grey-composite-panels, recessed-penthouse
- Style tags
- contemporary, rationalist, modular
- Visual tags
- urban-infill, residential, grid, modular, contemporary, street-edge
- Geometry
- Symmetrical facade grid featuring a 9-bay regular horizontal division across 5 middle residential stories, capped by a recessed glass penthouse and grounded by a transparent commercial ground level.
- Facade system
- Metal panel rainscreen with protruding prefabricated window surround modules and structural glass storefront at base.
- Structural guess
- Steel or concrete frame with non-loadbearing exterior rainscreen cladding.
- Spatial scale
- Mid-rise urban micro-housing scale, roughly seven stories total with human-scaled retail at street level.
- Lighting
- Bright direct daylight casting crisp top-and-left shadows across the projecting window surrounds.
- Atmosphere
- Crisp, structured, and orderly urban presence under bright daylight.
- Environmental context
- Dense urban street with overhead utility lines, adjacent brick and contemporary infill buildings.
- Spatial experience
- From the street, the gridded facade reads as an orderly urban module, with deep projecting frames that establish a rhythmic relief against the flat grey background.
- Composition rhythm
- Rigid orthogonal grid with uniform square modules repeated across vertical and horizontal axes.
- Style reading
- Contemporary rationalist residential infill
- Program
- Micro-housing apartments with ground-floor commercial space
- Perspective
- Exterior Facade
- Discipline
- architecture