Michael McDonough | Architect
Selected Projects
- design e2 feature
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Michael McDonough is featured in the PBS series design:e2 (the economies of being environmentally conscious). Design:e2 is an original six-part series that explores the vitality of the environment through eco-friendly architecture. Narrated by Brad Pitt and shot in high-definition, the series introduces us to the inventive leaders and technologies driving sustainable practices worldwide in the design of buildings where we live, work, and play.
- design-e2 | PBS.com
- Kontent + Real Films
design-e2.com
- e-House: A Lab for Living
“The Perfect House” Builder Magazine
An experimental home built in New York State’s Mid-Hudson Valley, e-House was conceived as a laboratory for the “best of the best” in all categories of construction. Its ultimate goal is to propose a new set of standards for how we build and how we live. From a unique floor plan based on McDonough’s observations of patterns in nature, to smart house controls, to dozens of new materials and systems, e-House challenges conventional “green building” thinking and advocates new ways of living with technology.
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- ArcHouse Project
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ArcHouse is a prefab home offering flexibility in design and advanced green building features. Developed for WIRED Magazine's "NextFest" exhibition it uses an east-facing "arc" or curved wall to gather morning light into all rooms, putting occupants in touch with the benefits of natural "circadian rhythms" of the changing seasons. Other features include computer-cut structural insulated wall panels, a recreational green roof deck that produces food, bamboo floors and exterior sheathing, and insulation made from agricultural waste. Overall, the house is designed to be wind and solar powered and to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide, mitigating global warming.
- Watch the video (26 MB)
- WIRED NextFest
- Frogdesign, Inc. Digital Media Offices (Austin, TX)
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Digital Media Offices for the globally-based frogdesign incorporate and celebrate environmentalism and advanced computing (“green-tech”). The entire facility is future-proofed: Designed-for-disassembly, it allows for re-configuration of network cabling and partitions. At the end of the project’s useful life, efficient deconstruction can be achieved with a screwdriver and a materials list (cf. automotive disassembly using embedded chip technology).
Austin, Texas Chapter, American Institute of Architects Design Award 1998
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- Lufthansa Passenger Lounges and Cafés
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Lufthansa Airlines required a design ethos harkening back to the romance and excitement of early air travel. In the Passenger Lounges and Cafés for Terminal One at JFK, overscaled, twisted and arcing architectural elements, allude to the hyperscaled, curvilinear geometry of aircraft — wings, wing-flaps, fuselage, and tail.
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- Laminated Bamboo Furniture
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Designed as part of the first bamboo contract furniture collection for Summit Furniture, Inc., these bent bamboo chairs use a unique cold-formed lamination process developed by McDonough in cooperation with Smith and Fong of San Francisco, California. The series is light-weight, all bamboo, and designed with a conference table.
Top Twenty Products of 1998 – Interior Design Magazine
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- Civic Alliance Planning and Design Workshop for Lower Manhattan
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Michael McDonough Architect was pleased to participate in the Civic Alliance Planning and Design Workshop for Lower Manhattan, a 4-day workshop convened by the Regional Plan Association, and held from 13 December 2002 to 17 December 2002 at the South Street Seaport in New York City.
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- Large Scale Bamboo Structures
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The Bamboo Bridge project – the first of its kind anywhere on earth – comprises a one-hundred-feet long (33 meters) polyten truss capable of supporting up to sixty times its own weight, and constructed of a unique high-strength Asian solid bamboo, steel cables, and connectors.
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