Honorable Mention: American Architecture Awards 2023
A Journey to Find Flexibility within Systems | Bentonville - Arkansas | 2022

Architects: Mutuo
General Contractor: Mutuo
Client: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Photographers: Ironside Photography and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Through our work, we’ve learned that the challenges to produce housing go beyond design. The Housing System is designed to minimize risk, leaving many at the margins. The ‘Architecture at Home’ exhibit at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art afforded us the opportunity to highlight the underlaying housing systems – Land Acquisition, Financing, Permitting and Construction – and create awareness, empathy, and dialog to spark wider participation and change.

We were inspired by Abraham, a builder in LA who can’t build his own home. The fragmented prototype is not a housing solution. It is an exploration of different systems meant to challenge the visitor’s expectations and assumptions about housing and the housing system. The prototype materializes within the rigid grid that represents the inflexible housing system. It doesn't reinvent the system, instead attempting to expose it.

Chiseled concrete column bases in the grid chip away at the rigid system, and handcrafted wood and clay columns from Mexico represent the desired flexibility in the system. They also signify the assimilation of cultural aspects that make a house a home.