PRO/con: Brill Residence

Client—David and Lisa Brill

Site—A half acre lot in a gated community, with only half of the site buildable due to a steep drop off on the south side of the home; San Clemente, CA

Program— single family residence

Completion—Winter 1998

The home had some major geological conditions that made the design of the home very difficult to execute. There is a beautiful view on San Clemente and the ocean beyond from the south side of the home, and so the home was built around this aspect. Concepts of privacy versus the public interaction with the rest of the community was explored, along with the relationship with the surrounding environment. In the end design was rejected because of the unrealistic nature of the home for not following architectural guide lines.

Tennent, Scott, ed. Jones, Partners Architecture: El Segundo : Designs for Words, Buildings, Machines. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2007. Print. p. 85.

Water colour done by Marisa Musing

PRO/con: Pearson Residence

Client—Scott and Andrea Pearson

Site—Eldora, CO

Program—Vacation House

Completion—Jan 2004

This is a classic two-level PRO/con installation. It is situated next to a ski-slope and includes two bedrooms, a kitchen, living and dining, and a family room.

Tennent, Scott, ed. Jones, Partners Architecture: El Segundo : Designs for Words, Buildings, Machines. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2007. Print. p 46.

Water colour done by Marisa Musing

PRO/con: Mountain Hut

Client—University of California at Berkeley

Site—Palisade Glacier in the High Sierras

Program—Wilderness base camp/hostel/warming hut

Completion—Dec 2003

This building was inspired by the elemental nature of the site. The structure was intended to stand out on the site with a utilitarian directness. The containers provide housing for campers, a shelter for travelers, and a community space for gathering around central fireplaces in the units. 

Tennent, Scott, ed. Jones, Partners Architecture: El Segundo : Designs for Words, Buildings, Machines. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2007. Print. p. 45

"PRO/con MOUNTAIN HUT." JONES,PARTNERS;ARCHITECTURE. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. <http://www.programcontainer.net/mountain.html>.

Water colour done by Marisa Musing

PRO/con: Package Homes

Client—Anyone

Site—Typical suburban lots

Program—Modular housing system from shipping containers and miscellaneous infill systems

Completion—Fall 2000

In a time of unstable family structures and shifting power relations in a group environment, the agility of modern domesticity is tested with these designs. The package homes question the user to spatially express their personal understandings of domestic traditions and transactions. The homes can also be personalized to fit the needs of each family environment. Clients are able to choose different packages that make up unique components to the container homes.

Tennent, Scott, ed. Jones, Partners Architecture: El Segundo : Designs for Words, Buildings, Machines. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2007. Print. p. 163-187.

"PRO/con PACKAGE HOMES." JONES,PARTNERS;ARCHITECTURE. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. <http://www.programcontainer.net/packagehomes/index.html>.

Water colour done by Marisa Musing 

Continued use of the Shipping Container: PRO/con

The interest in shipping containers did not end with the primitive hut. Wes Jones continued to use shipping containers in multiple projects, which he titled PRO/con (Program/container). The purpose of PRO/con designs are to solve the problems related to low-cost housing in a time of mobility, therefore the use of transportable, inexpensive manufactured devices to construct a home are important to the theme. The system is based on the primary structural use of 20 ft standard ISO shipping containers. PRO/con takes advantage of the ease of transportation and storage of these containers in the designs.

The functionality of the storage container and its construction with the rest of the home is very accurately described in el segundo: 'It is a fully pre-fabricated unit to be delivered on-site and placed on arrangement of steel dunnage (similar to what is used for anchor billboards). Dunnage transfers loads of the new structure to host the building's structural hard points. A rotating subframe and slewing ring assembly rests immediately upon this anchoring, stabilizing dunnage, and in turn supports the basic PRO/con module of two containers.' The containers include all utilities fit for a typical residential environment, including rooms for sleeping, bathing, a living room, kitchen and study.

In total there are nineteen projects in the PRO/con category of Wes Jones architecture. Here we have done a brief overview of five of these projects. It is very easy to identify the similarities of these projects to the primitive hut.

Tennent, Scott, ed. Jones, Partners Architecture: El Segundo : Designs for Words, Buildings, Machines. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2007. Print. p. 119

Hesselink Guest Hut

In 1994 Wes Jones designed a living space that was meant to take up 360 acres of forest in a property located in High Sierra, California. The landscape of the area required the use of some sort of standard prefabricated device; something that would be strong, durable, inexpensive, and easily transportable by helicopter or truck. The answer to these needs was a shipping container.

The end result of this project was the Guest Hut, which were independant small cabins for guests, located in a forest environment. Each configuration of the container homes pertained to the environment in which it is situated. For example, the vertical elements that come from stacking the containers gives a sense of stability and security for a flat land region, where as in a steep and dangerous site the containers include overhanging elements that cover the rocky environment around. This special relationship that was designed for the building and its environment was a theory that Jones questioned later on regarding the primitive hut. He began to further question the relationship between the house and the wilderness. This inquiry of Jones was foreshadowing for his reflections on the primitive hut.

It is evident that the building has themes, such as industrial materials, that Jones uses later on in other projects, especially the primitive hut. The concept he had behind this project was very important to the transformation of the primitive hut. This project is also where the origin of the shipping container in his work came from. Jones learned the flexibilities and resourcefulness of the shipping container after working on this project, and therefore continued to stretch the object's use and design in later works.

"Hesselink Guest Hut / Container House, 1994." Frac Centre. Laurent Pinon, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. <http://www.frac-centre.fr/collection/collection-art-architecture/index-des-auteurs/auteurs/projets-64.html?authID=100>.

sketch  done by Marisa Musing

Panorama Shipping Containters

Here is a larger scale version of the morphology of the use of shipping containers for the Primitive Hut. This gives a better perspective of the influence that shipping containers had on their work and the final design.

The idea behind the primitive hut was to use existing materials that are massed produced, and incorporate them into the design for a home, whose final form would consist of completely scavenged and recycled materials, similar to the work of a hunter or gatherer. Jones and Phau took on this ideal and decided on the use of a shipping container as the basis for their primitive hut design. Shipping containers come in various sizes, but they worked with the standard 20 ft standard ISO shipping container, which Jones had and continued to use in later projects for PRO/con. From the shipping container base, the home dwells into more stacking and collecting of parts to create a collage-like effect, and a primitive look. 

Irony can be found through this design because of the lack of typical primal materials to build the home. The word primitive is more often thought of as being natural, wild-like, and something taken from the Earth, rather than manufactured goods. However the ironic juxtaposition found in Jones and Phau's primitive hut, with its inclusion of wood logs and branches in each of their designs, develops a new way to consider the ideals of a primitive hut.