Memphis, Tennesse, USA
Seeking to design authentic spaces and places, archimania architects transform Memphis’ downtown urban core designing new homes that will offer residents an abundance of green space and a variety of urban conditions in a dilapidated industrial warehouse and storage building area.
The Frontline townhouses won a 2021 American Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
A traditional front-porch narrative was introduced fostering connectivity and community within a typology that often supports isolation and indoor living.
The project addresses urban renewal, density, and inner-city housing by drawing on the relationships between the buildings, site, and neighborhood.
The townhomes project is situated in Memphis, Tennessee on a 1.25-acre industrial
the site between a vibrant arts district and the Mississippi River bluff.
The architect and owner/developer sought to bring 30 single-family zero-lot-line townhomes into the existing historic district that would promote a more sustainable, community-focused development.
Because the project completely fills an urban block, the site and its orientation is critical and therefore the building footprint hugs the site’s perimeter with an amount of relief analogous to the surrounding context.
The dense, economical site layout is organized into three distinct rows, each with
unique relationships to exterior space and the city.
The third story level disengages from the rigor of the contextual urban street front and imbues the streetscape with an informal, dynamic character.
The experience residents have to the existing urban fabric is everchanging with
connections to the street, gardens, and a courtyard under a changing landscape of light and shadow.
The buildings are expressed as a series of stacked volumes clad in zinc-grey box-rib metal at levels 1 and 2 and topped by bright yellow volumes of fiber cement board and batten on level 3.
The rhythmically undulating façade remains the primary spatial and visual driver of the project.
These undulations bring a delightful play of light and shadow across the building façade.
The scale of box rib metal varies between levels, further transforming the rhythm of
highlights and shadows.
When the level 2 band projects over the entry stoop, private balconies are formed for many of the units while other units receive a triangulated bay window.
The ground-level skin mirrors this movement, inward to create a covered semi-private entry for every unit.
Durable box rib metal and concrete were chosen because of their low maintenance and inherent sustainability through longevity.
Additionally, the box rib metal works well with the context through the depth of the façade and light industrial quality seen in the surrounding stock of early industrial masonry and metal buildings.
Private and communal exterior spaces were key contributors to the health of the residents and the community of which they are apart.
A dramatically shaped 27-foot tall courtyard with textural landscaping and various levels of undulating walls has become the heart of this project.
The courtyard terminates at a staircase which leads to a communal grill and game space on a level with the nearby train tracks.
Planting throughout this courtyard and at all units, entry points bring a needed connection with nature in a district that has long been without shared greenspace.
Long views of downtown, the Mississippi River, and the railroad help connect residents to the broader urban context.
This energetic streetscape delivers a sense of vitality and unity at an important block in a rebounding Memphis urban neighborhood.
Project: Frontline
Architects: archimania
Client: Woodard Properties
Contractor: Woodard Properties
Photographers: archimania
