Pilaster PuzzleSix Columns, a home by 31/44 Architects for cofounder Will Burges, is raw and warm at onceByJack Murphy December 31, 2024Located outside London, Six Columns features a brick frontage and sloped roof (Nick Dearden)SHARERuins have long been a capital-R Romantic source of inspiration for architects. The formal references and physicalspoliaof prior epochs often serve as the inspirational building blocks for tomorrows architecture. Lately, one contemporary flavor of this inspirational search has flourished among British architects who generationally follow practices like David Chipperfield or Caruso St John and among whom the legacy of figures like Louis Kahn still lingers. Here a sense of solemn spatial expression is joined with a still-life appreciation of domestic messiness and the tightening belts of the U.K.s climate goals. One of the best expressions of this sensibility is Six Columns, a ground-up home designed by Will Burges of31/44 Architectsfor his family. The residence, massed in three wings, occupies a sloping, trapezoidal site outside of London that used to be a side garden. Perhaps at a distance it looks typical with its brick frontage and sloped roof, but up close things veer into more expressive territory. At the ground level, bricks are set in a staggered texture or with small vertical apertures, and one encounters a (perhaps unnecessary?) column that proudly supports a beam on the way to the front door, which itself is set next to a green-marble panel that feels like a Milanese facade. Above, six (perhaps eponymous?) columnspilasters, technicallyare set on either side of a wide glazed opening that brings light into the stairwell.Read more about the house on aninteriormag.com. United Kingdom