Dezeen Debate newsletter features "modernised catacombs" in the Catskills
The latest edition of Dezeen Debate features a collection of black interconnected volumes set into a hill side in upstate New York and a block of apartments in Melbourne that readers would like to see in LA. Subscribe to Dezeen Debate now!
Arched passageways that act as tunnels connect the six black-clad single-room volumes of Ghent House in the Catskill Mountains by Thomas Phifer and Partners.
Located on an expansive, 78-acre site in upstate New York, a two-hour drive from Manhattan, the home was completed in 2020.
Some readers think the project looks like "modernised catacombs" or as if "someone has actually built a house that came to them during a nightmare", others "find the concept interesting but can see why it is divisive".
One commenter said: "what I like about the house is that, outside, you can walk over it – and deer and other wildlife can do so as well".
Other stories in this week's newsletter include the news that Moshe Safdie is donating his Habitat 67 apartment to McGill University and ZN Era's proposal for encircling the Burj Khalifa in Dubai with an elevated "continuous metropolis".
Dezeen Debate also featured projects by Noriaki Hanaoka Architecture, which has completed a concrete home elevated over a sloping site in Japan, and Chilean studio Pezo von Ellrichshausen's sculptural pavilion in Canberra, Australia.
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