Business Insider reports on the Starburst House /  by James Whitaker

Whitaker Studio's Starburst House in Joshua Tree

Business Insider have featured our Starburst House this week. If you visit our instagram feed you’ll see a special little animation that we made for the article that shows the house in a new way!

We're Hiring /  by James Whitaker

Whitaker Studio is Hiring

Whitaker Studio is on the hunt for an excellent new team member to start immediately.

We have a bunch of projects scattered around the world, and as the number of projects grows our team needs to grow. We need people to help us turn these projects into reality. Sometimes we’ll need you to come up with great, bold ideas, and sometimes we’ll need you to be able to critique ideas and say it as you see it in a clear and articulate way. Other times we will need you to just knuckle down and get the work done; no questions. Sadly, great work isn’t easily done, and we have no appetite for the average. We work really hard every day to create the best possible designs we can. We want our work to be site-specific and original. We want to create work that people haven’t seen before. If you’re happy drawing up the status quo read no further.

But working hard doesn’t mean that we’re keen to work late every night. Sometimes we need to burn the midnight oil but rarely is great work done when tired and worn out. We’ve got friends and family too. If you need to arrange your day around childcare we can make that work. Or if you’d really like to start late on a Wednesday so you can go to yoga that can work too. We will measure you on the work you produce, not the hours you sit at your desk. But this means we need someone with good time management skills. If you always handed your work in late at uni we probably aren’t the right place for you.

So down to the specifics. We are looking for a RIBA Part 2 or Part 3 to join our team.

Applicants must:

  • be good at managing their own time

  • be eligible to work in the UK

  • be fluent in English, both spoken and written

  • have strong Adobe Illustrator skills

  • be quick and proficient in AutoCAD

  • have good 3D modelling skills. 3DS Max proficiency is desirable but a good level in Rhino would also be considered

The role is short term with the possibility of being extended. It will start immediately.

Send CVs and concise portfolios to jobs@whitakerstudio.co.uk

Upcycling: Reuse and Repurposing as a Design Principle in Architecture /  by James Whitaker

Giant thanks to Daniel Stockhammer and Hanna Kuzniatsova at the University of Liechtenstein for including our container house in Joshua Tree, California in their book Upcycling: Reuse and Repurposing as a Design Principle in Architecture. It’s a great honour!

If you’d like to get a copy here’s a link.

Container Magazine (but not those sort of containers) /  by James Whitaker

A big thanks to Maria Anton Sanz and the team at Container magazine in Mexico for their piece about our Joshua Tree Residence. (Container is an art and design magazine that has nothing to do with the shipping boxes.)

“A good architecture provokes reactions”, this is how our special chat with James Whitaker begins, he is the founding architect of Whitaker Studio, creator of this “contained” house. “I don’t feel excited about buildings that simply do their work. Whether the architectural piece leads to a visceral emotion or there is an intellectual depth in the work, I feel attracted by architecture with certain je ne sais quoi. A work that responds to all the practical demands asked (avoiding rain and heat, for example), but then it is taken further and it becomes an artwork you can live in”.