Beltline-adjacent house is taking modern to new dimensions in Old Fourth Ward

Much like a gingerbread house, this geometrically daring, single-family modern home in Old Fourth Ward, dubbed “Haus Gables,” is coming together one preassembled face at a time—and just a few hundred feet from the Beltline.

Sean Keenan, Curbed Atlanta

At 169 Sampson Street, about a block from the John Wesley Dobbs Avenue entrance to the Beltline’s Eastside Trail, Principle Builders Group is piecing together the sleek 2,100-square-foot house. And construction is moving fast.

It took just days to build the main frame of the building (seen above), largely because Haus Gables is what’s called a cross-laminated timber (CLT) build.

That means large panels of glued-together slats of lumber are shipped to a site to be assembled piece-by-piece.

“This is the second house made entirely out of CLT in the country,” said the project’s architect, Jennifer Bonner, director of her own firm, MALL, in a recent email. The materials, she said, came by way of Austria in three shipping containers.

Sean Keenan, Curbed Atlanta

Haus Gables—a result of Bonner’s research on the “Domestic Hats” format she’s developed—will embrace a creative spin on the typical roof construction Atlantans are accustomed to.

It’s called Haus Gables “because of its exaggerated gabled roof structure,” Bonner told Curbed Atlanta in December 2015. She found the Sampson Street location months before Krog Street Market would open its doors.

Sean Keenan, Curbed Atlanta

Bonner said she undertook the project knowing full-well she had only an 18-foot-wide buildable space to work with: “As architects, we get excited about working with constraints and challenges of the site,” she said in the Q&A.

Another exciting facet of the project, she added, will be the use of faux finishes throughout the exterior and interior of the house. “There are deeply rooted traditions and examples of faux-finishing found in the Southern architecture, and I am looking at how to do this in a contemporary way.”

Haus Gables is set to be finished by September. We’ve asked for pricing details and renderings and will update this story should they come.

Sean Keenan, Curbed Atlanta

Sean Keenan, Curbed Atlanta

• Haus Gables, Atlanta [firm website]
• Houses Have Hats: The Cerebral Side of ATL Architecture [Curbed]