Located in Southampton, New York Centrifugal Villa is a private residence which was recently completed by OBRA Architects.  As the word explains, Centrifugal Villa is “arranged around a hollow center, as if the heart of the house had somehow fallen outside its body.”
 
Centrifugal // comes from the Latin word centrum "center" and fugere "to flee"; it represents the effects of inertia that arise in connection with rotation and which are experienced as an outward force away from the center of rotation.

Centrifugal Villa is developed on a five-acre property which overlooks an agricultural reserve; the arrangement of the residence includes the main house, an individual guesthouse and garage structure, and a pool house with a poolside pavilion.

This eco-friendly, green building residence was designed by OBRA Architects to make the most out of geothermal heating and incorporate passive energy-saving techniques.  Designed and constructed as a wood post-and-beam structure, the exterior cladding is detailed with vertical board and batten seams which create an interesting architectural pattern and also give continuity to the building exterior and encourage an uninterrupted rhythmic flow around the elevations of the roof.  Such a construction offers various aesthetic and structural benefits, as the post-and-beam frame lends itself to open plan designs and allows for complete enclosure in effective insulation for energy efficiency. 

Furthermore, it includes a narrow-section interior to allow natural ventilation and a sequence and layout of dormer windows and openings that allow for a natural source of light and ventilation for top floors thus minimizing the artificial requirements, but it also increase the amount of headroom in the room and allows for more usable space.

The post-and-beam frame structure has allowed for a quick construction development in its modern personification.  The materials and the design of this residence have given the home owners the ability to make a creative statement through the use of design.  The string of consequent spaces in its interior provides an understanding of the whole by sacrificing their individual geometric cohesiveness to the fractured configuration of the entire composition.

The understanding of the interior is characterized by constantly shifting vanishing points, at the place of their collision in each crease of the plan, large openings cutting dormer scoops on the roof; centrifugally release the views out to the surrounding landscape. The house, defined by this idea rather than a formal imposition, cannibalizes the local “vernacular,” distorting it through hexagonal introspection of the plan and the transposed proportion of the parts.