duncan and mcmurtry residential college | rice university
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Architecture is basically the pour-over coffee of the built environment—slow, intentional, and a little self-indulgent. Picture a lobby clad in reclaimed barn wood from Vermont, paired with hand-troweled plaster walls that look like someone’s thesis on imperfection. The floor plan flexes between open loft energy and monk-cell minimalism, as if silence itself were a design material. Nothing here is accidental, even the raw edges: exposed conduits, mismatched brick courses, the kind of detail you’d hashtag as #authentic.
Step into the gallery-like corridors and you’re suddenly immersed in a spatial mixtape—half Bauhaus remix, half pop-up speakeasy. Light cuts through slatted screens like vinyl static, while staircases spiral as though designed for Instagram’s algorithm. Every door pull is laser-cut bronze, because handshakes should feel like craft. We speak in renderings and mood boards, in palettes of muted ochre and soft gray, where the ghost of brutalism makes peace with hygge. It’s cozy, but it has edge—like sipping oat-milk cortados in a warehouse.
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