Ludo Groen is a doctoral candidate in the history and theory of architecture (gta) at ETH Zürich, while practicing architecture from his eponymous studio. His doctoral research, part of the SNSF-funded research project “Switzerland: A Technological Pastoral,” documents the architecture of Swiss banking before and after 1968.
        Between 2018 and 2021, he worked as a researcher at The Berlage at Delft University of Technology and Het Nieuwe Instituut, the Dutch institute for architecture, design, and digital culture. At The Berlage he was involved in the organisation of lectures, master classes, teaching, and various book projects. At Het Nieuwe Instituut, he contributed to various exhibitions and research projects, including Automated Landscapes, which will be published in the forhcoming book Automated Landscapes, documenting the emerging automated architectures of dairy farms, greenhouses, data centers, and factories, in the Netherlands and beyond.
        Ludo holds a master degree in architecture from Delft University of Technology and a post-master degree from The Berlage.
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Solar House
Culemborg
Architecture*
May, 2014

When Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1940s published the Jacobs House II in the pages of the Ladies Home Journal, his objective was as ambitious as to set a model for ecological small, single-story dwellings. Often L-shaped to fit around a garden terrace, the model homes were characterized by the use of vernacular materials, canopies for natural cooling, natural lighting with clerestory windows for passive solar heating, and a strong visual connection between interior and exterior spaces. Though never adopted on a large scale after the fall of oil prices in post-war America, Wright’s model house reasserts its relevance in the context of the twenty-first century’s pursuit of sustainability. The principles of the Jacobs House II are readopted in the design of this house. Acting as a shell, its dark and rough timber skin shelters a sequence of bright refined interior spaces oriented towards the sun.
*with ORIGINS Architecture (Jamie van Lede & Jeffrey Mulder). Photos by Stijn Poelstra.




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