Perspectives September 20, 2019

Designing the Purrfect Home for Cats

A look at our cat house designs for Architects for Animals' annual Giving Shelter fundraiser

Cozy nooks, materials to sink your claws into, and towering platforms—some preferred design features of felines. Our Los Angeles team joined the Architects for Animals’ annual Giving Shelter fundraiser again this year, designing a kitty-friendly shelter for it’s online auction.

Each year, Los Angeles-based architects and designers create innovative and intriguing cat houses. These houses are then auctioned to raise funds for local nonprofit FixNation, which provides free spay and neuter services for stray cats in the city.

cat house
Clawed’s investigation of the Oblique Function, which emphasizes sloped surfaces, bought contemporary architecture into the purred dimension.
Image courtesy of Meghan Bob
Kitty-Tested and Approved

Our design this year is titled “Clawed Purrent: Function of the Oblique 9,” and it is a play-on-words of the publication, The Function of the Oblique: The Architecture of Claude Parent and Paul Virilio.

In a parallel universe where cats rule the Earth, French architect Clawed Purrent revolutionized 20th-Century space making. “Function of the Oblique 9” demonstrates his obsession with shifting and tipping planes and the fractured plan. The work is based on a felinomorphic scale of proportions and can be adjusted to any number of configurations offering the possibility of entirely new landscapes within a single volume of space.

 

cat house
Biryani finds a perch to pounce from
Durable, and apparently intriguing, materials
Take a look back at our designs from previous years:
James explores unFURled, 2017
Image courtesy of Meghan Bob
cat house
Walter lounges in Catleidoscope, 2016
Image courtesy of Meghan Bob
cat house
CatKit, 2014

For more cat houses, check out dezeen’s feature on this year’s submissions, here.