About
RESOLUTION: 4 ARCHITECTURE is an internationally published and highly acclaimed ten-person firm, completing projects in the residential, commercial, and public realms. Founded in 1990 by Joseph Tanney and Robert Luntz, RES4 is dedicated to addressing 21st century conditions through intelligent architecture and design. The firm consciously works to enhance sustainable practices that address the current and long-term challenges facing our dynamic communities. Through iterative investigation, RES4 works to shape the palpable, illuminate the obscure, and understand the interface of architecture, its users, and its context.
Recognized for reigniting the discipline’s pursuit of prefabrication, RESOLUTION: 4 ARCHITECTURE has developed THE MODERN MODULAR, a systematic design methodology that leverages existing prefabrication methods to produce custom modern homes, specific to each client and site.
As a small critical practice in New York City, RES4’s work began with a series of kitchen and bathroom interventions and evolved into apartment, loft, and large office renovations. In completing numerous interior projects, RES4 has developed many highly efficient, cost-effective, well-detailed, and idea-driven spaces. This experience working within existing constraints - or ‘thinking inside the box’ - combined with a preoccupation with off-the-shelf products, prompted RES4 to begin exploring off-site, factory construction. After years of research and development, RES4 continues to pursue and develop a systematic design methodology that leverages existing methods of prefabrication for residential construction: THE MODERN MODULAR. These efforts attempt to offer an option of ‘Mass Customization’ to the single-family housing market, thereby transforming the sub-urban fabric of the domestic American landscape. RES4’s prefab projects explore efficiency of design, implementation, and performance, while producing custom modern homes specific to each client and site. The results are designs with a better value than comparable site-built projects, while providing a greater predictability in construction costs and schedule. In 2003, RES4 won an International Competition for a modern prefabricated home, The Dwell Home. It was noted by the Washington Post as the “highest profile modern prefabricated home in America,” and is considered the “Holy Grail” for modern prefab enthusiasts by the Wall Street Journal. The design and fabrication of the Dwell Home reignited enthusiasm for the promise of prefab in America and abroad. In addition to having been profiled in newspapers nationwide, RES4’s work has been featured in architectural journals such as Architecture, Architectural Record, Architectural Digest, Architectural Review, Residential Architect, Domus, LARCA, and Interni; shelter magazines such as Wallpaper, Metropolitan Home, House and Garden, Azure, Interior Design, and Dwell; popular magazines, such as Time, Newsweek, WIRED, and Food and Wine; and media such as CNN, HGTV, DIY, NPR, Nightline, The Travel Channel, and The CBS Morning News.
In 2013, Princeton Architectural Press published Modern Modular: The Prefab Houses of Resolution: 4 Architecture, featuring the design, fabrication, and completion of a select number of projects built over ten years of research and development. Joseph Tanney and Robert Luntz have lectured throughout the US and have been visiting critics at numerous universities. Their work has been exhibited in various museums including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and MOMA in New York. The architectural profession has also recognized RES4’s work. In addition to being awarded multiple AIA Design Awards for various projects, THE MODERN MODULAR has received an American Architecture Award, a National AIA Housing Award for Concepts in Innovative Housing, and an Honor Award for Housing Design Research from the Boston Society of Architects and the AIA New York Chapter. Having designed over 120 prefab homes from Maine to Hawaii using modular, panelized, and hybrid methods of delivery, RESOLUTION: 4 ARCHITECTURE is considered one of the most prolific prefab architects practicing today, not only impacting advances within the profession, but also academic research into new methods of integrated design and prefabrication.
Environmental mission and strategy (ESG)
As times change, there is an ongoing need for sustainable elements to be incorporated into building design. Resolution 4: Architecture is sensitive to this reality and has designed several green features into their projects.