vaults & occuli, third round
Combining the first and second interpretations of this theme, here’s a take with both the flanking skylights (a la Soane) and the semi-circular colonnade, with two large columns on center to flesh things out.
vaults & occuli, take 2
In typical fashion, a synthetic plan was due: taking the vault from yesterday’s post (my take on Lutyen’s take on Soane’s take on antiquity), I slapped a half-round colonnades on either end covered each in a large conical shingled roof. The fun part is the cornice of the cubic vaulted form, which does some funky things to accommodate modules, structure, and walls, shown in the bottom drawing (wormseye axonometric detail). The lantern is a direct quote of the lighthouse lantern at Old Point Loma in San Diego.
vaults & occuli
I got a new book on Sir Edwin Lutyens, so obviously I’ve been obsessing over his details, here presenting a take on his epic kitchen at Castle Drogo (itself a quote of Sir John Soane’s soaring occuli at the Bank of England). Lutyens is truly fascinating, especially in his seemingly infinite possibility to breathe a sense of whimsy into the often staid classical Orders. My representation is axial, with two rounded skylit bays on either end of the main axis, an asymmetry that reads in the roof eaves as well as the elevations. The main door is marked with a Mannerist curved pediment, hinting at the curved vaults hidden within. The section below cuts through both axes.
a market hall
This is a collection of market types, with four ancient Greek stoae on the ground level, double stairs up to the second floor market halls, skylit, and further to the commodities trading levels within the tower. An atrium spans between the four levels. An enlarged plan of the entry lobby finishes the drawing set.
aalto revisited
I had wanted to draw this while we were on site, but the monk who was giving us a tour was moving at a brisk rate. This is the entrance pavilion to Aalto’s Library at Mount Angel, as previously featured here, and is worth featuring because of the inherent classicism of it all – strictly modular, rigidly symmetrical (minus that one angled wall on the right), with a well-coordinated ceiling plan, brick floor patterning, column placement, and door/storefront alignment. For the über-modernist Aalto, this is proof that his early education in Nordic Classicism never truly left. Details below.
elevations
Three buildings I saw while driving cross town = three quick elevation studies: A symmetrical hip-roofed house with a long continuous masonry wall that continues to form a low wall on the rear yard; A series of openings on a flat stucco wall, centered on one large square picture window (the jack arches are my own); A square light well lined with industrial sash windows, and a clapboard volume beneath.
a long house
It started with a roof plan – a hip roofed monitor. Then a cone. Then a pyramid skylight. In plan, the monitor sits above a square living room, the cone above a semi-circular bedroom, with cores flanking a tall dining room, topped with a skylight.
a pool house
A square with brick exterior walls, with a square pool in the center. One half of the enclosure is fleshed out on the interior with modern details, while the other has a classical impluvium roof, but with the same sliding glass doors as the modern half. An unfolded wormseye (upview) axonometric is below.
wall treatment
Maybe not what most people consider ‘capital-A’ architecture, but interesting nonetheless – interior walls and their treatment. These four options are studies for my own house, with coved ceilings, picture rail, wall base, chair rail, and wainscot sticking. The two top options explore large-scale masonry patterns a la Michael Graves, while the two bottom options divide the wall into sections, from many stripes to more distinct panels.
a barn to live in
Taking its form from some barn structures I passed on my trip to Oregon, this house has two opposing axes, one large gable, and a hip-ish roof. A spiral stair gently curves out on the side opposite the main entry. Classical details sit happily next to vernacular forms. Further formal explorations below
a dutch gable folly
Part gable, part hip roof: the dutch gable. This small pavilion is a simple post-and-beam structure, on a four-square plan, with shingled walls set in antis to the columns on two sides, all beneath a large square dutch gable roof. The roof is inherently directional, always favoring one axis of the other, even though the eaves remain constant. The bottom drawings attempt to subvert this, making the dutch gable diagonally symmetrical, similar to the roof of a small cabin I featured some weeks past.
a chamfered corner entry
A simple detail: a corner entry door under a decorative chamfer, which offers protection for the doorway while negotiating the full corner above. Two small lambs-tongue chamfers further detail the edges.
a tower
Taking cues from a small apartment complex south of Wilshire Boulevard, this small tower features an upper story that steps out over the lower floor, with a large, oversized ogee profile between the two, cut through with arched windows. The resulting effect is reminiscent of machicolation found on medieval embattlements.
spiraling down
Today’s drawing is a spiral staircase, hidden within a panellized Mies-inspired cube. Vertical wood slats make up the walls of the interior circle, and are repeated on the balustrade. The risers themselves are thin-gague blackened steel, with a structural stringer running on the exterior, leaving the inner circle a ragged black spiral of teeth-like treads.
mies + neutra, yet again
frame has been up and running for four months now, with new drawings featured daily, with nearly 90 posts and over 240 individual drawings. Some projects are new, others have been resuscitations of old sketches and long-forgotten partis. Often, after I’ve made a nice new shiny post, I’ll stumble upon a relevant detail hidden away in one of my many sketchbooks (or worse, loose sheets of paper fluttering about…). Such is the case with today’s post, which further elaborate upon the very first project featured on frame: mies + neutra.
a porch house
The parti is simple: two squares topped with a tall gable, surrounded by a wrap-around porch. A skylit stair occupies the very center, flanked by hearths. A semi-circular screened porch fills in one end, while an enclosed patio becomes a library at the other.
a library
In another rift on Bruce Price’s library at Tuxedo Park, this project takes one long gabled volume, with trabeated Doric aedicules on either end, and meets it with a second gable on the short axis. These two volumes don’t meet with a 90° corner, but are filleted with a quarter-round, in a nod to Stanley Tigerman’s Daisy House (among others). The variations below ditch the primary gable for a low one running in the opposite direction, and the aedicules take up the difference in geometry.
cabins & barns
Following up on two themes from my northward journey, I’m giving you a look into two ideas, both alike in simplicity. The Coast: a cabin, square with a large hip roof over a wrap-around porch, and elevations that need a good fleshing out. Farmland: a barn, with deep eaves on three sides, enclosed in glass behind.
some silos
Driving on I-5 through northern California takes you through a lot of farm land, and reminds you just how much of the American economy is agriculture. This means silos – lots of silos, which of course got me thinking. . . From top to bottom: Two silos bridged by a glass Miesian volume; Two silos on a courtyard base, bridged at the top; a picturesque collection of three silos and a grain elevator; a battery of six silos, spaces cut between them, topped with a temple form.
a cabin
Diagonally symmetrical, this small cabin type is a riff on the minimal, mid-century cabin we spent a week in on the Oregon coast. The plan is four-square, with the living room occupying one corner, fully glazed, with the hearth as a corner-focused object: this is a direct quote of our cabin, down to the thin-gauge blackened steel hearth. The rest of the plan stems from this single move, with the circular stair opposite, a study and kitchen flanking. The roof runs a single gable along the diagonal toward the living room, but tapers back into a typical hip for the two other facades.
karelia in oregon
Alvar Aalto has only three built structures in the United States: a dormitory at MIT, an interior on Manhattan, and a library at a Benedictine Abbey in Mount Angel, Oregon. These few drawings are my rapid attempt to distill some important moments from the Abbey library, which I visited on a recent trip up the Pacific coast: A section through the skylit split-level reading room, and a plan beneath; a detail section through a typical study desk, which run the length of the double-height spaces, eliminating a traditional guardrail; and a detailed plan of a glass partition at independent study carrels, with hollow-steel-section framing members and wood stops – a beautiful, humane, change to the typical Miesian system. There was so much more, but unfortunately so little time.
Recent Comments