a gate

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A friend and I were out exploring the local architectural haunts here in the Los Angeles area, which in this case included Pasadena’s Gamble House of 1908 as well as the other Greene & Greene homes studding the neighborhood.  One of these sits kitty-corner to Frank Lloyd Wright’s La Miniatura (or Millard House) of 1923, and I noticed a lovely wrought iron gate at the rear of the property, almost coyly unimpressive against dynamic klinker brick wall.  I began to think of my own home, and if a similar wrought iron gate would work against its Spanish revival aesthetic, with some details massaged here and there.  Not a building per se, but a linguistic study nonetheless.  Now if I can just find a blacksmith and a few dollars. . .
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yet another courtyard

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I normally like to post a number of drawings of the same project together, but I’ve been backlogged with scanning in some of my sketchbooks.  Excuses aside, here’s a plan.  A courtyard plan.  Another courtyard plan: square court in a square volume, off-center to allow for a variety in the sizes of the surrounding rooms, but on axis from the entry to the rear porch.  Large modern floor-to-ceiling windows paired against vernacular hipped roofs.  Elevations, sections, and details forthcoming.  Ti promeso.

not-so-lightly sketched

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Most of the time, the drawings I post on frame are more complete, polished, and thought out.  Often, they are the reworking of previous ideas, or different ways of representing an already designed form.  But that is not to say that I never do quicker, rougher, sketches.  Indeed, often these early sketches lie buried underneath more ‘finished’ drawings.  But today, I thought I’d share a few nascient ideas before they got worked through:

The top drawing began two discussions of halls-and-hearths (here and here); the below sketches reflect some agricultural forms I encountered on a long road-trip; a small cubic ‘house’ with a telescoping tower; another small cubic structure, with a large spire and a funky base condition; and a constructed mesa, a futile and humble attempt to capture the grandeur of those immense landforms (and not wholly unalike Hans Hollein’s landscrapers).
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