barns, squares, & halves

by | Sep 29, 2017 | entire buildings

BARN_14
Today, a barn, a square, and some fun with drawing projections.  If you’ve spent any time looking at my posts, you’ll know that I have a penchant for vernacular architectures, especially the banal agricultural buildings that dot the majority of America’s varied landscapes.  The barn is probably the epitome of those forms, and heavy timber framed barns seem to more or less rise from the earth itself.

This particular barn is my interpretation of the timber framed variety, with my love of formal rigor – the square.  The plan is a large four-square frame, with a double-wide central ‘nave’ and two single-wide ‘aisles’.  Large, folding doors frame the ends, with small punched windows the sides.  Since this barn is not intended to be utilitarian, the flooring is gridded black basalt pavers, with two large concrete decks on either end.

The drawings are all halves – the plan is half floor plan, half roof plan; the axonometric is half aerial, half wormseye; the oblique axon is also half & half; the elevation is half the side, half the front.
BARN_12
BARN_11
BARN_13

lutyens does a square

by | Sep 19, 2017 | precedent

LUTYENS_06
Today, merely an elevation and roof/floor plan of a simple structure Edwin Lutyens designed at Middleton Park, where a pair of these cubic houses form the gatehouse entry to a much larger country estate.  Why I enjoy it, and why I represent it here, is because it is one of Lutyen’s only square/cubic projects, where the picturesque goes to the wayside in an exercise of formal purity.  A large hip roof mounts the brick and stone Georgian base, where two dormers are set aligned with the windows beneath on two sides, and one dormer is centered on other two.  A large central chimney sprouts from the ridge.  The house itself is built into a larger gate, with two eagles perched atop, flanking the gateway.
Apparently, you can live in one . . .