Taking cues from the myriad of agricultural and vernacular forms I spotted on my trip up Yosemite-way the other week, this small square structure features a prominent gable on two ends, with a raised, ventilated mini-gable at the center bay, and a lantern above that on the center bay. The eaved sides are treated as small colonnades, with single doors running each length.
No program here, just form, where circles and squares meet, compete, and transform into one another. Four cubic pavilions are set at the corners of a large conic square hall (the roof form echoes a very early post, a form which I’ve been interested in for some time). The whole sits under a dutch gable roof, with a central skylight, and circular turrets on top of the square pavilions.
A cube, with a barrel vault and grand cyma profiles (direct quotations of Krier) giving axial directionality, while two walls present themselves as simple four-square panels. A grand cornice tops the volume at the exterior, with a triangular skylight running the length of the vault, and reveal courses in brick reference the four-square breakdown of the interior.
Playing a nod to a classic Robert A. M. Stern house at Seaside, Florida, this house is three squares in plan, with one aedicule-ed, where a spiral stair occupies the center, and an upper patio is flanked with Doric columns on center, supporting a bold pediment.
Taking influence from the old Packard showroom in Santa Monica (now a Mercedes Benz dealership), this facade is a further take on yesterday’s post, but obviously ditching the stair tower, and playing the apsoidal corners as solids rather than colonnades. Architectural language: it’s a fun thing sometimes.
While taking its name from one of John Hejduk’s many unbuilt projects, the One-Half House, this project offers a different interpretation of an architecture of halves. One half-plan of Richardson meets one half-plan of Neutra. The entry portico is recessed into the building line, and takes cues from some vernacular Angeleno tract homes from the 1930’s (concurrent with Neutra’s earlier formal explorations). I do think that the stucco variation at the bottom is much more convincing than the overtly Richardsonian brick variant – but maybe it needs to be weaned of a little too much Krier (Miami, or Windsor).
Further pulling the thread of hidden circular courtyards (here, here, & here), this exploration introduces yet another platonic geometry: the triangle. Low gables on each facade take the center, allowing colonnades to wrap the acute corners, while a circular colonnade sits in the middle, centered on a triangular obelisk in a circular pool. Interior spaces are fluid, with low walls and pipe columns hinting at spatial division. The dialogue between the round courtyard and the triangular roof ridges creates a dynamic interior roof form with exposed rafters throughout.
This house plays a game of symmetry, where the magnificent double gable of Lutyens’ Homewood is played on every facade, but punches out by one module on the east and west facades. The stair is set off-center, with a tall square atrium (Craig Ellwood of two posts back), and an asymmetrical collage of symmetrical rooms inside. My first plan (above) had double columns throughout, the second plan (below) favors the single centered column.
From last Friday’s foray into Craig Ellwood’s Scientific Data Systems building, I offer a revised take, with a large standing seam copper hip roof, and a skylit rotunda in place of the cubic atrium, and rounded out the panelled masonry walls along the east and west axes. Placing a large hip roof on a square form may be a subtle nod to Thomas Beeby’s Baker Institute at Rice University. The detail at right shows a new cornice with dentils and beads rendered in brick. Maybe something fun could be done with those columns. . .
Because even the most mundane of elements deserve to be thoughtfully and appropriately considered, I’m featuring a series of details and design considerations for a gate at my house, fronting a small garden courtyard. Typical wood rails span brick piers, with a weighted chain closer to keep things tidy.
Returning to the work of Lutyens, this small room takes its primary cue from a detail in a stair hall at Viceroy’s House, New Delhi, where an arcade is topped with a small pendentive at the corner, curving the profile of the ceiling. Wormseye axonometric views follow – the bottom image also has sectional and wormseye studies of another Lutyens-inspired previous post.
Plan as generator (aka, ‘floor plan comes first, elevations second’), with a long hallway bisecting a semi-cubic volume, colonnades at either end. Now a staircase – centered on the hallway, one half of the house takes a large ballroom, while the other is bisected into two smaller drawing rooms. The second floor, two long, windowed rooms sit over the porches, while a tall pyramidal skylight tops the stair hall.
A study in pure form, this project is a derivative of a previous post, with a curved pediment sits coplanar with the colonnade-cum-pergola that surrounds a circular pool, and some admittedly quirky curved glass-block walls mediating between the three bays of the facade with the smaller volume behind.
Today’s installment is something a little idiosyncratic – this one didn’t begin with a square, but rather a triangle. From that, came a rotunda, and two arms, one of which I furnished with a square. This project takes more precedence from the picturesque traditions, but is still rather rigorous in module and geometry. References stem from Robert A M Stern to Samuel Vosper’s work with the Army Corps of Engineers and a touch of Lutyens.
Today’s piece stems from an industrial building I passed by at Los Angeles’ wastewater treatment plant. The original was a blue corrugated steel box on diagonally braced stilts, with triangular recesses and frames above second story doors. I have no idea what this is used for. None. But The deliberateness of the design was evident, as the entire plant had been drawn up by Anthony Lumsden, a techno-postmodernist. So I clad it in shingles, inspired by some triangular dormers by Ike Kligerman Barkley, and set it on a chunky Tuscan colonnade (a la Graves), and called it ‘house’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Recent Comments