by nscoleman | May 27, 2016 | details, entire buildings
Let’s start with the detail this time, reading top to bottom: 1.) A shingled wall curves in to meet a stucco wall in a re-entrant corner. Square windows are cut from this, mullioned into the four-square, with small, beveled squares around. 2.) This shingle wall is the second story with a colonnade below, the stucco is an otherwise blank wall, with only one tall window cutting through the middle and terminating in a dormer at the roof. 3.) This tall window only hints at the circular interior volume behind, one side a stair, the other an entry. Other than that, no record of the two wall systems is traced on the interior, where only the radius of the curve exists. 4.) And just like that, we’re back at the detail again.
by nscoleman | May 26, 2016 | entire buildings
Lacking any particular program (that is, use), this courtyard structure plays on several ideas: the plan is neither a true double-courtyard, neither is it truly H-shaped (where the courts would be open on one side); one half of the project is more abstract modernist while the other is more expressly traditional; glass walls sit next to Classical colonnades; all the while the two side volumes are topped with that dormer I posted a few weeks back.
by nscoleman | May 25, 2016 | entire buildings
Driving along the coast through Laguna Beach, I noticed a funky little structure now operating as the offices for a small auto repair shop – it was clearly an old gas station, with the concrete pump pads still extant, which I’ve drawn in the top-most drawing. The fascinating bit was that the overall building was a gabled Spanish stucco hut, complete with a red tile roof and chimney, but the service awning was a flat modernist roof, and which cut deep into the gabled volume. The overlap and simultaneity of languages was so simple, irreverent, and playful. So I did my own variation: the plan is the bottom half of the top drawing, the half-elevations are below.
by nscoleman | May 23, 2016 | entire buildings
A typical typology of Southern California, the bungalow court is typified by a series of low, one-story units arrayed around a small courtyard, all fit onto a single residential lot. Most often, the structures were fitted in the Spanish Colonial Revival, Moderne, or (less frequently) the Arts and Crafts styles. My interpretation favors a hybrid language of the Moderne with hints of Gill. After drawing a perfectly fine elevation, I couldn’t help myself but to fit out a delightful little tiempetto on the corner. . . working a bit of Michael Graves back into things – because, why not?
by nscoleman | May 20, 2016 | entire buildings
Yet another take on the theme, this time with a symmetrical wrapper, with studies on how the core might sit within the volume. The thought was to more directly synthesize Wright’s Usonian Houses with Mies’ 50X50 House. But more on those later.
by nscoleman | May 19, 2016 | entire buildings, precedent
Continuing yesterday’s Miesian Cheney (and derivatives), this example pulls its plan directly from Schinkel’s Neue Wache in Berlin, which I’ve drawn below.
by nscoleman | May 18, 2016 | entire buildings
So I took the Cheney house plan and put it on Mies’ module, replaced the central hearth with a modified Farnsworth core just to see what happened. Iterations ensued, and even Schinkel reared his head.
by nscoleman | May 9, 2016 | entire buildings
I’ve been fascinated with the impluvium for some time now – a large roughly cubic room with an inverted roof that is open to the sky at the center, an essential feature of the Roman domus house typology. This project places a large impluvium at its center, with modern courtyards and bedrooms flaking it, and more traditionally-scaled living spaces at the entry. Formal echoes of Irving Gill, H. H. Richardson, Richard Neutra, and Michael Graves abound.
by nscoleman | May 6, 2016 | entire buildings
Two outer walls are traditionally detailed, while the porticos between them take on an abstract formalist language. The cubic volume of the villa proper is more Mies-ian, and is topped with large shingled hip roof (with the dormer I featured yesterday), while a round stair tower sits on the other side of the far wall (alla John Hejduk’s ‘Wall House’ series).
by nscoleman | May 4, 2016 | entire buildings
Where the previous project offered more of a synthesis between the modern and the classical in terms of style, this one poses a synthesis between types – structuring a basilica form with equal transepts, similar to a Greek cross.
This hybrid typology is not new, and can be found in early Christian churches, such as San Nazaro in Brolo or the Basilica di San Marco in Venice. Stylistically, my interpretation takes cues from H. H. Richardson, with thick masonry walls, continuous cornice lines, and a large hip roof, which obscures the tower over the crossing from the outside. Below are earlier studies of a similar plan with much different attitudes towards envelope.
by nscoleman | May 3, 2016 | details, entire buildings
Looking through my sketchbooks, I stumbled across further drawings for the project I featured yesterday. These are studies of the tower, the interior pendentives (the triangular surfaces that mediate between the arches and the tower corners), and the apses themselves.
by nscoleman | May 2, 2016 | entire buildings
Taking cues from both the Nervi and Richardson projects, this church places a large tower campanile at the crossing. The circular geometries owe more to Trinity, but the glass corners and spatial fluidity are direct quotes of St. Mary. The tower transitions from a square at its base to a circle at the crown, paying homage to Nervi’s typical hyperbolic paraboloid surfaces.
by nscoleman | Apr 28, 2016 | entire buildings
Though taking its detailing from Greek antiquity, with a Doric portico in antis, this small structure is thoroughly modern in its four-square plan. One enters off-center, in fact, the center is occupied by a column, and the front portico is only made of two columns, with one corner being a bearing wall (this wall is the in antis part). An exedra flanks the main skylit volume. Two variations follow.
by nscoleman | Apr 27, 2016 | entire buildings
As per the request of one commentor, I spent some time this weekend fleshing out the project featured in last week’s post ‘courtyards, nine squares, and robert a. m. stern‘. Plan with elevations, enlarged plans and axon above; perspective, details, and roof plan below.
by nscoleman | Apr 25, 2016 | entire buildings
We all know what gas stations look like here in America – banal. Yet, the same ‘Mid-Century’ Modernism that is so popular right now also tidied up these rather pedestrian buildings as well. Mies van der Rohe even tried his hand at one in Montreal as part of a larger development. However, decades of neglect and changing cultural tastes have obscured the once minimal elegance of these structures. I drove past an example in Santa Monica that had been covered up in all the various and cheap appliques of ‘Mediterranean’ style. If Modernism could love this typology, could good Classicism? Behold, the fruits of such thinking – Doric porticos and pyramidal skylights.
by nscoleman | Apr 25, 2016 | entire buildings
I was digging through my sketchbooks and found a nice little partial wormseye axonometric drawing that should have been a part of an earlier post. This one may be a bit more difficult to understand, seeing as it’s a pretty unusual type of drawing. But effectively, what I’ve done is drawn a corner of the project looking from underneath the building, as if the ground wasn’t there.
by nscoleman | Apr 24, 2016 | entire buildings
Another Robert A. M. Stern inspired creation- this one more of a direct interpretation of the larger country estates built during the last decades of the 19th Century, collectively referred to as the Shingle Style. Bob Stern has been one of the forerunners in reviving and interpreting the style since the late 70’s. This is a more stylistically ‘correct’ adaptation, with funkier variations to follow.
by nscoleman | Apr 22, 2016 | entire buildings, precedent
For the past three weeks, I’ve kept a volume of Robert A. M. Stern’s work on my bedside table, along with Henry Russell Hitchcock’s biography of H. H. Richardson. But more on Richardson later. The drawing above shows a small garden folly elevation by Stern as well as a nine-square courtyard house it inspired below. More Stern-spiration to come.
by nscoleman | Apr 19, 2016 | entire buildings
These drawings attempt to synthesize how a linear basilica form might stem from a square volume. The first drawing is intentionally church-like, but I find the two derivations below to be more interesting – the first with apses at either end, and accessed from the short axis; the second with the stair tower volumes repeated, more of a town-hall.
by nscoleman | Apr 16, 2016 | entire buildings
A glass gallery surrounded by a Doric peristyle, within an Ungers-esque wrapper – in plan, elevation, wormseye, and corner details.
by nscoleman | Apr 16, 2016 | entire buildings
Since it’s opening day here at frame, I’ll leave you with something on the other end of the stylistic spectrum. Shallow bay windows normally found on turn of the last century skyscrapers are set next to a tall rural gable to make up the front facade. The bucolic villa type meets urban detail.
by nscoleman | Apr 15, 2016 | entire buildings
My client had just built a new greenhouse on his Malibu estate – it was awful. But the open framework of black steel and plexiglass infill on the roof and walls intrigued me. What about Mies in California, Neutra even?
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