This small house is defined by the square courtyard at its center, which is filled with trees and a reflecting pool. The form that wraps it is bisected by alleys, forcing one to ambulate through the courtyard to move between the halves. Further, no access is granted directly from the house to the surrounding landscape, making the courtyard the public entry as well. Studies below explore rendering two of the courtyard faces in Doric form, opposed to the simple brick envelope at the exterior.
Continuing my exploration of rural agricultural form, this square cabin-like-structure plays on ideas of symmetry, complete and incomplete form, nine-square and four-square planning, all within the guise of simple vernacular architecture. The side elevation was the generator, with an overall symmetrical gable, infilled below with a colonnade on one end, a blank wall on the other, and a large picture window on center. The plan operates between the three bays of this side elevation and four running perpendicular, with a long vaulted living-sleeping room flanked by the porch-colonnade on one end and a long kitchen-toilet-service gallery opposite. A study of potentially running a barrel vaulted ceiling the length of the main living hall is at the bottom.
Or not. Maybe just a hut then. A four-square hut. With a porch on one side and a matching sleeping alcove on the other. And a single wood stove. A small kitchenette as well. And plenty of bookshelves. Or maybe a different roof altogether in place of the four gables? An inverted butterfly perhaps? I think so. Much more interesting than the bucolic nonchalance of that first drawing.
Beginning with Mies’ chapel at IIT, this quick project extrapolates his frame-and-infill, steel-and-brick, pavilion into a basilica form, with a full apse and a hipped roof. A square skylight orients the modernist square volume, while dormer gables pierce the trabeated apse. A more exuberant roof study follows.
Continuing last week‘s Californian agricultural experiments, this small structure (which I’m titling a ‘cabin’, but really is a programless form) is square in plan with a pitched roof running in one direction, terminating in a dutch gable at the far end over a colonnaded porch and a large circular window in the gable face, and cantilevering over the entry portico, where two identical doors reference the four-square floor plan. The language owes much to Richardson, filtered through the vernacular, with a shingle roof, clapboard walls, and a flemish bond brick base.
Taking cues from the Craig Ellwood project I featured a few weeks ago, this generic office building places a large glass box off the ground, ringed at grade with reflecting pools. The drama is in the circular courtyard hidden inside, which is conical in section, flaring open to the sky above. Corner staircases echo the circular motif.
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.
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