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.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
Following up on two themes from my northward journey, I’m giving you a look into two ideas, both alike in simplicity. The Coast: a cabin, square with a large hip roof over a wrap-around porch, and elevations that need a good fleshing out. Farmland: a barn, with deep eaves on three sides, enclosed in glass behind.
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