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.
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.
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.
In another rift on Bruce Price’s library at Tuxedo Park, this project takes one long gabled volume, with trabeated Doric aedicules on either end, and meets it with a second gable on the short axis. These two volumes don’t meet with a 90° corner, but are filleted with a quarter-round, in a nod to Stanley Tigerman’s Daisy House (among others). The variations below ditch the primary gable for a low one running in the opposite direction, and the aedicules take up the difference in geometry.
Diagonally symmetrical, this small cabin type is a riff on the minimal, mid-century cabin we spent a week in on the Oregon coast. The plan is four-square, with the living room occupying one corner, fully glazed, with the hearth as a corner-focused object: this is a direct quote of our cabin, down to the thin-gauge blackened steel hearth. The rest of the plan stems from this single move, with the circular stair opposite, a study and kitchen flanking. The roof runs a single gable along the diagonal toward the living room, but tapers back into a typical hip for the two other facades.
A bay window topped with a full-width gable, leaving small triangular soffits at the eaves. I noticed this feature on my way to a site meeting in South Los Angeles, and since then have seen it recurring throughout my library – Richardson, Bruce Price, Peabody & Stearns, et al. So here’s my version: covered in shingles throughout, battered stone walls at grade, four-square windows, the gable becomes a full pediment, and the big reveal – a rounded interior wall.
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.
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