greek shingles

HOUSE_09

This small home is a take on the shingled row houses of southern New England, particularly by a number of homes I visited on the Rhode Island-Massachusetts border while in graduate school.  The volume is a simple cube, wrapped in shingles for three stories, reflected by a nine-square breakdown in floor plan.  While the precedent is more humble in its vernacular porch, I’ve given it a more deliberately Grecian portico, with a deliberately pedimented end gable at top.  A small ocular window hints at the circular central staircase inside, played against the otherwise rectangular language of the whole.

tales from the getty villa

FURNITURE_02

My wife and I took a short trip to Machado Silvetti’s Getty Villa a few months ago.  I brought along my sketchbook and put down a few details, ideas, or forms that I found fascinating – from the archaeological ‘Roman’ architecture of the Villa proper, Machado Silvetti’s modernist interventions, or the ancient Roman and Greek antiquities housed inside, including that splendid bronze staircase (underside of risers and stone handrail).

GETTY-VILLA_01