Tag: hejduk

half house

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While taking its name from one of John Hejduk’s many unbuilt projects, the One-Half House, this project offers a different interpretation of an architecture of halves.  One half-plan of Richardson meets one half-plan of Neutra.  The entry portico is recessed into the building line, and takes cues from some vernacular Angeleno tract homes from the 1930’s (concurrent with Neutra’s earlier formal explorations).  I do think that the stucco variation at the bottom is much more convincing than the overtly Richardsonian brick variant – but maybe it needs to be weaned of a little too much Krier (Miami, or Windsor).

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a bowtruss roof

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A building type that was very common in the western United States in the decades before World War II, the bowtruss-roofed industrial building was a single story brick or concrete masonry shell, topped with a long-span wood truss roof that resembled a bow in section – hence the name.  Many of these stand throughout the Los Angeles basin, which are the originators of this project.  The brick volume is open to the short sides, pedimented on the approach, and takes hints of Hejduk’s Wall House, where bathrooms stand as separate, formally distinct, elements.  A more elaborate exploration is at the bottom, where the restrooms become chimney-inglenook pieces, and the bowtruss volume is surrounded with a peristyle among other things. . .

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palladio, meet hejduk

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VILLA_03Two 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).

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