inglenook – frame

a kitchen in the round

2018⋅07⋅10 NS ColemanLeave a comment

Today’s post is a continuation of the previous week’s. Here, I’ve blown-up the kitchen proper, which like my grandparents’ kitchen that inspired it, has a large central island. Where theirs was square, though, I’ve rendered it circular, in homage to Sir Edwin Lutyens’ great subterranean kitchen at Castle Drogo. Similarly to Lutyens’, I’ve topped it with a great circular skylight as well, to bring ample daylight into the workspace. For a stroke of my own interest, I’ve placed a small breakfast nook to the south, which takes cues from Frank Lloyd Wright’s many inglenooks that dotted his earliest works.

a bowtruss roof

2016⋅07⋅06 NS ColemanLeave a comment

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. . .