I’ve been fascinated with the impluvium for some time now – a large roughly cubic room with an inverted roof that is open to the sky at the center, an essential feature of the Roman domus house typology. This project places a large impluvium at its center, with modern courtyards and bedrooms flaking it, and more traditionally-scaled living spaces at the entry. Formal echoes of Irving Gill, H. H. Richardson, Richard Neutra, and Michael Graves abound.
Between reading a biography on H. H. Richardson and glancing through one of Michael Graves’ volumes, I thought up this little dormer – taken from the cantilevered round dormers found throughout Richardson’s work (and the Shingle Style at large), and met it with a perfect circular window (divided into nine lites, of course) such as Graves was wont to use, and made into a lantern of sorts, having windows on two sides. My documentation of Graves’ examples follows.
Two small moments from Stern’s monograph c. 1985 that I’ll share: A sumptuous ogee-like hallway ceiling profile paired with a simple arched opening and round window at the Mexx Clothing headquarters, Amsterdam; and a rather straightforward Shingle Style house with wonderfully subtle asymmetries in the Hamptons. That is all.
Another Robert A. M. Stern inspired creation- this one more of a direct interpretation of the larger country estates built during the last decades of the 19th Century, collectively referred to as the Shingle Style. Bob Stern has been one of the forerunners in reviving and interpreting the style since the late 70’s. This is a more stylistically ‘correct’ adaptation, with funkier variations to follow.
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