villa – frame

guest post – leon krier takes on corb

2017⋅11⋅092017⋅11⋅09 NS ColemanLeave a comment

A few weeks ago, I posted a quick sketch of a Classicized version of Le Corbusier’s Five Points. That post in turn had been influenced by the work of Leon Krier. Today, Leon has agreed to share with you some yet unpublished drawings, his own revisiting of Le Corbusier’s seminal Villa Savoye.

This is the mecca of Corbusian modernism, and Krier takes no small shots, recontextualizing the villa by relocating it on the site, extending a large walled garden at one end, and bringing the roof garden to a climactic belvedere.

Krier keeps Corb’s basic Five Points right in place, but deftly moves them about: placing the piloti on a massive, battered base; adding more forms to the sculptural roof garden; and making a feature out of the ‘free plan’ curve at ground level. Corbusier is still here, but so is Krier.

All work is graciously lent by Leon Krier, who maintains his copyright © 2017.

nine squares, a few circles, and a couple piloti

2016⋅12⋅20 NS ColemanLeave a comment

The story of where these ideas come from is a hodgepodge, so let’s just talk about what this is: a circular atrium in the middle of a nine-square plan demarcated with Corbusian piloti-cum-columns, with its four corners filled with circles: two circles are set up as objects, while two others are strung together with a larger radius. All of this sits below a blank square volume, continuing the allusion to Villa Savoy, with a strong gable at the roof line.

shingles and palladio

2016⋅07⋅27 NS ColemanLeave a comment

A Palladian villa facade on the primary axis is countered with long, low shingled porches on the transverse, which in a twist of irony is where the entry is located. Behind a symmetrical elevation of colonnades and porticoes, the building takes a more free spirit – one porch is exterior, the other ‘enclosed’, a glass-wrapped stair hall occupies two of three bays of a frontal portico, while the left over bay is screened in. The shingled roofs of the porches extend to meet a long skylit lightwell, cutting the central Palladian volume in twain.

a cottage villa

2016⋅07⋅15 NS ColemanLeave a comment

A square with Richardsonian towers on the corners, flat masonry facades in the main axis, with full-height shingle roofs over porches in the other. A skylit circular stair in a square hall in the center with octagonal-ish foyers on either end with half-round aedicules for entry porches.

palladio, meet hejduk

2016⋅05⋅062016⋅05⋅06 NS ColemanLeave a comment

VILLA_03 Two 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).

VILLA_04

an urban villa

2016⋅04⋅162016⋅04⋅22 NS Coleman2 Comments

VILLA_01

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.