building

Built-in seating (table optional) can give a project a more formal, architectural look. It can also provide an architectural point of interest for luring guests outside. The orderliness and permanence of it contrasts nicely with plantings and other organic materials surrounding it.

Sean has designed and built seating fixtures for various Knibb Design projects over the years, some of which can be seen in this newsletters, here and here.)

Note the rough natural edge to the underside of both the table and the bench:

Constructions can offer a zen-like appearance to a garden as well, with their resolute lines, boundaries, and geometry. A built planter can also achieve this to a degree but seating adds the human component. By inviting us in it makes us another aspect of the garden of the garden itself.

For want of a garden a new view helps:

The entry is the first impression. It prepares the viewer and guides them into the experience that follows.

(Photo below by David Lauer:)

As an architectural experience the entry can also effect those who may only ever pass by. It's the most important opportunity for establishing a home's brand.

Below, trees behind the house establish a setting while two smaller ornamentals in front create the illusion of the home being in a deep forest.

An Eero Saarinen house:

A UCLA study of Los Angeles middle class home culture found that the only leisure time residents spent in their yards, especially the fronts, tended to be involved in yard work. Yards tend not to fulfill their intended purpose in the stressed working lives of many. (They also found that few people park their cars in their garage, instead they use the space for storage of items they most likely will never use.)

Proof of how important maintaining the illusion is to us.

Orange welcomes among the cacti, heat, and rocks of Palm Springs.

Pools: We're still waiting for the summer weather to come to us in West LA but we can sympathize with our planetary comrades who've been enduring some of the worst summer weather ever. Of the last 17 years, 16 have been the hottest on record. If the trend continues—and why wouldn't it?—a backyard swimming pool may become more necessity than luxury.

A cocktail in a hammock with a nap: Bring it on.

The first swimming pool is believed to have been built in present day Pakistan in the 3rd millennium BCE (it was lined with bricks and a tar-based sealant). By the 19th century pools became popular on private estates, cities wanting to flaunt their social and urban modernity coveted indoor public pools. By 1837, six were built in London. They were also viewed as safe alternative to rivers where many bathers were known to drown.

By the sixties, the pool was the symbol of affordable suburban luxury. Kidney shaped pools inhabited the cul-de-sac backyards of the middle class along with their brick barbecues, wet bars, and electric kitchens.

The provenience of the image below is forgotten but it may've been from a hotel in Mexico, somewhere.

Brazilian architect Marcio Kogan's Casa Araras:

An indoor pool by the great Danish designer Verner Panton from the Hotel Astoria in Trondheim, Norway, 1960.

Below, one of the world's more famous indoors, the Roman pool at Heart Castle, San Simeon: Styled after the Baths of Caracalla in Rome c. 211-17 CE.

From the design of Eva Harlou, Denmark's architectural version of Kelly Wearstler. The Z House on the eastern coastline of Jutland: First below, the indoor pool; second below, as it appears from the outside.

The Sheats-Goldstein house by John Lautner with its semi-covered pool, 1963: The docents call it "probably the most dangerous house you've ever been in" because of its sheet glass walkway over a water feature with no handrails. Guests cross at their own peril.

Raymond Loewy, the designer extraordinaire who masterminded the Avanti ("the car that never dies"), had this Palm Springs house created for him by architect Albert Frey in 1947. Note how the pool intersects the threshold of the house.

This isn't an indoor pool but a room below the pool deck that looks into the pool. The house itself overlooks Hout Bay in Cape Town, South Africa.

Afternoon shadow play:

The title is from this Langston Hughes poem.

Nothing says modern quite like glass.

Maybe its the transparency and illusion of space it offers or its paradox of fragility and strength. It's smooth fetish-able surface. Taken altogether, they're qualities that make glass architecturally irresistible. Not to mention its sustainability and cost effectiveness when compared to other building materials. And not least: It's completely recyclable.

Maybe, as home dwellers we're a little dog-like; once inside we always crave to look out. We love our shelters but we don't want them to feel like a cages. Glass appeals to that.

Glass has origins going back to the ancient Rome. By the middle ages, stained glass was used to glorious artistic effect in churches, temples, etc; As architectural historian Arthur Korn said, stained glass allowed "a glimpse of paradise in luminous colors from the shadow of the grave."

The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century made glass practical for more than just window panes. In 1851 The Crystal Palace provided both the first extensive use of glass extensively as a construction material and presager for modernist architecture to follow. Created by conservatory designer and head gardener at Chatsworth House Joseph Paxton, the Palace also foreshadowed Modernist architecture. Originally built to stand in London's Hyde Park for The Great Exhibition (later renamed The World's Fair), the Palace, the project was also the first major installation to feature public (pay) toilets. Amazingly, three years later the Palace would be disassembled and relocated to suburban Sydenham Hall in South London. The Palace would eventually be destroyed by fire in 1936.

The Bauhaus, and most significantly Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, would begin a love affair with new Industrial Revolution materials that would feature glass in both architecture and furniture in a big way. As you see from the images posted here, it was an affair that still shows no signs of waning.

The quintessential Bauhaus campus building by Walter Gropius, 1926:

The Kluczynski Federal Building, Chicago, by Mies van der Rohe:

The iconic Glass House by Philip Johnson: According to its website, the structure "is best understood as a pavilion for viewing the surrounding landscape." the Wikipedia page calls it "an essay in minimum structure": Bauhaus by way of Japan.

Sadly, the house has fallen into a state of disrepair necessitating millions of dollars in repairs. Described in its present condition as a mold sponge, its various ailments include peeling tiles, crumbling fixtures, and damage from humidity. Frank Lloyd Wright may've said something once the falling apart being proof of its superior aesthetics but unfortunately I couldn't find any Google corroboration.

In any event, the Glass House helped usher in the International Style to America and influence much of what is posted here.

Natural light is a part of our biological need. Intuitively, we prefer daylight to electric light. It is a perfect white light. And it is, of course, plentiful. Marilyne Andersen, MIT Department of Architecture

Architect Arthur Erikson's Fire Island house:

A glass house in a forest in Thailand:

A school in Japan:

It's been said that a glass exterior can lead to a building’s forming a religious attachment with the environment.

Recent research has shown natural light not can not only have a positive effect on energy consumption but on human well being and productivity as well. Technological advances have made glass more efficient, sustainable, and practical than ever.

It appears glass is no less modern than it ever was.

Gray is the yin and yang altogether. It's the feminine in the way it nurtures and supports surrounding colors. It's also the masculine, an ominous sky and battleships. In the tonal palette it represents Switzerland: Neutral, cool, subdued, sophisticated, elegant, corporate, and serious.

In the right hands it is grace, as in the designs of David Hicks (the two below) which are nothing like corporate.

G

Gray socializes well with other colors. It is a peacemaker. It pulls back bright colors and grounds darks and lights. It's most agreeable: In a family of purple, pink, and yellow it is a kind of visual middle child.

It's the epitome of diversity and the ultimate equalizer. It is also bold without being assertive. An abused gray can easily turn into a drone: drab, dull, and dead. Yet within it is always the potential for the spectacular.

It is simple, understated elegance, refined enough to never call attention to itself.

In the garden, it stands back and launches the green and red forward.

It makes even a hand-made look natural in the landscape.

Long ago, before the living rooms of America were designed to funnel all attention into home entertainment centers, the social space of well-designed homes would have inhabitants focus on each other rather than appliances. A quintessential example is this seating platform by architect Paul Rudolph from 1955.

Just by the fact we descend into the space transforms the atmosphere into something more rarefied. It practically gushes with implied intimacy.

Perhaps the most iconic of conversation pits, below, from Eero Saarinen’s Miller House in Columbus, Indiana, built in 1957.

The pedigree for the pit may come from the Middle East or North Africa. The Moroccan trend of the early naughties brought a resurgence of conversation spaces, especially outdoor.

Below, a more recent interpretation created by March Studio, Australia.

And more classics of the mid-century:

Another of more recent vintage, below a Chicago townhouse by Roger Hirsch Architect.

As seating, this stark vision in triangles may be more appropriate for lectures on particle physics or hostile take-overs than soft-spoken candlelit conversations.

This example, with its resplendent views of the outdoors and pillowy comforts, invites much more than conversations with its provocative mirrored ceiling.

Thank you to the Ouno design blog for material and inspiration.

The Nanyang Art School in Singapore: Not overpowering or separate from its environment but assimilating, like a good guest. As other architectural trends go long past their expiration dates, this building will likely remain as fresh as the evergreen fescue that covers it. Nature does that.

Garden styles may trend but they never date.

Picture and source Inhabitat.com:
The roofs create open space, insulate the building, cool the surrounding air and harvest rainwater for landscaping irrigation. Planted grasses mix with native greenery to colonize the building and bond it to the setting.

(The title is taken from Grass (1918) by Carl Sandburg.)

Speak low when you speak, love
Our summer day withers away too soon, too soon
Speak low when you speak, love
Our moment is swift, like ships adrift, we're swept apart, too soon

Speak low, darling, speak low
Love is a spark, lost in the dark too soon, too soon
I feel wherever I go that tomorrow is near, tomorrow is here and always too soon
Time is so old and love so brief
Love is pure gold and time a thief

We're late, darling, we're late
The curtain descends, ev'rything ends too soon, too soon
I wait, darling, I wait
Will you speak low to me, speak love to me and soon

Speak Low, lyric by Odgen Nash, music by Kurt Weill

Speak low if you speak love.
- William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 2.1

It might've been comedian Steven Wright who asked: Why do we call them buildings; shouldn't they be called builts?

In the world of architecture, perhaps the most famous unbuilt of all may be that of Moravian born Austrio-Hungarian architect Adolf Loos. Loos was an early zealot for modernism and, as was made clear in his famous essay Ornament and Crime, a militant decorative reactionary. Said he:

The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of everyday use.

Loos also created what he called the Raumplan which suggested that houses shouldn't be divided into rooms separated by walls. Instead, they should flow from a more continuous living space: Clearly, an idea whose time has come.

In 1928 he completed a design for a proposed Xanadu-styled dwelling for legendary American ex-pat singer, dancer, actress, and apparent enchantress, Josephine Baker.

Exactly how and why the design came about has long been the subject of speculation. She may've commissioned Loos for the design. Or not.

Here's a model of the legendary building:

And the tabloid version: At the winsome age of 19, Josephine Baker arrived in Paris to find work as singer and dancer. She quickly became an overnight sensation. This success allowed her into the most cultured circles of the Parisian fabulous. It'd be here that Loos encountered her and, like many others, was immediately smitten. Adopting her as his muse, he designed a grandiloquent residence unbeknownst to La Bakaire. He presented his vision of Chez Baker to her in 1928. (She would've been 22 at the time.) How in her youth, even as a sensation, she'd be able to afford a palace clad in black and white marble, split into three levels with spiraling staircases, a cylindrical tower, and an interior second floor pool is a mystery. (See floor plans here.) Baker's response to either the design or designer is unknown.

Why Loos would be enthralled with La Bakaire isn't hard to imagine: Leaving New York behind as "the highest-paid chorus girl in vaudville," her dances and costumes in the Folies Bergères and other productions were famously provocative. She was beautiful, exotic, and a fluent jazz dancer at a time when jazz was the vanguard. But even this pales to her experience during the war in the French Resistance. She also spoke at the podium before Martin Luther King gave his I Have a Dream speech. (She was offered a leading role in the post-King civil rights movement: She turned it down.) As the victim of much racism in America and abroad (Hitler was not a fan) she'd adopt a dozen children from around the world, her so-called Rainbow Tribe, to make a point on diversity and compatibility. In his later years Loos would boast that Baker had taught him the Charleston.

But, clearly, there was more to Adolf Loos than leery fan-boy infatuation. His mix of austere classicism with modernist streamlining would meet with success.

Above, Villa Karma: His collaboration with architect Hugo Ehrlich is considered an early example of the modern house (Loos was the primary designer 1904-1906; Ehrlich would finish it). Loos's personal life was not nearly as balanced and harmonious as his professional one, particularly his health. (He was diagnosed with cancer early in his career.) Below; The Villa as seen on the inside.

The Villa Müller, below*: Due to Loos's failing health, the architect Karel Lhota was hired to help with the design. The client himself was a successful concrete contractor who had been working on some innovative uses of reinforced concrete which became part of the building's design. The building itself would have a colorful history of its own. (Thank you Veronica G. for the heads up!)

This sensibility, especially when applied to furnishings, would prove prescient: Below, a timeless chandelier from 1911 and a tumbler set from 1931.

Another renowned Loos unbuilt: This Doric column-styled tower was a proposal for the Chicago Tribune from 1922. Created for an architectural competition that would lure a gallery of marquee names including Walter Gropius, Adolf Meyer, and Eliel  Saarinen (father of Eero). Alas, none of them would prevail; the winning entry, which one contemporary critic said would set back architecture 50 years, has since been described as a "fruity Gothic pile."

Feeling his pain for the decorative in the everyday object, an homage to the maestro from artist Laurent Craste: Petite étude pour «Adolf Loos’s wet dream».