This
is the second half of Obie’s CRAN Symposium presentation.
● Oregon Coast House is on a heavily
wind swept bluff with views both up and down the coastline. The desire for
corresponding walls of glass led to the use of cedar log buttresses – which harken back to the
driftwood logs found along the beaches.
● I particularly like the way this
exoskeleton reaches out and grabs ahold of the site.
● Aesthetics are very important to me –
so important that I need them to have purposeful underpinnings.
● I’m not a fan of Buckminster Fuller’s aesthetics,
but I really like his statement: “When I’m
working on a problem I never think about beauty, but when I have finished, if
it is not beautiful, I know I did
something wrong.”
● With economics limiting so much
traditional detail and embellishment I tend to expose a lot of the structural elements.
● Speaking of functional expressions I
have been fascinated by exposed framing for some time and in this case the studs on the interior hypotenuse wall are
exposed, there becoming a
wall of shelves and niches.
● Looking straight out we see a view
loft above a small piece of covered porch below.
● I seldom use conventional hallways to
access the various rooms of the house.
Here the bedrooms can open entirely
onto the main space via a steel framed pocket door of stained Hardibacker panels.
● This is the Johnson House in the Dry
Creek Valley. It’s in a forest setting,
and is elongated east-west to maximize
light and views for each room, and included a program requirement for covered porches.
● To avoid blocking light the covered porches
are placed at the ends of the house and light openings
are incorporated.
● Except for a patch of grass off the
dining terrace and a few other exceptions, only native landscaping is used. This
helps preserve continuity with the larger landscape.
● The cantilevered roofs are made
practical because the primary structure is steel – requested by the owners to protect against widow makers – and steel easily handles the outreach.
● The exterior is primarily metal (for
fireproofing) and we wanted some contrast to help identify the entry. It
is concrete and while one might yell “foul/inconsistent” I reply “Get over it – the contrast is good.”
● Our world is imperfect and
inconsistent (at least by human standards) and there are shortcomings everywhere we look – it’s
just the way it is. In the search for
meaning every theory, criticism,
and philosophy is incomplete but I tend to like Louis Sullivan’s “Art is doing things right.”
● The interior has an asymmetrical gable
ceiling and a continuous band clerestories along the south wall.
● By the way, this house is on today’s
house tour.
● Sonoma Coast House is a whole house
makeover. It sits on the bluff at The
Sea Ranch and had been built with a
number of sloping walls with conventional windows in them.
● They leaked profusely and although we
preserved the sloping walls the new house has very
little similarity to the original.
● Working with the sloping walls was in
some ways counter intuitive, yet for me intuition played a significant role in the design process. Intuition often gets a bad rap, but I think
it can be a valuable design tool.
● Integrating an entry onto the sloping
wall was very challenging. By making the
entry element appear as a
free-standing trellis I seemingly avoided the difficult aesthetic juncture.
● As in all of these projects natural
landscaping helps achieve continuity with the larger landscape.
● Upon approach one passes beneath a
huge shore pine. From the interior one
looks back out onto the old tree. This braced frame replaces a former shear
wall.
● The interior is quite complicated so a
very limited material pallet was used – in this case all surfaces are Douglas fir – a very warm hued local species.
● I think I know that you should look to
yourself for answers, but do not hesitate to borrow (I don’t consider it stealing) from anyone or anything. I certainly was aware of other architects using log columns, profile
doors, exposed framing and industrial lighting…
● This is Malcolm Wells’ work on the
left. Many people and things have influenced
me, but one of the first nature
oriented architectural philosophies to really catch my attention was Malcolm Wells’ comparison of the
natural to the man-made in “The Absolutely Constant
Incontestably Stable Architectural Value Scale.” Quite a mouthful.
In
this system performance is rated
based on its positive or negative affect on things like pure air, pure water, wildlife
habitat, and so forth.
● Bill Turnbull’s Zimmerman House is on
the right. Bill had a great architectural sense of the landscape and, I believe, is very much under appreciated.
● In the 1980s all manner of solar
heating and controls were being experimented with. By
the 1990s awareness of environmental issues were beginning to reach the architectural profession at large and concern
with style began to include concern for the environment.
● As human densities have increased so
have our impacts on the environment – the landscape
– and so have the calls for more rules, codes, and oversights regarding every aspect of construction: water, sewage, materials, structure, …The
best part of so called “green
architecture” for me is that perhaps it will raise general awareness that
Mother Earth is beginning to
squirm a bit – perhaps quite a bit!
● Some say environmental consciousness
has arrived – at least that’s the talk.
You would think that we can’t
help but create “green architecture” – practically every product we specify is touted as green or eco-friendly or
sustainable. Everyone claims to be part
of the solution, but what
solution? We follow some agency’s guidelines,
perhaps feel good about
ourselves, and continue business as usual.
● The continuing problem is that
reductions in impact are soon offset by increases in population.
Further regulations just continue a cycle of ever increasing depletion
of resources. This is not sustainability – it’s postponement!
● Here is a U.S. Population graph –
world population graphs are similar. With birth rates being higher than death rates the population obviously increases
continuously. And the greater the number the greater the
increase.
● Any thought of human sustainability has
to be rooted in population stabilization and I presume
this means stabilization of the economy and as such is a topic that is taboo
for politicians and just about everyone
else (including you and me) – no one
ever mentions the “P” word. It’s common sense that we can achieve
population stability more easily with
5 billion than 10 billion, more easily with 10 billion than 15 billion – what
sense is there in continuing to
increase our numbers?
● Other than air this is my favorite
resource. Numerous governing agencies regulate and restrict water usage in the name of “green philosophy” but the
next day these or other agencies approve
the increase of more housing and/or greater densities
● More people need water so we make do
with less water so we can accommodate more people. That may not sound like good news, but you
haven’t heard the really bad news…
● We are all so involved with our own
lives and society that it is difficult to have a good sense of how the total system works and our impact on the rest
of our planet. We require massive supply and refuse systems to keep
our society functioning. According to National Geographic in an average lifetime each
person’s impact (often called the human footprint)
will:
·
Use
1.8 million gallons of water
·
Burn
31,350 gallons of gasoline
·
Use
29,700 pounds of plastic
·
Use
43,371 aluminum cans
·
Discard
64 tons of garbage to landfills
·
Etcetera,
etcetera, etcetera
● I see conserving water as actually
detrimental to the environment because the more we conserve – the more we sacrifice – the more people we can
accommodate to ravage the earth in a
plethora of other ways. It’s not just
water that is the culprit, it’s everything that befriends population growth – seemingly good things like clean
energy, disease control, increased
food production, and on and on.
● As resources diminish our options are
reduced and the quality of life is inevitably reduced. Many reductions occur slowly enough that we
don’t necessarily even take notice – perhaps
things like the incremental replacement of the land with development. We
don’t have very compassionate ethics for developing the natural landscape –
most lots are essentially
placemats for houses and offer the inhabitants little exchange with their surroundings.
● Other reductions can occur
catastrophically – like the paving of the LA River or the American Plains Indians’ horrific loss
of land and entire way of life through non- indigenous
hunting and targeted killing to eliminate their food and resource supply, the buffalo. It is estimated that between 1868 and 1885
the buffalo population dropped from 31
million to 500 and the Native American population in the 19th
century dropped from 1 million
to 237 thousand.
● This is not my idea of minimalist
architecture in the future – rather it’s a poignant reminder that while we may think of pure air and water as our most
valuable resources – our freedom and
quality of life are also being eroded away.
● Every year there are added
restrictions…
● So now we’ve some full circle – my
inherent sympathies are with preserving the natural landscape. I think of us
as a species among species where the golden rule might apply to all life – “Do unto others as you
would have others do unto you.”
● I hope I’ve given you food for thought
and that something from this morning’s presentation
will prove helpful to your own work and practice. Thank you.
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