Mecca of Modernism in the Midwest

Last month Aimee suprised me with a proposition- pass my LEED exam I had scheduled in two weeks, and we would get out of Chicago for the weekend and drive to Columbus, Indiana. It's not a big town, just under forty thousand people, with a walkable downtown and a beautiful bed and breakfast at which Aimee had booked for us to stay. But this weekend was geared around my interests, and Aimee was quite thoughtful to suggest it.

Columbus is a modern architecture mecca. The AIA ranked it 6th in the country for architectural innovation and design (and locals are not shy about sharing this with you). You can read more about J. Irwin Miller, the "architecture fund", and Modernism in Columbus here.

Columbus contains work by Eliel and Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, Harry Weese, Richard Meier, Robert Venturi, Gunnar Birkerts, Kevin Roche, and landscape architect Dan Kiley.

I had remembered most of the notable projects from architectural history class but as always happens, my perspective and comprehension of the work changed after seeing each in person. I was most struck by how well many of the buildings were integrated into the landscape. More likely, how well the landscape was designed to enhance the architecture. Dan Kiley was the landscape architect for many of these projects. I found it difficult to stand back and take that one big-picture photo of many of the buildings. I always seemed to be standing in a grid of trees (or behind one) which obstructed the clear sight line.



I first ran into this problem while trying to photograph Eero Saarinen's Irwin Union Bank. The bank site consists of Saarinen's building on the street corner, drive-through deposit lanes, and an adjacent green space. Instead of populating the green space with trees and leaving the paved drive lanes barren, Dan Kiley chose to reverse the arrangement. Rather unexpectedly, a line of trees outlines the open green space while the landscape density (grid of trees) occurs between the drive lanes. This arrangement provides for an open park space, changes an open paved survace into a transition between landscape and building, and prevents the steel and glass building from being an isolated object on the street corner (a common complaint about Modernism and bank buildings in general).


In a church, architectural vocabulary is at its most delicate. The subtle interaction of light, space, and nature, instead of ornamentation, generate the pure atmosphere of today's Finnish church. Unpretentiousness has its origins deep in the past and national character. -Severi Blomstedt, Director, Museum of Finnish Architecture

The architectural influence of Columbus begins with Finnish born Eliel Saarinen, continues with his son Eero and runs through the Cranbrook Institute and the Saarinen office with Harry Weiss and Kevin Roche. Aimee and I were able to slip into Saarinen the elder's First Christian Church before it closed to the public at noon on Saturday. My experience there, both inside and out, brought back vivid memories of my summer semester in Finland almost six years ago. The exterior is stark, the cubic form of the sanctuary and bell tower are plain brick with little ornament. This was quite unusual for a church, especially during the Gothic Revival and Art Nouveau styles of the 1940's.



I wanted to reference the Blomstedt quote above because I believe he touches upon the essence of Finnish architecture, and much of Columbus' architecture as well. For the most part, First Christian Church is devoid of ornament, especially ornament one would expect to find in a church. I entered the sanctuary from the side aisle, behind and to the right of the alter rather than on axis. The space was asymmetrical, the only side aisle was the one from which I entered, and that space was softly illuminated by vertical windows slicing through the white brick walls.



The compression of the aisle opened to the full height of the sanctuary. Aimee pointed out that there was not a single pane of stained glass in the church and no icons save two simple crosses. Instead, the sacredness of the space was quietly implied by the quality of light, wood screens, and the delicate pattern of the window mullions.

It is amazing that this building, the first modernist church built in the United States, was built in 1942. It reminded me of the Resurrection Chapel by Erik Bryggman which I had visited in Finland. I think the similarities are notable: an assymetrical floor plan, a side-lit aisle, and no interior ornamentation, just light playing upon white walls and explicit references to nature.

It was not my intention to just talk about the work of the Saarinens in Columbus. Actually, the bit about the Irwin Union Bank was commenting on Dan Kiley. But this last building was again, a collaboration between Eero Saarinen and Dan Kiley.

During the guided tour that Aimee and I took, our tour guide mentioned that Saarinen had also designed J. Irwin Miller's house there in Columbus. But it was not on the tour, not in our guidebooks, and he could not tell us where it was because it was still owned by the Miller family. Actually, it had just been donated to the Indianapolis Museum of Art contingent on the museum's promise to match the $5 million Miller endowment to keep the house operating as a museum. But until that transaction becomes official, the house is not open to the public and not part of our tour.

On Sunday afternoon, on our drive out of town, I noticed a tall geometric hedgerow fronting the road, concealing the property behind it. The hedges were large cubes, every other one shifted back, like the first two rows of a chess board. Man, that looked a lot like something Kiley would do, and if there is a house back there, I'd bet it's Miller's. I drove past and Aimee actually convinced me to turn around - what's the worst thing that could happen? And sure enough, when we took the driveway past the hedgerow, we found ourselves in a Kiley landscape with a white, low roofed, glass and steel building set within the trees.

We had found a jewel of Columbus that not everyone gets to see. How many I wonder. We walked around the house and peered into the windows - nobody was there. I was excited about our find and paranoid about trespassing at the same time. My paranoia (mostly) faded and I relaxed and focused on this house I had not known existed. Since I had never heard of this house before, never seen a photo, and never read a critique, it was interesting to observe it without preconceptions. The facades were simple, each a similar arrangement of dark stone infilling a window wall. But they were differentiated by programming and (surprise) landscaping - each had a distinct character and function (automobile approach to the east, formal patio to the north, open yard sloping away to the west, and formal garden and pool to the south).

This piece of modernism was not (could not be) siteless and the spaces Saarinen and Kiley created rendered warmth to the materials.

Columbus - the city and the architecture - exceeded my expectations. "Unexpected" seemed to be the word that kept coming to mind. Aimee said that she was pleasantly surprised at how much she enjoyed the trip too (no headway however on my idea of an architectural tour of Europe for our honeymoon...Nevis it is! ).

precedent 03 - Loblolly House

One thing that's interesting about our house is that light can show up anywhere, different places at different times of the year. Because the interior is quite open, and because virtually all the windows face sun south. The clerestory windows are magical in this way. Because they are high and span the house and catch the sun differently with the seasons.

Here is an example: So I'm standing in [the kids' bathroom with no windows and the door open when] I notice this blazing patch of light as big as my two hands on the wall in front of me. I look over my left shoulder to see where it's coming from...I see that the late winter morning sun has just reached the lower corner of the first clerestory window. A laser across our interior space. I recall that in early spring, sunlight will shoot at mid-day from those top windows all the way to the back wall of the house. Light shaft to the back of the dark chamber, same as the burial mounds around Stonehenge.

from an email from Dad, 03.14.2009


It's not just the presence of light in the house, it's the quality. The house glows. The open space of the property and Carmen's green or golden field to the west provide a quality that needs to be harnessed, filtered, absorbed, etc. Appreciated. I can see why my dad chose to build how he did.This light quality was what I wanted to explore in this post. Dad's email seemed to dovetail perfectly into the next precedent house I wished to examine (click on any of the images to go to my picasa/loblolly image gallery).



The Loblolly House by KieranTimberlake is a Maryland house, taking many of the same local qualities into consideration. Loblolly is on Taylors Island, on the edge of a loblolly pine forest, with only a hundred yards or so of saltmeadow between it and the Chesapeake Bay. What drew me to Loblolly House, besides the location, was the vertical wood rainscreen on three sides; the elevations viewed from the pine forest. The concept was for these sides of the house to emulate the quality of the trees - light, shadow, striation, verticality - from the trees. The long west facade opens completely to the Bay and the setting sun. Loblolly House was conceived as a treehouse, a platform in the trees, or a duck blind, masked on three sides but with an open, focused front. The house rests lightly on wood piles driven into the sand.




While reading about the house, I learned that just as relevant of a concept as the open facades, the house was prefabricated primarily off-site and brought on-site in pieces (cartridges) which were then assembled in just 6 weeks. It is actually best explained by the architect (and owner) Stephen Kieran in a ten minute video interview and tour of the house by Ultimate House tv. Kieran describes the time and cost saving benefits of prefab, how Loblolly differs from modular homes of the past, as well as the house's other features: the rainscreen, folding doors, and green (color) bamboo floors.

While this post merely introduces the idea of quality of light and the Loblolly house, I'll discuss the topic further and what we can draw from Loblolly as either an edit to this post or in the next post.

GIMMEESHELTER!

precedent 02 - VH r-12

Restrictive zoning, rather than necessity, is often the mother of architectural invention. Made to withstand the harsh winters of Martha’s Vineyard while treading lightly on the island, the VH R-10 gHouse, designed by architect Darren Petrucci, AIA, was so profoundly shaped by local restrictions that it adopted the zoning district—R-10—as part of its name.

By code, VH r-10 could not exceed a 600sf footprint and still qualify as a guest house. Petrucci drew a 40x24 foot footprint on a 4 foot module and cut away the corners to meet the criteria. The outdoor spaces created at the corners present opportunities for exterior circulation and a terrace.





Floor to ceiling glass of the main living space echoes the subtracted volumes at the exterior. These spaces, exterior and interior, negotiate transparency and closure by the sliding of large mahogany rainscreens. The screens allow for the living space to be completely opened to the yard while giving definition to the (not counted in the building footprint) entry stair. Slid together (closed), the screens provide privacy, shutter the windows, and reveal the corner spaces resulting in a compactness of the volume as a whole. The shuttered house reads as a core (concrete foundation wall, shutters, and upper volume) flanked by the more delicate elements (exterior stairs, terrace, and sunscreen/trellis.




VH r-12 gHouse gains a half basement by sliding the wood-clad upper volume up four feet above grade, distinguishing it from the concrete base.

Both of these moves, shuttering and raising the first floor, can be utilized as hurricane proofing strategies.

We have also talked about the strategy of using a central core for the cottage. The central core would contain services (kitchen, bath, and a bedroom), the minimum that would need to be protected in the event of serious weather. The rest of the house would frame into the core. The living spaces, extra bedrooms, exterior terraces, or a screened porch.

One last thing. I wanted to point out this ceiling in the bedroom. It is another suggestion of complementary opacity and transparency. It is probably not as complex as it looks as a colleague of mine pointed out. It is delicate and substantial at the same time.

Until next time.

Complexity, Autonomy, Effort, and Reward

When Borgenicht came home at night to his children, he may have been tired and poor and overwhelmed, but he was alive. He was his own boss. He was responsible for his own decisions and direction. His work is complex: it engaged his mind and imagination. And in his work, there was a relationship between effort and reward: the longer he and Regina stayed up at night sewing aprons, the more money they made the next day on the streets.

Those three things - autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward - are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It's whether our work fulfills us. If I offered you a choice between being an architect for $75,000 a year and working in a tollbooth every day for the rest of your life for $100,000 a year, which would you take? I'm guessing the former, because there is complexity, autonomy, and a relationship between effort and reward in doing creative work, and that's worth more to most of us than money.

from Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

precedents 01

precidents 01

(click the photo above for Shutterfly pictures)

Vincent James Associates Architects' (VJAA) Type Variant House in Northern Wisconsin.  James dubbed this "Machine in the Garden", an adaption of Le Corbusier's "Machine For Living":

The idea of the type/variant house developed from the client's interest in collecting objects in series.  As, for example, in butterfly collection, the essential characteristics and variations among objects appear amplified by grouping them within a particular type.

The house was conceived as a “collection” of wood-framed, copper-clad volumes, each differentiated by its orientation, proportions, and natural light.  The rooms and spaces defined by the cubic volumes frame continually shifting views of the site and other parts of the house.  Interior and exterior stairs, ramps, and bridges combine to create multiple pathways, both public and discrete, throughout the house.

The complex is meant to both grow out of the landscape and blend into it.  Planes of bluestone transition from the building's foundation to the ground plane to elevated terraces.  And from outside in.  The exterior cladding is copper.  Over time, the virgin metallic color is streaked by the elements in patterns defined by nature, soon providing a grey green rust patina.  I suppose eventually the skin will turn completely that light green patina color.  

This concept of the building skin changing in response to the elements is similar to Herzog & De Meuron's DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park, SF (built after Type/Variant).

There are several ideas here that I want to take into consideration.  First, the idea that the house concept is driven by the occupant's personality and interest.  From organization, method of construction, materials.  The idea of a "Limiting Concept" (Steven Holl, Parallax) gives the designer a constant reference point, a baseline to push against during design.  And in the instance of a residence, the direct concept can provide an immediate connection for the client, especially during the preliminary design 

Things I know about my father:

He designed and built the house I grew up in.  It's timberframe, passive solar with south facing patio windows and doors on the first and second floors and clerestory awning windows at the ridge.  He is a gardener, a bread baker, wine connoisseur, carpenter, and loves to eat dinner on the porch with my mom.

He has talked about a house that has interior/exterior spaces.  A living room that can open to an exterior porch or terrace, and a garden that folds into the living space.  

We have talked about the juxtaposition of poured form concrete and wood screens.  The idea of a concrete core containing the living essentials - kitchen, bath, and a bedroom - and open living spaces framed into the core.  The core would act as a safe haven in the event of high winds.  Also the primary structure, thermal mass, what else...?

The next post will take a look at Pertucci's vh r-10 house, a beautiful example of core and frame construction with sliding slat walls that open and close for privacy.

  

because it's hurricane proof...

There was a dome house that my dad saw online and originally sent me an email regarding building a shelter in the event of a hurricane or high winds.  I'm not sure if this was the one, I think he sent me a link that had a news article and diagrams.  I'll keep looking for the article.  So this is where it started.

what is GIMMEESHELTER?

GIMMESHELTER is an exploration, a research project with a site and a client but no schedule and no budget.

GIMMESHELTER will be a virtual sketchbook, pinup board, preliminary review, and precedent binder.

I hope to record the design from precedent to final design, a running narrative chronologically available for my client's (my dad's) review.

When I was working on my thesis in college, I sketched on a 9" roll of trace - I bought an 18" roll and cut it in half on the bandsaw in the woodshop - felt tip pen and alcohol based markers (brand?). When used on trace, the markers bled and looked like watercolors. I specifically chose lighter colors that had this effect, and got into the habit of using brown, green, and blue almost exclusively. I never ripped off the trace. I rolled up the drawn-on end and kept unrolling the unused portion to draw on. By mid-semester we called it the scroll but it was useful to be able to scroll back and forth through designs and thought processes. Even if the sketches ended up as a dead end, they were an ever present reminder of the continuity (or discontinuity) of the design. I admit that sometimes it was counterproductive to have a continuous record. Sometimes I thought too much about a sketch rather than trying something out and being able to tear it off and start over. The scroll became a relic. But there was something truly valuable in it too. Rolling through enabled me to quickly regain design momentum. Professor Doug Harmon even joked (he was serious) that I should design a contraption that would help me quickly scroll back and forth. The design record and momentum is what I want to replicate here. A scroll for the digital age...and one that I can tear off and edit if I like. Because of my office job, the design of this project will not be as ever present as one would like. This way, I will be able to quickly re-immerse myself into the work. And be able to share it with my client - my father - 1200 miles away.

The GIMMESHELTER project is the design of a guest house / retirement cottage for my parents adjacent to the house I grew up in in Ridgely, Maryland. I can thank Al Gore, Katrina, and my father's 50th birthday for this "commission". He wants a house that he can retire in (practical), smaller than the five bedroom (six?) house we grew up in and easier to take care of. He has an interest in building green, the environment, and a concern that climate change could bring a hurricane up the peninsula (much more research needed on this one). So at this point his parameters include an energy efficient cottage with a structural "core" that can resist category x force winds. Everything else is on the table. This is where the research begins. We have talked about houses published in Arch Record, I have posted pictures onto Snapfish but our discussion was limited by the format. I wish that we could sit down together at the dining room table every weekend but for now this will have to do. I will be posting precedent houses soon. Here we go...