خانه آلواردو رود در برکلی به عنوان جایگزینی برای خانه ای به شیوه تئودور که ماه 16 سال درآن زندگی کرده بودیم و سرانجام در آتش سوزی برکلی اوکلند در سال 1991 سوخت ساخته شد .
صبح یک روز آفتابی در ماه فوریه من و همسرم برای اولین بار بعد از آتش سوزی برای دیدن MRY از برکلی خارج شدیم .
بازیودل ما را در اداره سنتامونیکا دید و اسلایدها و مدلهایی از کار شرکت را به ما نشان داد و در مورد خانه ای که در ذهنمان داشتیم از ما سئوال کرد : و سپس به سمت خانه یتنابیب در مالیبو حرکت کردم .
اولین حسی که هنگام ورود به خانه در من تحریک شد حس بویایی بود سوپ گوجه فرنگی خانگی که روی گاز می جوشید .
ما از بالای یک قسمت شیبدار وارد خانه شدیم : تپه های ساحلی پشت سرمان بود و اقیانوس در دور دستها جلب توجه می کرد .
در داخل خانه توجه من به پله ها و پاگرد های سنگ آهک جلب شد که از یک سمت به فضای نشیمن و از سوی دیگر به منظره باغ ختم می شد .
چشمانم بالا و پائین پرچینهای گل رز ، سطح استخر و اقیانوس آرام را می دید .
من نفس راحتی کشیدم .
این محور قدرتمند کوه تا دریا انسان را دعوت به نشستن می کند و این حس با آن راه پله سبک می نیمالیست (کمینه ای) ولی قدرتمند که به سمت چپ ورودی کشیده شده بود .
تشکیل می شد از خود می پرسیدم و آن بالا چیست ؟
از پله ها بالا رفتم تا نگاهی به هال بیاندازم .
هنگامی که از اتاق خواب رمانتیک با بالکن سرپوشیده عبور می کردم یک راه پله مرا به سمت بالاتر هدایت کرد در آنجا یک فضای اداری برج کوچک با منظره ای از تپه ها و اقیانوس ها وجود داشت .
با خود اندیشیدم این خانه جادو می کند .
خانه لذت بخشی ، هوشمندانه ، انسان گرایانه و از همه مهتر اینکه در آن زمان برای من
آرام بود – به آرامی در نور بعد از ظهر اقیانوس آرام می درخشید .
این همان اقامتی بود که ما به عنوان خانه جدید می خواستیم .
باز ، جان رابل ، تینا و گروه MRY گوش دادند ، بحث کردند و خانه ای را برای ما طراحی کردند که خصوصیات خانه یودل /بیب را داشت در عین حال که پاسخگوی نیازهای خاص ، ما نیز بود .
من علاقه خود را به معماری و نیز که نرده فلزی الهام بخشی و نویورک استیت و سقف تزئین شده نقره ای کلمتیان داشت .
یک نقشه شکوفا که زیر لبه بام را به خانه همسایه آن طرف خیابان مربوط می کرد توسط برنارد مای بک معمار برکلی طراحی شد .
رنگ آمیزی بیرونی ، سبز ، زرد کمرنگ و طوسی انتخاب شد چرا که این رنگها بیشتر مناسب کالیفرنیای شمالی بود تا کالیفرنیای جنوبی .
The Alvarado road in Berkeley was built to replace a Tudor-style home that my family had lived in for 16 years until it burned to the ground in the Berkeley / Oakland firestorm of 1991 .
on a sunny February morning my if and I ventured our of Berkeley for the first time since the fire to visit MRY .buzz Yudell met us at the Santa Monica office , showed us slides and models of the firms work , and asked us about the kind of house that we had in mind :
Then we drove up the coast to his and Tina Beebes home in Malibu .
My first sensation upon entering the house was an olfactory one – of home made tomato soup stewing on the stove .
we entered the home from the top of a gently sloping site , with coastal hills to our backs and the ocean beckoning in the distance .
once inside , my gaze was drown down a cascading series of limestone stairs and landing , each with an adjacent living space to one side and views of the garden to the other .
below and beyond my eye traveled over a hedge of blossoming iceberg roses and the smooth , reflective surface of the swimming pool , to the ethereal pacific ocean in the distance .
I breathed a deep sigh of relief .
Playing against this powerful mountain – to – sea axis was the invitation to ascend , issued by the minimalist yet muscular staircase to the left of the entrance .
“what is up there ?” I wondered .
I climbed the stair to discover a long book – lined hallway .
Passing a romantic bedroom with a covered balcony , narrower stairs took me higher , terminating in a tiny tower office space with a panoramic view of both hills and ocean .
“ this house has magic , “ I thought .
Passing a romantic bedroom with a covered balcony , narrower stairs took me higher , terminating in a tiny tower office space with a panoramic view of both hills and ocean .
“ this house has magic , “ I thought .
The house was sensual , intelligent , humanistic , but most importantly to me at that time , it was serene – quietly glowing un the afternoon pacific coast light .
this was the kind of dwelling that we wanted for our new home .
buzz , john ruble , Tina and the MRY group listened , discussed , and designed a home for us that had all of the qualities of the Yudell / Beebe home while at the same time responding to our particular needs .
I expressed an interest in turn – of – the – century Vichitecture , which led to a wiener Werkstatte – inspired mental railing and a Klimtian silver decorative ceiling detail .
a burgundy check pattern tucked under the eaves related the house to its neighbor across the street , designed by the Berkeley architect Bernard maybeck .
An exterior palette of sage green , pate yellow , and gray was selected because it was suited to the northern California landscape than the terracotta typically found in southern California .
The house was constructed with natural , elemental materials : a metal roof : slate decks : maple flooring : limestone mantels : stained wooden ceilings : and thick , hand shift as one moves through the house , experiencing a carefully choreographed sequence of transitions : tall to short , wide to narrow , cozy to grand , high to low .
I feel contained but never confined , always connected to the outside , to the gardens , to the California light .
I am at ease in the house in part due to the consistent patterns that integrate diverse elements in the house at every scale .
at the same time , I experience surprise , whimsy , and more than a touch of magic in features such as a tower within a tower reachable only by climbing a ladder , or a window seat on the lowest level of the house where I can nap , read , or gaze out past a climbing rose to a small lily pond .
more than anything , what makes it hard for me to leave for work in the morning , often draws me back for lunch at midday , and beckons me at duck , is the serenity , first experienced at buzz and tinas house in Malibu and now on Alvarado road .
that feeling is worth more than the “ oh my god !” effect typically sought by other architects .
The central act of shaping place is the search for from .
this search proceeds in concert with an evolving understanding of place .
for us , it comprises analytic , intuitive , and sensate realms of exploration .
It is at times an ineffable , almost magical process .
it is also highly iterative , with each new initiative informed by an evolving understanding of the numerous dimensions of the genius loci .
For centuries , architects have debated and proclaimed their understanding of the process of discovering appropriate forms .
a look at some signal viewpoints illustrates the diversity of approaches .
The Ecole des beaux arts , established in 1863 , insisted that students develop a “parti” , typically a formal geometric diagram , as an armature for the full development of the building .
this was conceived early on , and the success of the design lay in part in how clearly they could hew to the original diagram throughout their design process .
“parti” derives from the world “partisan” , with the implication that students would become advocates for their original diagram .
“from follow function” , Louis Sullivans canonical coinage , exemplifies the modern movements tendency toward reductive formulations .
while it is strictly true , if not tautological , it tends to validate the programmatic and analytic aspects of function and to slight , by omission , the cultural and experiential aspects of our environments .
Louis Kahn spoke of a process of crystallizing the formal diagram and then , as new information informs the process , dissecting and crystallizing a more embracing form which subsumes greater complexity within a clear diagram .
this resonates with the way in which scientists refer to the “elegance” of a solution : the more phenomena that can be explained by simplest theory , the more elegant .
Robert venture influentially reminded us of the “messy vitality” inherent in the understanding , accommodation , and responsiveness to the spatial and temporal layering of our world and cultures .
his early manifesto complexity and contradiction renewed our perceptions of the breadth of from and language within which architects work with conviction and poetry .
At the same time , Charles more kept reminding us of the cultural diversity of the world , of the wisdom embedded within vernacular building , of the need to speak freely and without pious postures or ideologically inspired purity : all the while celebrating our shared human needs and aspirations .
With the backlash against the excesses of putative postmodernism and its trickle down descendants of the 1980s , we have not only chastened ourselves , but we have ushered in a new self limiting orthodoxy .
the building as a minor relevance in an electronic environment .
societal and programmatic aspirations are often taken as low grade constraints beyond which the architect must quickly move .
We see the opportunity to renew and reassert the possibility of shaping places of individual character that are uniquely connected to their context , culture , and time .
we embrace and explore the inherent tension between the desire for the “ideal” and the accommodation of the messiness of the real .
We find it critical to embrace the tension between the ideal and real , or the diagrammatic and the situational .
this allows for both clarity of concept , and richness and specificity of experience and place .
These dualities are central to shaping places that are understandable and mysterious , archetypal and site-specific , conceptual and sensate .
Geometry and order : The search or from is enhanced by the identification of a system that can be used to connect the physical and symbolic worlds .
geometry is a timeless tool for architects .
its etymology from the Greek for “measure of the world” (geo & metron : earth & measure) , reinforces the power of the duality of the found physicality of the earth and the conceived abstraction of measure .
this is central to our way of understanding and working .
such importance reverberates through time .
as peter Doyle , one of our mathematician “let no one who is ignorant of geometry enter here” .
Order is a much broader term than geometry .
it encompasses such modes numbers , sequences , structure , and systems .
it too comprises both symbolic and physical schema , and thereby can help us to connect the experienced and imagined world to the material world .
Geometry and order have , since the earliest built form , embedded our cultural dimensions in our physical world .
The ancient Egyptians manifested a relatively static conception of the cosmos with their massive primary forms .
the disposition of form built in relation to the