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April 11, 2009

A Sense of Space in the 21st Century

So I present demonstrations at JLCLive. Before the Seattle show, a friend and I toured the city.

We trundled the usual spots, like the famous Pike Place Fish Market where the guys in orange Helly Hansen overalls hurl salmon filets. We're both in the business of houses -- he's easily one of the best, most knowledgeable builders of homes there is on this planet -- so no conversation strayed far from the buildings surrounding us.

We walked through Pioneer Square an area of commercial buildings built around 1900. The mill building we spotted on the way in was detailed with brick arches and copper cornice that was so beautiful -- ON A FACTORY, imagine that today! -- that it made your heart ache. Then, in the main square, we saw an ornamental iron train station entrance copied after those in Paris (Paris, as a city, by the way is in tact and a link to pre-WWII architectural history because the French surrendered to Hitler he tells me; London, not so much). Then, building after façade after storefront was dripping with individual detail and artistry. Stone, brick, masonry, copper, metal -- cornices, crown, window heads, doors -- it just couldn't get prettier. I mean even the fire station that was run down was a work of art.

And behind us rose the glass and steel towers of Seattle's center. Sleek, stark, modern, enormous.

Why can't they hold the same warmth and "integrity" as the older buildings? Why aren't they as "beautiful?" we asked.

Well, there's a quantifiable answer to this subjective question, for me at any rate, and it comes from my mother (wise) and my wife (wise and trained in architecture.)

A mom-mantra -- and I have yet to find a time in my life when this isn't true -- is as follows: There is no arguing matters of taste. Some people like blue; some yellow. It's just the way it is. Always has been, always will be.

My wife's point of view has changed my view of "modern" architecture because, unlike so many things produced by architects (any builder will tell you) it is pragmatic. "Think about it, Mark," she says. "Imagine the cost of building an 80 story building whose footprint takes up 1/2 a city block with turn-of-the-20 th Century detail. There's not enough money in the whole world to do it, never mind the armies of men required to pull it off building after building."

It's true.

It might be sad, but it might open up a new perspective on looking at modern buildings. The rules are different. You can make the case that, in order to be so massive, they're designing in a narrower bandwidth.

But don't get faked out. Architects are loaded with hubris -- you have to be to put your name on something 80 stories tall and they'll tell you they're work is beautiful; Frank Lloyd Wright was downright forceful about it.

While I've learned a valuable lessons between the low-scape and high-rise horizon at Pioneer Square, I don't care how flippin' awesome someone says they are... if I think your building is ugly then it's ugly to me. Moms have a great way of being right sometimes.

Posted by Mark Clement at 10:16 AM

April 3, 2009

How's Your Design Vocabulary?

This blog is your chance to take me to task, to run me through the ringer, take me down a peg. See when I started building on my own, designing trim for a home improvement job -- or even entire house -- meant going to Home Depot and picking out which molding I liked.

There's still method to that madness because art doesn't follow a prescribed path. For example, I recently combined Craftsman period details with a 200 year old molding style from Lowes new EverTrue line and a 100-year-old trimless window detail from the American 4-square period. And I could have made it all up from the ether, but knowing what's-what really helped me design it -- and build it -- better than guessing. WindsorOne.com is a great site for checking down four popular trim styles.

Pulling back a little to housing styles in general there's a nice timeline of which style was popular when at The House of Antique Hardware.

And while a timeline is handy for knowing when a style was hot, it's more useful to know some identifying details of the actual style -- Victorian, for example, is named for the massively detailed architectural style popular around the reign of Queen Victoria. Then there's Italianate (similar but different from Victorian,) Cape Cod (typically a 28x32 footprint with a 12-pitch roof popularized in America's first suburb Levittown, ironically built on Long Island, NY after WWII), Ranch or Rambler (a housing style popularized by Frank Lloyd Wright but only made tolerable as a resident by the existence of conditioned air; the house was affordable and gatewayed opening up vast tracks of populable land, like Florida and Arizona.)

Here's another thing this kind of high-fallutin' hoobbee-whatee opens up: your own opinion and -- dare I say it without becoming hopelessly lame?--your own sensibility.

For example, just because everybody says Wright is the bees-knees it's OK to not like him (gag.) One of my mentors loves Wright. I can't stand him, Wright that is. But the point is to GET what Wright is doing -- or TRYING to do--and how it's impacted the houses we work on (which is something I learned from my designer wife, who's a designer.)

You may not be called to frame an 18-in-12 turret on a Queen Anne or Shingle Style home or to set columns on a Greek Revival but when you meet with customers there's an unspoken expectation they have of you to know what kind of house you're standing in. By the way, if you're ever in Washington, DC visiting the National Building Museum will not be a waste of your time.
Now, you can stuff your tape measure in your overalls and stick a pencil behind your ear and bark, "Let's frame it!" and not really see all the implications of what you just said. Or you can have a working knowledge of the pieces and parts that go into building what they want -- and you can communicate that to them as well as build it into your bid so you can actually make money. Knowledge, esoteric or not, brings us closer to the art and science of how we make something work versus how we make something beautiful.

So here's your chance to take me to task: have my feet left the earth here? Do you expect your contractor to have an eye for proportion and architectural history? Do you want your trim guys to know the difference between Colonial and Craftsman trim details or do you just want them to nail the boards up and move on?

Posted by Mark Clement at 11:03 AM