Cassilhaus

You can't wear all of your Christmas clothes the day after Christmas

Part of my design process was looking at a HUGE number of contemporary house designs to stimulate ideas for all aspects of our house.  I have quite a stack of modern house coffee table books decorated with a splendid display of post-it notes.  There is Modern House, Modern House 2, Modern House 3, 100 Modern Houses, 100 More Modern Houses, Bride of Modern House, Son of Modern House, 20 Top Contempory Architects, inumerable single architect monographs, etc. etc.   We appear to be in good company as these books are filled with stunning designs of architects' own houses or commissions for their parents, siblings, or uncles--likely because no regular client would let them push the envelope so far.  What was so overwhelming was trying to synthesize and integrate all the disperate ideas that I liked and make them my own.

Ellen told me about one of her fellow architecture students at Texas A&M, John Paul Dunn, who used to admonish, "you can't wear all your Christmas clothes the day after Christmas".  I laughed out loud at this and it became a useful mantra to remind me that just because I like a design idea doesn't mean I need to incorporate it into our house.  Design ideas usually start the conversation rather than end it.  I've said earlier in this blog that some of the best ideas on this house have resulted from problems and budget constraints and in retrospect this should have been obvious because you are forced to look at things from a new perspective and you must work as a team and spend more time to find a solution.  The fabulous project gallery at the East end of the bridge emerged when we couldn't fit the bathtub where we wanted it when the bathroom was located there.  A new and better pocket door arrangement at the guest pod grew out of Orange County's building permit rejection of our initial plan (I lost some sleep over that one but now I embrace problems!).  The wonderful decorative cedar ceiling all the way under the bridge grew as an extension of our cedar canopy over the dining table which we put in to make the dining area more intimate in the double high space.  The list is long and the design keeps getting more refined.  This week's struggle is with millwork. The bid has come in way over budget and we have been scrambling to simplify the designs.  The most successful approach has been to look for off the shelf products that can substitute for or integrate with our custom designs to lower the overall cost. IKEA came to the rescue again in a few areas but one of the exciting finds was BLUDOT.  They are based in Minneapolis and make fabulous contemporary furniture--very reasonably priced and several notches above IKEA.  Ellen and I first saw this stuff at the Walker Art Center gift shop and logged it away in our brains until we were looking for just the right cabinet to replace the custom unit in the guest loft.  Enter the maple and powder coated steel MODU-LICIOUS 3. We were able to incorporate two of these side by side, modify the knee wall height and eliminate an all custom cabinet.  That also drove completely simplifying the headboard ($145 from IKEA) and wood cap in that area and saved several thousand dollars. We now feel like we have a better overall design in the guest loft.  We also found a simple beautiful steel micro-bookshelf from BLUDOT called TOTEM that we are integrating into our entry instead of going all custom--again we think it will be a cooler end product AND save money.

You can never solve a problem at the level at which it was created. You have to go to at least one level beyond.
- Albert Einstein

WE GET MAIL!

My generation is new to blogging.  I assumed when I started this that I would get tons of comments on the blog about my posts but instead all my friends call me and send me emails about the blog. I think I have gotten 2 actual blog comments since I started. Go figure. My friend Jim, a wonderful artist in Durham, passed this on--

"What I will miss are the details of the structure that will become secrets--The welded brace mated to the wood frame.  The way that corners are turned and beams are enmeshed in complex posts; this house is stretched out like a lanky runner going over a hurdle...those places where the structure is especially stout as if it were expecting a Great Wind.. are the places, images, that I carry away to ponder. So, get in closer with the camera to help us remember the Hidden Order that gives this project its integrity."

This is for you Jim--

Thanks Jim!  Keep those cards, letters, emails, phone calls, telegrams and whatever coming.

Will you tell me a Clerestory?

Clerestory--A clerestory, pronounced clear story, is a high wall with a bank of narrow windows along the very top.  The clerestory wall usually rises above adjoining roofs.

To get lots of light in the house without getting too much direct sunlight on the art, we designed a clerestory the entire way around the bridge, on the north and east sides of the guest pod, and on the north and west sides of the main pod.  There will be 3 foot overhangs all the way around that block the direct sun but still allow indirect reflected light.

Ellen finally was able to get me to understand that when you have a non-rectilinear form like a trapezoid and you have a constant roof slope that is not a hyperbolic paraboloid, one main side of the trapezoid will need to be constant height and the other increasing in height from one end to the other to meet the roof.

You can see this easily if you place a slopped piece of paper over a trapezoidal shape.  Our solution was to have rectilinear windows on the South side of the bridge and trapezoidal ones on the North.

They have been rough framing the clerestory this week and have finished about half of it.

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described.

                            --Garry Winogrand

Lofty Ideals

Huge progress in the last few days as the small pod is nearly completely framed and they have started to frame the walls of the bridge. The full height of the house is now apparent. Check out more framing photos on the sidebar.

The vertical scale is clear for the first time at the double high space at the North end of the guest pod.

The guest pod sleeping loft is turning out to be one of the sweetest spots in the house with views on 3 sides.   Here it is a few days ago before the rest of the wall framing was up.  There is a stair up to this level and then a small landing and then two more risers to get up to the level of the main gallery and the bathroom associated with this space.  There will be a knee wall along the north side where you can look down below to the studio space.  There are three clerstory windows facing east (one operable), gigantic windows to the north with a view to the creek and a very sizable window just at the stair landing facing west that allows views of the main house and the stream below as well as the entire bridge exterior.  The loft is quite cozy and we are wrestling right now with how to get some decent storage in there and still have some clearance around the bed.

You can get a sense of the views at the NE corner both from ground floor and up in the loft:

Ellen repeatedly warns me that a psychological hard rain is gonna fall when the house gets actual walls and roofs and I won't be able to see everything from everywhere.  Now it is just a wide open vista.

It is counterintuitive to welcome insecurity as a sign that something good is beginning.  I have never greeted it as a friend.  But I know that that is where the work is done, and premature comfort is a pretty good sign that nothing much is happening.

     --Sean Kernan

Wacky Neighbor

Driving to the site on Valentine's Day we saw this crazy group of decked out (in red) birds at the entrance to our neighborhood.  I am kicking myself for not taking a picture.  Looks like we have a tradition as we saw this today for Saint Pattys:

How cool is that to live in a neighborhood with people who do bird installations!

Thought for the day:

MORE WAG      LESS BARK

Quick Update

Just got back from a weekend away to see the steel cut on the east end of the bridge:

Lots of room to spare!  We get to keep the tree.  The footprint of the entire house is now complete.

So how long did you say you wanted this thing?

When I first walked onto the site after the most recent round of steel I figured we somehow screwed up our careful siting of the house and would have to lose our favorite hickory tree or live with a tree growing up throught the center of the project gallery at the far east end of the bridge.

It turns out that when you order steel they come in stock lengths and when they erected the steel they decided to just install it at full length and then cut it in the field when the figured out precisely how long they needed to be.  They worked on the bridge floor framing on Tuesday and Wednesday and figured out exactly where the end of the bridge will be and we will get to keep our tree and it will be hugging the house just like we planned!  The final joists are shown in the photos above.

The physician can bury his mistakes but the architect can only advise his clients to plant  vines.                                                Frank Lloyd Wright

VIV and LELA

Ellen and I rent children occassionally--much simpler than ownership.   Our weekly charges, Viv and Lela, arguably the cutest  two little girls in America, made their first trip to Cassilhaus today and boy did we have a big time.  Please don't tell their parents Char and Mark about playing with the rusty steel, nail strips, and the spent welding rods.  Vivian kept saying "we're fixing your house!!"

In about 30 seconds Vivian went from being terrified of the 2x10 ramp up to the deck level to maximizing the bounce as she skipped down.

They quickly discovered some loose bolts and washers and got very focused on having Ellen begin architectural apprenticeships.

With the last couple of days of rain New Hope Creek below was just raging--white water and lots of noise.  What a wonderful sound after so much drought.  The stream was also completely cleared out from the strong current.  Several visitors from the neighborhood today--Saturday is a big visiting day.  Lots of "lot envy" going on.  We feel so lucky to have found this stunningly beautiful place and to be able to share it with these two amazing young ladies.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

                Marcel Proust

                                     

            Marcel Proust

ART WALK

Yesterday Dwayne and Steve worked on the floor framing of the connecting bridge. This houses the gallery and it was my first chance to walk through it and get a sense of the scale of everything.  Ellen and I love art and collect photography. It was a balancing act of wall space vs. windows throughout the design phase and I think we found a great balance by using alot of high windows and having a gallery space dedicated to hanging art.  There are low windows at floor level on the north side of the bridge to allow a view down to the stream below.

Myron and his crew have come up with some ingenious custom scaffolding units to avoid having to set up ground based scaffolding on this incredibly steep slope.

To the extent that this world surrenders its richness and diversity it surrenders its poetry.  To the extent that it relinquishes its capacity to surprise, it relinquishes its magic.  To the extent that it loses its ability to tolerate ridiculous and even dangerous exceptions, it looses its grace.      

                      Tom Robbins                   

Tom Robbins

CEDAR SKY

Framing continues on the main pod and is focused on the "stair object" Framing in this area is very complicated with so many angles and complicated duct work and millwork that starts on the ground floor and comes up through to the second floor as a continuous millwork piece.  One of my favorite design elements in the project is a decorative slatted cedar ceiling the runs the entire length of the underside of the bridge both inside and outside and defines the shape of the bridge inside.  When outside it consists of 1x4" cedar boards mounted horizontally with 3/4" gaps over black painted plywood.  When the ceiling moves inside we add 1x2" cedar mounted vertically in the gaps between the horizontal slats.  This pattern continues through the entry and kitchen of the main pod and part of the studio in the guest pod and then reverts to just the horizontals when it goes outside to the screened porch and the area below the project gallery on the far east cantilevered piece of the bridge. In the main kitchen ceiling the vertical members continue north in free space and form a canopy over the dining table to make that space a little more intimate.

Right at the point where the cedar ceiling transitions from outside at the bridge to inside at the entry hall we have placed a large high 10'x14" window to allow you to read this ceiling from outside to inside.

Stay tuned for finished photos.

A man sets himself the task of portraying the world.  Over the years he fills a given surface with images of provinces and kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fish, rooms, instruments, heavenly bodies, horses, and people.  Shortly before he dies he discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is a drawing of his own face.

                                                                                                                        Jorge Luis Borges

THE BRIDGE

I've been sick for week like everyone else so pardon the slow posts.  The much anticipated connection of the big and small pods happened on Friday with the placement of the steel support structure of the large bridge volume that sits on top of the two

pods.  I could have killed Myron for not telling me it was happening and as a result I missed documenting a lot of it.  Hopefully Kevin with Custom Steel has some photos I can put up. It went up remarkably fast given the number of individual pieces.  The upper trapezoid can now be visualized and you can start to see how the whole house goes together.

The larger western end of the the bridge sits on top of the screened porch and houses our master bedroom and bath.  We have a huge window at the NW corner and the view to the stream below is magical.  The rest of the bridge houses the stair landing and hallway, a library, photo gallery, guest bathroom, and small project gallery.

One architectural element we like quite a bit is having a freestanding volume within another volume.  Our master closet is like this in our bedroom and the entire stair case is a freestanding sculptural element we call the "stair object" and it houses (in addition to the stairs) our regrigerator, pantries, and various millwork pieces. You can see they are starting to frame it up below with the regrigerator at the lower left of the image.

The "gallery object" is a 3/4 height volume in the gallery that will house artwork, a bench, lighting equipment, and some other surprises. These will be a lot easier to visualize once I can put some photos up or show you in person!

Last but not least we got a job sign up out at Erwin and Mimosa to direct traffic.