Textures and Finishes

Luis Fitting the Transom
These windows over doors were common in Nantucket houses to indicate if fire was in the room. I designed some “modern” version of these at a point but then realized the problem with light leak and lack of privacy from the hallway. In this case light from there’ll serve as an “occupied” sign. And I like the way the additional reflective plane will both superimpose a reflection in the distant window and give it another step of depth.

Transom in the Morning
The following day with light coming in. I’m excited to start marking the light in various spots. The corrugated siding outside will divide a shadow into minutes, even seconds. Inside at the stairwell the skylight and stair below will be another sundial.

Floor and Tub Wall
We’re using teakwood (a sandstone from India that looks like delicious halvah to me) on the floor and white mosaics on the tub “boxes”. The teakwood was chosen to be a good transition from the wood floor- there’s no door in our bathroom and I wanted that segue to be quiet. The smaller mosaics were chosen for the tub because it seemed there’d be some give in getting whole tiles surrounding the “inserted” tub basin- basically an even count of whole lengths and widths around the edge. Planning the tile like this is tricky, as the math never white works out, the mesh sags, gravity and the slightest variation get in the way. My sense to do white was to keep it all recessive and to have the tubs blend with the walls in which they are against, and then the common white between the tub and the tile bolsters a heavier reading, it seems more solid.

Rift Sawn White Oak and Teakwood
I placed a piece of our floor, newly delivered and seasoning in several rooms, adjacent to where closets will be built in our bathroom (I’m hoping for Hinoki cedar) to compare the color and grain. Obviously not a “match” but sympathetic enough. The rift sawn flooring is great, and the muted caramel of it feels fresh and clean while its grain immediately telegraphs to the mission rule furniture all through the arroyo.
Getting the grout right in the teakwood involved mixing a couple of sandless blends.

Hallway
I wanted to see the flooring running down the hall from the stair. We originally were going to run it in this single direction upstairs but now I think we’ll switch it at the bend. I’m concerned with that extra angled cut on most boards squandering more than we have. With the tiles I’ve ordered close to my takeoffs and had almost nothing left, ignoring the industry standard practice of 10-15% extra. Of course if you’re spending much time at all piecing the scraps you’ve blown whatever economy you’ve gathered from your frugality.
I’m still not crazy about this juncture- I may eventually cap the rail to allow for the palm gliding which would eventually make this shabby. Or at some point demo everything solid and let more light get to downstairs- a pipe rail could negotiate this slippage between the hallway guardrail and the diagonal of the stairs.

Between Bedrooms to the Balcony
Starting to think about the frames and how to paint them out and also the doors. We were getting birch and thinking of playing it by ear- the temporary paint grade doors give a good sense of blending in for now. I think if these frames are kept quiet the view beyond collapses the depth. The corrugated is a great matte for the green beyond.

Balcony Railing
I’m very happy to have this white rail- high enough to feel completely contained, and regular and plain to not compete with the view.

Big Window and Deck
Our son and I washed the big window to get off all the adhesives that came with it. Well get this deck together this week, replacing the plywood we’d placed to receive the big window.

Late Afternoon Rain

I remember watching the McNeil Lehrer Report and loving the interstitial footage that was a camera sitting in nature, with sound. It seemed perfect. There would be news, then one of these, then in-depth conversation and then another. They were opposite of ads, sort of mental palate cleansers. Then there were ads for various foundations mixing in, I think to some degree paving the way to today’s venture philanthropy.
It’s easy to think of those quiet moments standing in the empty, almost done house. And the light was one of these terrific things where it’s sun shining on the horizon and darkness and showers above. I’m really looking forward to a much fuller immersion into the nature of the arroyo and these interludes than we have where live now at the bottom of the hill.

Soon the rain passed and left us with some great light.

Rainbow up the Hill

Dumpster in the Driveway
We cleaned up the site today which involves repeatedly cutting and stacking all the extras into our dumpster to haul away. A shame to waste so much material, and next time around I’ll be far more careful about ordering.

View From Floor Out Porch Doors
Everything needs some cleaning after the painting and sanding.

View out the Big Window
This is from the same perspective. I’m loving getting in various crouched states and adjusting that horizon line to crop more or less of the street and hill.

Detail at the Big Window and Side to Living Room

This was reminding me of Courbet a bit:

Gustave Courbet The Stormy Sea 1869 Musee D’Orsay
I’ll paint that window frame (the side one perpendicular to the view) and sash a matching white and it will simplify and amplify that reflective corner.

As the light was leaving I lay on my back and looked up the stairwell. I like seeing how these planes differentiate one another, and how the perspective changes the perception. I can’t figure out what it reminds me of but it’s a narrow space kind of like what you get wandering lost in Venice (maybe that generally with a bit of Michelucci’s church, from a book). But less spooky.

Up West
I have to get in that cleft (where the solid stair rail at left meets the hallway guardrail at right at a very acute 20 degree angle) with a brush. There are numerous edges where various planes meet that I’ll need to touch up, as dried, separated paint seems to accentuate a crack between the planes, when filled it will help them melt into each other in their ambient reflections.

Up East

Up West

At the Stair
Somehow this one reminded me of Thomas Demand’s photos of models of spaces. It’s funny how you sometimes take a visual from an artist and in your mind it distills itself to fit your schemata. For me I enjoy the banal part, the descriptionlessness that allows me to daydream (In my mind his work was far more monochromatic too, in my image search these were as close as I came). I hadn’t known the subtext of horror in each, and now I know, things don’t look the same. But the images still convey a blankness, a space for thought that I’ll leave unlabeled as their titles themselves do:

Thomas Demand Corridor

Thomas Demand Archive both images undated via Thoughts on Contemporary Photography

Up Hill

Porch

Balcony

Fleeing to the Country and Looking Back at the City

Last week my wife and I went to a fundraiser for Refuge Point, a terrific organization that is linking with our government and private parties to help rescue refugees from oppressive conditions, war, and other dehumanizing factors. The party was hosted at an impeccable house designed by John Pawson. The detailing and shear density of excellent craftsmanship, solidity and the state of grace that commitment compels was great to feel, all the more staggering in contrast to the couple of tales of rescue with this backdrop. I guess what caught me in the end about the house though was the deliberate look back at the city.

Bel Air House by John Pawson 2011 (photo by Todd Eberle via Architectural Digest)
It was unexpected for me a dozen miles from downtown in bel air (hard to see in this photo- very clear the other night). The procession from the street up the drive then out to this plinth essentially does the same clockwise loop to go from the trees to the view of buildings that we’ll have:

View Back to City from Nature
Ours is a bit of smart car to its Battlestar Galactica, but the same impulse. A circular drive and going through the house to then look back at the city is obviously some mastery trope, but it also plays on the conflicting strains of isolation and community. Walden is more about getting away than being there. When we got the land long ago I marveled at the Topanga Eastside vibe of the place. Later once Staples Center was built downtown and the Clippers and Lakers moved there I marveled at the 8 minute drive time between games and home. I’ve been very busy trying to get together all the varied strands that take it from this “oh I can’t believe it’s happening, I could look at the framing for days straight” to actually getting it done. In the beginning of July I had the finished the framing and expected to get the inspection without realizing I had to get all the infrastructure in as well: fire sprinklers, electricity, plumbing, and ductwork before we could get the OK (the installation of these utilities can end up riddling the structure with holes and cuts, the inspectors for good reason want to see what’s left of the structure afterwards… far easier to control when you’re meeting the various subs in person and discussing in detail the installation, and also the TJI’s which make up our floors are quite deep and actually provide a good margin for a first timer). These ended up taking a couple of months, in the interim my face was temporarily paralyzed, and we renewed our rental of the scaffolding. I remember the guy gleefully invoking the potential of overtime when he left.
We finally got our signoff Monday, so now we’re busily trying to get all the surfaces that will be clad in metal clad first in plywood which will accept the metal’s fasteners. We’d left off their surface on all the soffits and overhangs to expose the structure while running all these utilities. This powder-coated-white metal has been fabricated. The longest (I think 30″ wide) sheet is 34′+. The vendor asked if it’d fit down the road and I responded it depends on the truck. I’m not sure how easily it’ll maneuver around the bends, and the width may make a difference. The glulam supporting our son’s bedroom is 37′ long but only 5 1/4″ wide. It’s exciting to imagine these sheets in one fell swoop. I think it’ll emphasize a corduroy nature when they’re laid up vertically. The house may end up looking like a giant cat hotel (kidding).

One thing did change as a result of the inspection:

The Notch in the Porch
the inspector asked that I close the opening from the balcony or otherwise i’d have to build a stair there. The grade in this hybrid rendering (real model, photoshopped slope) is near to real life, and the fact is I’m not so interested in double access along the side but I wanted to keep the rail cutoff (though structurally this cantilever was a bit of a hassle) to have that side read as a figure rather than a mask. Something about that useless downturn/notch opens up the side (including actually opening up more airflow), whereas closing it up makes it seem more of a lookout:

Peaks Island Lookout
These bunkers/observation towers are on the island where my mother and stepfather live. Casco Bay could contain the entire Naval fleet during WW2 so surveillance from these points was important.

The View From Within
While the notch didn’t provide us any view at all, and frankly made no sense inside, I liked it enough outside to want to keep its leaky shape.

View from Porch with Notch
We closed it in today.

I saw a photograph of a beach a while back and am interested in seeing how that would look in our living room, something about the water and the canyon seems a good mix.

Massimo Vitali Papeete Beach 2 2004

I like the idea of the horizon of an image connecting with the horizon outdoors.

The SRF on the opposite side has a vaguely Amarcord-ish feeling at night:

Hammock Time

A couple of weeks ago we got a hammock, just had time to put it up now:

Hammock Between the Black Walnut and the Pepper Trees
Having never hung one before but impatient with directions, our son and I drilled a few pilot holes, small 3/16″ ones (mine in the trees, his in several “practice sites”) and went about hanging and rehanging ’til finally we were just taut enough. The slope beneath provides a great dock-like low side to get on then swing freely away from the downward sloping ground. Tauter is obviously better, we went from a twine sack of big bumbling oranges to something resembling a bed the further down the pepper limb we stretched. And the best part is it seems like we’ll have enough breathing room to put up a tree house as originally planned. For a moment it seemed they’d be on top of one another, and the tree house was losing. I’m excited to take the trapezoid of 4 bearing points at the pepper tree and extrude it upwards, see what we get. Our son’s requested a door and a window, we’ll probably make one side long enough for bunks and I think we may clad it in the green asphalt shingles Frank clad one of the Brooks Avenue units in. That’d seem to blend in great and probably be a fairly inexpensive solution to weather.

Arnoldi Triplex, Venice CA, 1980 Frank Gehry and Associates (photo via Dogtown Ink)
I’ve always liked this one with its steps ands its apparent joy, the most. I can’t find the funny story about Frank being on vacation and the surveyor laying it out on the wrong lot though I can relate, something about a glance at the wayward North arrow being the tell, and a hasty purchase across the street.

Two Support Points for Tree House at Pepper Tree on Left
Here’s the view from the hammock, I’m enjoying a lot the decision to bias our house to the one side which affords an open view to the canyon, and I also like the horizon above the house being preserved.

And here we are, complete with neighbor’s quintet of yap-happy dogs across the street:

Afternoon Light in the Arroyo

After our site council meeting at school I picked up our son to shoot hoops before the Celtics-Heat game 6 (an unfortunate blowout- was excited there for the old guys to take on the thunder but it seems unlikely now), and coming round the bend a block or two up from our house was struck by the light across the canyon. The day before I’d stood on a rock there to see if I could see our house and there it was:

House Beyond the Stone Pine Tree

Our son soon wanted to grab the camera and shoot some pictures himself:

Lunging Son with Pilot House by Whitney Smith + Quincy Jones + Edgardo Contini (Mutual Housing Association) Beyond

Here’s what he got:

A Crow Flies Above
With Montecito Heights in the background. The Audubon Society at Debs Park is up there- I’ve read that this is the last/southernmost portion of the same wilderness that Teddy Roosevelt declared a national park in 1911 (Angeles Crest), and there’s a greenbelt stretching from up in the mountains down through to downtown along this route.
Afternoons building the second floor and looking over our future balcony we see a lot of gliding and scanning red tailed hawks and crows, I imagine the canyon is full of rodents. When the afternoon onshore breeze comes in across the cranes down in San Pedro it ends up here with an uplift- I’d guess the wind is a constant +10mph only twenty feet or so above the street. As we close in the framing with plywood, I’m beginning to feel the cross-ventilation I imagined a few years and one scheme ago. Paul, our across the street neighbor, confirmed its efficacy: in his 27 years there he and Shelly have turned their ceiling fans on only 3 times. They have no air-conditioning, just well placed clerestory windows and lower windows opposite them.

Cross Ventilation of an Earlier Scheme (#8)

As the sun goes over the top of the hill you can get more of the layered veils the moisture can sometime produce, and its easy to see how the arroyo in general captivated folks with its reflected light:

Arroyo Seco Franz Bischoff circa 1915
This isn’t the most incredible painting, but ones from this “arroyo school” remind me a bit of my favorite faux impressionist Nantucket painter, Anne Congdon Ramsdell’s work which captures that same cliche-ish plein air failing light, and one can ponder the overlaps between Eastman Johnson, Frank Swift Chase, her and the Greene Brothers, who spent time in summers there before moving out here and building the Gamble House a few years later in 1908.

Closer Up, Plywood on the Balcony

May Flowers

The very little rain we’ve gotten this year (about 60% of normal) has been a bit of a blessing for us building with few rainouts, but not so great for everything else. The seeds we sowed from the Theodore Payne Foundation were seeming to not come up, but they now seem to have established themselves and in the last week we’ve gotten quite a few newcoming flowers. The challenge is to identify the hearty ones we planted vs. the perhaps heartier existing weeds, most of which are nonnative. The mustard, for one, is a nice looking plant but apparently quite a water hog and destructive to the native flora. So there’ve been a few days at the site where I’ll be idling and pulling weeds, not too sure if – wait, hey that’s one we planted- or not. Besides the mustard there is a hard to ID spiny thing which I can’t imagine ever wanting to lay down in, I’ll pull those too.
Some flowers:

At our present house there’s a passel of stray cats that roam around. Our cat variously hangs, is chased by, and has standoffs with them. Our son’s named them straightforwardly: “White Cat, Golden Cat, and Black Cat”- looks like she’ll have more here:

hope this gopher doesn’t cause us too much trouble:

I took some shots on the way to my son’s school, a lot seems to be in bloom:


Site from Path to School
I’m often frustrated with new buildings where there’s an axial view based on the street layout which wasn’t considered at all, showing how limited the horizon of context they’d accounted for. Here I hadn’t actually walked this path to know how squarely we’d sit within its view, fortunately I think it’s a good angle on the house, and another reason to make the roof and walls of the same material as I think we’ll be seeing a good portion of the roof from here.

Just up from where the path deposits you in a cul de sac, at the corner en route to the school you can look up and see this:

Pilot House, Quincy Jones & Whitney Smith 1950
Interested, I’ve seen it before on Google Maps and there’s a great looking oval pool in front of the house. Thanks to my friend Nate for telling me who designed it.

Here’s an interior shot from the same corner:

Pilot House, Interior (photo courtesy of Society of Architectural Historians Southern California Chapter)

and a more historic, uncredited photo courtesy of www.savewright.org:

Pilot House Interior
From the Save Wright Chat:
With their own funds Jones and Smith purchased an inexpensive hillside lot in Mt. Washington, a section of Los Angeles adjacent to downtown, to built a pilot house for the project. The house, Model 102, made out of concrete-block masonry and wood, was built in 1950 with a rectangular floor plan at a cost of $16,700.
(or around 160k today… this perhaps speaks a lot about the increased level of structure required in the intervening years)
It turns out Whitney Smith collaborated with Quincy Jones on this, of particular interest to me as I love his office building (with Wayne Williams at 1414 Fair Oaks in South Pasadena (shared with Garrett Eckbo) down the street from my own.

Day 97- New Year’s Day View of Catalina

We went up to our site the day after seeding, it’d been near 80 on the last day of the year and we wanted to keep these newly cast seeds damp.

As we tried to get everything covered and the sun was setting I noticed that as it falls, at least in winter, it brings the distant camel-like profile of Catalina into sharper reveal:


Setting Sun and Catalina
The marine layer foregrounding is a fog mixture over the 25 miles or so of city between us and San Pedro. The diplodocus tail of Palos Verdes exiting to the right is landbound.

On a Clear Day (or Night) You Can See Catalina

We headed up to the site Sunday night with some friends for the first time since we’ve begun. The sun set on one of those exceptionally clear days we get here towards winter. The visibility so far exceeds what I grew up with on the east coast it seems to collapse distances and collage¹ the landscape. We’re looking around and Miguel says he can see Catalina!² I couldn’t believe it.
The next day I check out Google Earth, where a while ago I’d placed a sketchup model to see how it related to the rest of the surroundings, and lo and behold we’re on a 52.3 mile beeline to the Avalon Casino. Truth be told I don’t care so much for Avalon, a real salt water taffy t-shirt town you wouldn’t expect from its beautiful position on the map³, I prefer Twin Harbors, even moreso Little Harbor on the backside where we annually camp.
Having grown up on Nantucket, though, the notion of “oceanview” weighs heavily. My grandparents’ place, our family hub of sorts, was across the street from a great beach. And it seemed to me access was more important than seeing it. In fact being close by and not seeing it seemed preferable to the opposite. But pretty funny that you can see the water from here, and great fun engaging in Google Earth. I’m hopeful that at some point the database will become so robust that not only will municipalities provide GIS survey info but actual building models could be placed, the more info that’s ladled into conversations about cities, growth, and context the better.

Panoramic View from Behind Site (via Google Earth)
The ocean at right appears to be Venice.

Miguel’s iPhone Snapshot
The actual silhouetted view is largely obscured by trees unaccounted for in Google Earth. I’ve been told by a geologist I’m working with that the pro version of this program has astonishingly accurate topographical information.

52.3 Mile Beeline
Palos Verdes sits like an island in the basin, and to the right our relative drumlin of Mt. Washington at the tail end of the range that extends west through Griffith Park and the Hollywood Hills, and into the Santa Monica Mountains above Malibu.

footnotes
¹For collaging space, landscape and architecture these are my favorite.

Mies Van der Rohe collage (courtesy MoMa)
²Later in the week our neighbor Arline let me know they can see the bridges in San Pedro regularly on clear winter mornings.
³And most unfortunate site of lost architecture in Schindler’s now demolished Wolfe House.

Day Minus One Eucalyptus Removal

Saturday of the weekend before we were going to begin digging, let’s call it Day Minus Three, the thought that we had to rapidly remove the towering eucalyptus on our property became unavoidable. Our excavation, or over-excavation for the footings more accurately, was going to place the edge of the cut within the roots/dripline of the tree. The news in the previous week of a woman getting crushed in her Honda under a fallen tree, and the town’s seemingly hasty decision to remove them was difficult to ignore.
And the thought in the back of the head that they were a fire hazard didn’t help:
It has been estimated that 70% of the energy released through the combustion of vegetation in the Oakland fire was due to eucalyptus.
So, our son’s love of the tree and its fragrant leaves notwithstanding we got rid of it.
It hadn’t looked quite right since several years before when the developer of the house next door cut it in the middle of the night, but truth be told it looked better than ever the days before we took it down.

Before

After

I’m thinking we’ll replace it with some Gingkos, like these at the Huntington Garden’s Japanese Garden. They seem to have a good combination of screening and transparency, and the seasonality of their color and leaves seems good too.

Gingkos in the Zen Garden @theHuntington