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Sylvan Hill ResidenceCritical Commentary by Bruno ZeviAs published in L'architectura (Italy),
November 1994 |
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| This Connecticut home,
located at a two-hours’ drive from New York, is the
highly successful creation of a school of design that
appears to be rooted in the work of Bruce Goff; indeed,
it recalls one of the major themes woven through that
great architect’s work: how to conciliate the use of
industrial products with the need to interpret and
enhance the setting into which a work of architecture
must fit. A series of pavilions is arranged on a gentle wooded slope in a way that brings the outdoors practically into the house. The feeling one gets of coming upon a cluster of lodges in the forest is enhanced by the architects incorporation of outcropping rocks into the overall design. The architect has rendered due homage to the works of his predecessors: Aldo van Eyck’s "Wheels of Heaven:, Louis Kahn’s church in Rochester, and especially Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen’s "Church in the Rock". His main focus, after defining the "typical containers", was evidently on relating the house to its surroundings, and above all on linking the various parts with a series of well-characterized spaces and pathways. As to the first aspect, no sign of other people can be seen from inside the house, although the windows of the three pavilions are designed so that the view is never cut off. As to the second, the architect has given meticulous care to organizing what we might call the temporal process of spatial perception. The half-mile access road represents an important stage in the overall spatial experience. After reaching the parking area, we enter the house at the hinge between two pavilions, housing the "public" areas (living, dining, and kitchen). This [trellis covered entry] path is protected, rather like a courtyard, by a partly opaque and partly transparent roof that seems to float above the walls. Breezeways are strung along one side, while on the other an indoor path starts from the entrance, winds around the living space and leads to the bedrooms. Along this itinerary one may view the owner’s art collection, whose location here is ideal. From this same connecting gallery one reaches the guest area - the only rectangular part of the design, blithely juxtaposed on the sequence of sinuous spaces. This "domestic organism" evidently grew out of a complex conception of architecture whose guiding principles are worth mentioning in this connection. The first is to fit architecture into its natural setting. This involves, first of all, the choice of materials (in this case, the appropriate prevalence of wood); a spatial composition that makes the building part of the landscape, or even an extension of the elements that generated the landscape; and the use of light, which is enhanced by the frequent emergence of the wooden bearing structure wherever the architect wants to obtain strong chiaroscuro effects, creating suggestive areas that link the woods and the indoors. The second principle has to do with rigorous composition - - with order, one might say, were that term not so often charged with repressive connotations. The splendid indoor areas, though highly characterized, are situated in modular "containers of [nearly] identical size; their envelope is flexible, and thus able to meet different needs through controlled modifications. The third principle refers to the design of the space that tie one pavilion to the next. Together with the flexibility built into the pavilions themselves, these spaces can represent the indispensable interface between industrial products and the natural context, engendering complex organism even from a sequential process.
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