Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Mini-Review: Postmodern Residential Design



This article about postmodern residential architecture is the result of my most up-voted Reddit comment of last week. Hadaway House in Whistler B.C., certainly deserves some critical inspection because there's lots we can learn to make good architecture better. It's a striking house – both inside and out – and from the pictures in the linked article there's lots of details to absorb like custom glazing and carpentry which can translate in more average homes as very nice architectural features.

The interior styling is a bit Zen and people are going to fall where they may on whether they like it or not. I like it. The architectural field is so visual somehow it feels appropriate after coming home from the art gallery to feel relaxed around white walls with no clutter. On the other hand, there are the practicalities of daily life to consider and some high-quality high-design built-in shelving would go along way toward making living in an architectural statement more liveable. The third option is that this was just for the photoshoot anyways and after the photographer left all the smartphone cables etc. came out again.


The real genius of the structure, and characteristic my comment captured, is that the interior is very well conceived. As I wrote this post I struggled with exactly how to expand on this characteristic. It's very subtle. A commenter on the Dezeen article noted that the interior was "sympathetically" modelled and I somehow find myself agreeing with this sentiment. To try to nail down a more precise description of why I'd paid Patkau Architects big bucks to design my house (with whom I have absolutely no connection with by the way) I would please draw the reader's attention to how the edges of the walls and ceiling form neat vertices like true facets of a crystal. Headroom and dead space are each maximized and minimized in turn. This is a completely non-trivial mental exercise and one which I'd be very curious to know what, if any, methodologies were behind it. I mean, I have my approach but I'm far from knowing if it's optimal or not. Unfortunately, in reviewing materials for this piece I did not come across exactly from whose mind this design dropped out of but maybe this is because it was a collaborative effort anyways.

Any scorecard considering perfect architecture in the 21st century needs to account for sustainability. Giving the benefit of the doubt to the client all those windows are triple glazed, I'm more concerned with the exact type of wood used for the exterior. Looks good doesn't it? It has a diverse range of tones which adds great depth to the texture. It's a type of South American hardwood called Ipe. I'm not familiar with ipe at all but do know bulk lumber doesn't make it's way to the interior of B.C. without leaving one large carbon footprint behind. Hint: there's renewable pine and spruce out every window (well, not really, but you get the point). And that's just the thing, LEED Platinum or Living Building certification isn't necessary. But some evidence of an attempt in that direction; acknowledgement that it's an issue; would have gone a long way to blunting this criticism and turning this into a bit more of a celebration. That said, maybe we'll be surprised? Maybe this house was built carbon neutral? That would be enough for me to get the party started again, because really, my threshold to celebrate building and architecture is notoriously low.

To read more about the house, the original Reddit thread can be found here.

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