As the summer months quickly approach, our minds often wander to the setting that will bring us the most peace, R&R. Coincidentally; the majority of us envision the outdoors and a body of water to lap up our year‘long pent-up stress. The harmony that exists within the relationship of indoor meets outdoor not only lends itself to the ultimate form of creative output but to the dialog that a client often brings up within the first meeting with an architect/and or designer “Make it modern.” Rarely does one request a walled off castle on a hill with minimal views of the outdoors. Nor does a designer hear requests for overly accessorized and furnished homes adorned with intricate detail and moulding to match. No, often, it is ‘simplicity’ that rules. Richard Neutra, a famous west coast architect of the mid-twentieth century, along with Frank Lloyd Wright and Horace Gifford on the east coast, just to name a few, embraced the indoor/outdoor relationship and designed their residences to allow for literal and visual breezeways. Today’s residences, especially summer retreats, have taken the indoor/outdoor relationship to a sublime edge teetering on experience and premeditated minimal belongings by which to renew one’s soul not crowd it. Yet, to simply build slab on slab of rectangular shapes and cut-throughs exposing views is not enough. The beauty that exists in the following images does far more with far less. While provocative in appearance, look closely at the images, there is a sense of healing and well being in the spaces that the architecture frames. From the framed landscape view to the framed interior experience, done right, the indoor/outdoor relationship can be not only breathtaking but healing. Poorly designed? you may as well pour water over it like an off kilter sand castle and start again. Great design is not easily achieved nor a given-but it is worth learning from to springboard in pursuit of one's perfect solstice.
The Singleton House, Bel Air, California, by Richard Neutra mid 1950s. The quintessential example of indoor meets outdoor relationship. Image source: http://www.dailyicon.net/2011/03/page/2/
On the east coast, Horace Gifford, a modernist architect, whose work dated mid-late twentieth century, dotted Fire Island's sand dunes with designs that celebrated the indoor/outdoor relationship. (Below) his last design sketch from 1987.
Today's modern approach to satisfying the indoor/outdoor relationship recognizes that the sun and its effect on lighting the site throughout the day is the priority in the layout of the spatial relationship of land mass vs. interior room-scaping. Case in point, the cliff-sided contemporary beach front home (below). Despite its mass, the residence has levity and elegance that is grounded. The outdoor pools resemble glacier ponds that might as well as formed thousands of years previous.
Our love affair with water is not complicated. Simple structural forms that yield a blue oasis of escapism are forever sought after. Yet, when a passageway is built into the experience exposing the fresh outdoor air beyond, the pool takes on an entirely new approach, it becomes an architectural feature.
The tempting allure of a mirage off in a distance fascinates us on two accounts: 1. The plane-like sublime calmness that beacons interruption and 2. The self sustained minimalist environment that resonates containment and simplicity. To add a ripple to such an experience is our way of connecting like a child running up to a puddle to call it our own-yet when the indoor and outdoor relationship is in perfect harmony-surprisingly, there is an instant reverence and one tends to reflect rather than disrupt. It is in this moment where architects/designers that set out to achieve such a ying/yang balance have truly reached it.
Approaching a residence from the inside-out, framed box views that open up on a vista such as a body of water provide a real-life canvas on which nature paints ever changing scenes for the admirer.
(Below) "Architect Lloyd Russell’s Rimrock Ranch House is a tasty blend of practical functionality and sustainable style. The home sits 4,500 feet above sea level in the California desert outside Palm Springs. Russell, who describes his design aesthetic as “handmade modernism,” created the canopied home to both integrate, and flourish in, the challenging desert environment.
The most striking feature of the residence is its steel canopy designed to shield the home from the sun’s unforgiving rays and winter snowfalls, while simultaneously promoting air flow and passive cooling. The exterior walls of the the house consist of a well thought out combination of corrugated steel and sliding glass. Many of the home’s fixtures and details are recycled or salvaged providing the space both sustainable function and character. The home is designed and situated to take advantage of its open patio space and desert surroundings." Source & 2-images below: http://www.alternativeconsumer.com/2009/07/20/