COLLABORATING WITH THE LAND

Altering the land and the landscape is easy. Machinery can cut down a small forest or rearrange a hillside in a few days. Soft, marshy, ground or solid rock that's seemingly unsuitable for building upon is a slight nuisance the homeowners can surmount if they're willing to take on some additional expense. Dry yellow deserts can be turned into lush landscapes of green almost overnight with installation of mature plantings and simple irrigation systems. So why would modern architects be at all anxious about the land and landscape when they are free of its constraints? The answer is that the existing landscape usually possesses character—perhaps undervalued—and is ( more an asset than a detriment if you adopt a romantic approach to design. Romantic architects see raw, undisturbed land as a potential collaborator in the creation of unique houses, dwellings that gain much of their distinctiveness from the limitations and idiosyncrasies of the site. Every piece of land offers the sun, the night sky, breezes, contours, scents, sounds, colors, and the presence or absence of water. Even a property in the middle of the densest city has some relationship to nature. The ideal partner for romantic solutions is, of course, untouched countryside. A rocky cliff covered in moss or barnacles, a rolling meadow of wild grasses and flowers, a thicket of birches—these are landscapes with valuable attributes that can too easily be destroyed as the land is developed. This is why Obie Bowman frets with his "'personal paradox': a desire to build and a need to work with rather than against the natural landscape." Hugh Newell Jacobsen and Peter Bohlin operate slightly differently; they have no fear of manipulating the natural landscape, but like skilled and experienced gardeners, they begin with an intense reverence for the land's qualities. "Worshiping nature" would not be too strong a description of the designs of these three. You can sense it in how their houses are photographed. Often the landscape, more than the architecture, seems to be the central feature. "It's the landscape that drives it," says Jacobsen, discussing the inspiration for his seemingly formal, almost rigid designs. "The secret is the garden." Bohlin's designs emerge from geometric layouts based on rules of proportion—annotated with picturesque observations about the rising and setting sun or the vistas of the landscape.

The elements—sun, wind, and weather—are fundamental aspects of nature to be respected and capitalized upon. Any home can benefit from a sunny spot for breakfast or a shady spot for spending warm summer afternoons. Interiors are designed as theaters for the play of natural light. Bowman begins every project with a personal and expressive diagram that charts each element onto a map of the property so that he can best tap into each of their potential effects. Patterns of windows become displays of sun shadows on hardwood floors. Shadowy spaces lead to intensely lit ones, like scenes in a suspense movie. Combined with other elements such as cool or fragrant breezes, the sun and shade animate the house, making one room or another a favorite spot at certain times and in certain seasons. When skillfully harnessed, the sun exerts a powerful impact on a home's appearance. One of the most surprising features of Jacobsen's seemingly stoic houses is how expressive they become with the changing of the day. The slick surfaces of white painted wood or bricks put on new faces from morning through evening as the sun casts ever-changing shadows on the houses' sculptured exteriors, set against the surrounding landscape. In some instances, the ground itself is a focal point of romantic design. Bowman solves his paradox of building and yet preserving the landscape by wrapping his homes with the land, bringing the ground up and over the roof. Jacobsen creates great carpets of gravel to set his homes upon, recalling the good, solid surface of farmyards. For Bohlin an outcropping of rock is as glorious as any vista, and rather than frame it as a view, he pays tribute to it by "accommodating it." He does not remove it; he builds around it. A steeply sloped site costs less to acquire than a more level one, and for the romantic architect this is a lucky break. Never satisfied with homes that permit only one expression, a romantic appreciates the ability of a steep hill to put a house low to the ground on one side and high in the air on another. This applies to interiors as well. Embracing the multiplicity of the land's traits rather than forcing uniformity onto it brings forth a more dynamic and romantic solution. Allowing vegetation, whether it's a single large tree or a marshy lowland, to be preserved or "accommodated," as Bohlin would say, is in tune with romantic ideal and also with the capabilities of modern construction. Traditional methods of building disturbed the earth, often eliminating all the plantings not only within the house's footprint but also within twenty or thirty feet of its perimeter. By using reinforced concrete, laminated wood posts and beams, steel cables, or other structural components, the modern romantic can allow large parts of their homes to float above the ground. That is one of the methods of collaborating with the land. Whether to merge into the land, float above it, establish a man-made base, or make a strong contrast against the terrain is a choice that must be worked out for each romantic house. No matter which route is selected, in one way or another the romantic designer collaborates with the land.