DESIGNING GOOD HOME

Historically, feeling has been an important ingredient in American domestic architecture. In the seventeenth century, when the first permanent settlers from the British Isles and northern Europe arrived on this continent, they encountered a terrain that was unfamiliar and often inhospitable. The resources available in the new land were largely unknown. What they found in North America was so arduous and alien, so different from Europe, that the newcomers might as well have been colonizing the moon. In such a setting, shelter, even a rude, primitive one, was the first necessity. The settlers fashioned dwellings from whatever materials could be gathered within walking distance. Like children using their imagination to build forts in back yards or in the woods, the assembled rustic dwellings to protect themselves from all that seemed strange or threatening—the extreme weather, the wild animals, and of course the natives already living in the vicinity. The colonists' first rudimentary creations were shoebox homes of stacked logs with pitched roofs, sometimes of earth—gathered together in a village pattern, their boundaries fortified when possible. As soon as possible, however, the primitive homes were added onto, or entirely new houses were built. The colonists wanted their homes to resemble the houses they had known in the Old World. The settlers had no interest whatsoever in emulating the Native Americans' building customs. Nor did they intend to invent new forms for the New World. Rather, the progress of North American house design throughout the next three hundred years consisted mainly in translating and adapting European antecedents to the houses that would be built here. Although American builders looked to European models, their impulse was more romantic than historicist. They didn't so much copy Old World designs as invoke imagery that recalled certain places—such as villages in England, Germany, and the Netherlands. Early Americans built with the materials they found readily available, even if those materials had not commonly been used on the houses they were remembering. Americans erected houses predominantly of wood, even if the inspirations for the designs were European dwellings of masonry. Some wooden eighteenth-century structures became known as Dutch colonials despite the fact that they conveyed impressions of Dutch houses that had been built of stone. Even when American homes used the same materials as those on the other side of the Atlantic, such as stone or brick, they were hardly ever identical to the European originals. Americans adapted European imagery and styles to new conditions, different landscapes. In the nineteenth century, Italianate and Queen Anne cottages were built on beaches or on oceanfront cliffs in styles that recalled homes in the Italian countryside or in English suburbs. For Americans, literal reproductions of houses from the old country could rarely suit the lifestyles of a new industrious and democratic society. The mansions of the upper class overseas were generally considered too ostentatious for capitalist tycoons in the United States, even if the American versions did turn out to be quite elaborate. The cottages of Europe's lower class also did not lend themselves to copying—for an opposite reason: they were too inferior to house the New Worlds working class. Old homes in Europe's countryside had been designed without comfort-giving technologies such as central heating and indoor plumbing, and they had used glass sparingly—partly because it was terribly costly and partly because historic European architecture had sought to keep the world out. That defensive posture continued in some American houses, such as dwellings in the 1700s in New York's Mohawk Valley that were called "forts" because they were designed to ward off attacks by French and Indians. But as Hugh Newell Jacobsen pointed out to me, American architecture quickly shifted to a different path, and houses in the New World stopped being built for defense. American architects displayed an eagerness to let in the sun, the landscape, and the neighbors.

I believe that this embrace of the charm of European homes—even while avoiding the negatives associated with European life—is what makes American homes, and other colonial architecture throughout the world, so romantic and alluring. Today what's fascinating about American house design is that it draws imagery and sentiment from one world and mixes it with technology and methods from another. A number of contemporary architects, myself included, are inspired by the dynamics of this modern romantic sensibility. This approach is well suited to the many people who vow to build their own homes because their vision of the ideal home is not shared by "production home-builders" (the building industry's term for tract-home builders). Like the Americans of long ago, many people are torn between two worlds: one that arouses the feelings associated with a good home and one dictated by basic needs, location, and finances. In my experience, many clients crave a home that will satisfy complex aspirations—that will offer surprises and gratifying sensations while also being modern and functional. Modern picturesque architects Homeowners-to-be often seek out architects whose work resonates with those aspirations. I too have sought out such architects for inspiration. I have chosen three of them to be the subject of this book: Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Peter Bohhn, and Obie Bowman. The three have much in common, yet they produce work that is remarkably divergent. That should not be surprising, since these are architects who dare to test new recipes for designing a good home and who take a free-spirited approach to their work. What they share is a love of life and landscape, a passion about modern construction technologies, and a penchant for the familiar. Their work is not historicist, but it is picturesque. It is evocative—suggestive of ingrained associations—even as it is new. These designers are modern romantics—architects adept at producing contemporary houses that arouse emotion, that have soul. The three I've selected invent new forms, but not for the sake of inventing new forms. They devise interesting shapes to engage the viewers' and inhabitants' feelings, just as romantic designers have done for generations. Their houses are wondrously unique, yet not alien. They remind visitors of something familiar, whether it's a saltbox house that's common in their neighborhood or an old farm shed that they saw on a trip across the Midwest, or something they cannot quite put their finger on. Jacobsen builds homes, mainly in the eastern U.S. and Canada, whose profiles in the bright sunlight suggest the skyline of a village. Bohlin has used barn-like shapes for homes in various parts of America, and has designed provocative houses whose shapes bring to mind assemblies of garden walls and lean-tos. Bowman has created houses on the Pacific coast whose profiles look as if they might first have been seen by pioneers heading west in a wagon train. Some houses by Bowman are bold in design, but are wedged into the landscape so as not to intrude upon the context or the neighbors.