This Is Not a House by Rizzoli International Publications

Johnston Marklee captures light and views on a confined lot in Southern California.

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2013

Many of California’s sandy beaches are walled off from the coast highway by serried rows of long, narrow houses that appear as confining as a row of coffins in a mortuary. Impossible to break out of the box, for height and setbacks are strictly regulated, and dressing up the façades with period ornament does little to relieve the monotony. Movie moguls can afford a triple lot in Malibu for their lavish spreads, but mere mortals are confined to 40 feet. Occasionally, an architect finds a clever way out of the trap. I drove up to Oxnard, 31 miles northwest of Los Angeles, to see the latest house of Johnston Marklee, a small Los Angeles firm that turns constraints to advantage. I found an enigmatic white block with sharply carved U-shaped openings. As Mark Lee explains: “The envelope was so strict that the design process was more subtractive than additive; we carved away a solid mass to create the rooms. We were reluctant to broadcast the content right away, preferring to mask the complexity and reveal it a little at a time.” Commissioned as a second home by a couple whose two daughters have grown up, it breaks with the conventional beach house in radical and subtle ways. The empty site to the south will eventually be filled in, so the openings are designed to pull in light while maintaining privacy, and the north façade has only a few small windows. “We were influenced by Tadao Ando’s first house in Osaka, which is very introverted, presenting a blank façade to the street, with an entry courtyard behind that opens up to the sky,” says Lee. He and his partner, Sharon Johnston, worked with project architect Katrin Terstegen to find the perfect size and placement for each room, stacking them together in a schematic model and opening

each to the next. Working with physical models and 3D software, they explored four iterations before settling on the final, split-level plan. In contrast to the typical practice of placing the master bedroom directly above the living room on the beach front, blocking off the rooms behind, Johnston Marklee found a way of pulling views and light all the way through. They did that by inserting a raised courtyard at the center of the house and setting the master bedroom back from a double-height living room that opens onto a recessed terrace. A pair of guest rooms looks onto the street, but the other interiors, front and back, have a view through the house with a glimpse of the ocean beyond. The architects wanted to emphasize the eastwest axiality of the house and decided to give every room a rounded roof vault, which softens the rectilinearity of the shell and nods politely to the Spanish Colonial style that is still absurdly popular in Southern California. The arched openings are reversed at the upper level, turning tradition on its head. The Vault House has a steel-reinforced wood-frame structure, partially stuccoed, with a sprayed-on skin of Grailcoat forming an elastomeric membrane that requires no expansion joints and should withstand the corrosive sea air. There was a requirement to raise the house sixand-a-half feet to protect it from major storms, and it rests on a concrete deck that is supported by 28 piles and forms a solid foundation. The ground-level garage to the rear has walls that would readily collapse and allow a surge of water to pass under the house. This elevation provides security and imparts a sense of lightness to the block, as do the cut-outs. These are strategically

JOHNSTON MARKLEE

OXNARD | CALIFORNIA

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placed to provide oblique views out and to filter light from above, and their asymmetry turns the south façade into an abstract relief composition. The owners’ property line extends to the high-tide mark, and though the public has full access to the beach, the architects were permitted to extend the house 10 feet beyond the nearest neighbor, thus opening up side views and turning a single framed prospect into a wraparound panorama. Katrin and I entered the house through an unobtrusive portal carved out of the south façade. From this low entry, an architectural promenade unrolls. A short flight of steps leads up to the courtyard, from where we walked through the low-ceilinged kitchen-dining area and into the lofty living room, which opens through sliders onto a sheltered terrace and the infinity of sky and ocean. That’s a compelling sequence, but at every point another vista beckons, above or to one side, enriching the spatial experience and distilling the beauty of the shore. Light enters from two or more points, a solution that balances and diffuses the dazzle of sunlight reflected off water. The

arched vaults turn the interior into an organic, sensuously modeled sequence of spaces that flow into one another. In the living room, the ceiling is depressed to accommodate a roof terrace overlooking the beach and is rotated 90 degrees to frame a window. Openings shift from wide to narrow, and, seen obliquely, a round arch acquires a pointed Gothic profile. They leap across the courtyard to resume their sinuous course through the rear of the house, ending as two windows of different heights for the pair of guest bedrooms. And yet, in contrast to the free-form modeling of a Gaudí, the curvilinear geometry retains a classical rigor. Complexity grows from the ingenious configuration of simple elements, as it does in other Johnston Marklee residences. Though each is one of a kind and tailored to its site, there’s a consistency in the shaping of forms and spaces. In recent years, the firm has ranged further afield and secured larger projects. Throughout its practice, Johnston Marklee has achieved success with reticent, thoughtful structures that solve problems in a poetic way.

JOHNSTON MARKLEE

OXNARD | CALIFORNIA

“We were influenced by Tadao Ando’s first house in Osaka”

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Garage Utility Courtyard Dining Kitchen Living Bathroom Guest room Study Pantry Master bedroom Walk-in closet

JOHNSTON MARKLEE

OXNARD | CALIFORNIA

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DE V YLDER VINCK TAILLIEU

GHENT | BELGIUM

De Vylder Vinck Taillieu couldn’t leave out the beeches

Belgian firm De Vylder Vinck Taillieu has developed a varied body of work by treating the unique constraints of each project as opportunities in need of expression. In the case of House Bernheimbeuk, the architects’ approach involved a pragmatic yet playful consideration of site, budget and building regulations. The detached house they realized turned the “constraint” represented by three 80-year-old beech trees into the defining feature of the project. In the words of architect Jo Taillieu: “We couldn’t leave out the beeches!” Unlike a perimeter footing, the foundations of the building resemble the roots of a tree and are located as far as possible from the real roots of the beech tree that is part of the house. A tree-shaped concrete column rising from the midpoint of the foundation supports the house. This column is the mainstay of lightweight yet well-insulated exterior walls, which are clad in a type of slate siding commonly used in Belgium for houses that will probably be attached to new-build houses at a future date. At House Bernheimbeuk, however, the material has been applied in a way that appears less temporary and less likely to be part of a “waiting game.” Openings in the cladding are not cut out but formed by the omission of one or more shingles. The timber frame has been left exposed at one end. The design of a treefocused house based on a set of constraints enabled the architects to create a number of interesting interior spaces. Taillieu speaks of “the luxury of space, unrelated to square meters” and points out the gradual but distinct separation of inside and outside. This is a clearly executed project in which “not seeing the forest for the trees” was never an option.

DE V YLDER VINCK TAILLIEU

GHENT | BELGIUM

Text Florian Heilmeyer Photos Vito Stallone

L3P ARCHITECTS

OBERWENINGEN | SWITZERLAND

The colors will continue to change, although no one knows quite how or when 04 Fake excepudit que api ditis vere alias suntor sitium eatquaest expelit quodisit eveleste aut essi quatur frt autem qua etusaped mincto tem inctalis sita con nient. 05 Fake excepudit que api ditis vere alias suntor sitium eatquaest expelit quodisit eveleste aut essi quatur frt autem qua etusaped mincto tem inctalis sita con nient. 06 Fake excepudit que api ditis vere alias suntor sitium eatquaest expelit quodisit eveleste aut essi quatur frt autem qua etusaped mincto tem inctalis sita con nient.

of the façade was tested in Sonderegger’s studio. It took the artist “years of trial and error” to perfect the phased chemical treatment he used on the zinc-coated steel panels, and he prefers to keep the details of the process to himself. Egli reveals only that “Thomas made innumerable samples, which we assessed throughout the day and in various lighting conditions. We were immediately fascinated by how versatile and lively this material seemed to be.” Indeed, the façade does react to different types of light and times of day, which can make it look beige, brown, dark grey or almost black. Its texture produces a strange perception of depth that breaks the light. Not at all smooth, the surface has a rather grainy appearance and seems warmer than we expect steel to be. And the colors will continue to change, although no one knows quite how or when. Without a precedent, it’s impossible to predict.

Changing colors and interesting surfaces are another reference to regional geology. Across the valley rise the foothills of the Lägern mountain range, craggy ridges of Jura limestone that is beige when freshly broken but weathers to become a dark anthracite or black. This connection to the mountains may be why neighbors have responded so positively to the project. “Normally, when doing rural projects we run into problems with permits and need all our powers of persuasion,” says Egli. “In Oberweningen, a place with no other modern buildings, the authorities were astonishingly open and even characterized our project as a ‘fresh wind’ blowing through the village. We were also surprised by a lack of negative reaction from the people next door. The neighbor living on the slope above the houses said that when he looks over the two rooftops into the valley, he has the feeling that the original stretch of undeveloped land is still there.”

L3P ARCHITECTS

OBERWENINGEN | SWITZERLAND

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“Our work often evokes strong emotions, there are no neutral opinions”

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L3P ARCHITECTS

OBERWENINGEN | SWITZERLAND

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Text Simon Bush-King Photos Nic Granleese

ANDREW MAYNARD ARCHITECTS

MELBOURNE | AUSTRALIA

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+1 The architect admits that, for the first time, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s completed a project in which he would change nothing

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ANDREW MAYNARD ARCHITECTS

MELBOURNE | AUSTRALIA