Coast Redwood Siding
We recently returned from a week of camping on the Sonoma Coast and relaxing at Sea Ranch. Sea Ranch’s original designers had high aspirations for connecting to the land along the Sonoma coast, and in many ways they succeeded. One of their main responses to place was the prominent use of the defining wood of Northern California: Sequoia sempervirens, the Coast Redwood.
Designed for Gardening
It’s the middle of summer and our vegetable garden at the Middle Creek Bungalow is in full bloom, providing food for our family and a bounty for local pollinators. When you take the time to prepare for it, and the time to notice it, a garden is incredibly full of life. The practice of gardening has much in common with the practice of good architecture, and the pursuit of happiness.
Cork Exterior Cladding
For the Farm-Creek Residence one of the early options we looked at included using compressed cork as an exterior cladding panel. Cork comes from the bark of cork oak trees, native to the Iberian Peninsula, and can be harvested in sections without killing the tree. Most of it is used for wine corks, but a company called Thermacork takes the byproducts from cork stopper production that would otherwise be burnt to make building cladding panels.
Daylight
Many design strategies can help connect you to your place, but one of the most powerful is designing for daylight. Daylight, in all its constantly changing forms, is critical to our wellbeing. Besides the beauty we see in it and the function we gain from a well-lit space, experiencing daylight helps steady our natural circadian rhythms. By gradually changing across the course of the year daylight also grounds our minds in the seasonal rhythms of our local ecosystem.
Transformations
The most powerful way to affect the carbon footprint (and the cost) of a project is to reduce the overall square footage. No other single factor will come even close to making the same kind of difference as a reduction in overall size. Often that means getting the same program, the same functionality, out of a smaller, better space through clever design solutions.
One of the best tools is creating multifunctional spaces through transformational elements.
Bonds of Attention
How does architecture connect us to the rhythms of the natural world and the life that it supports? We use architecture, the shape of a space, a view, the way daylight falls on a material, how water flows across a surface, or how a window or door opens to a breeze, to draw our attention to those rhythms of life.