Nice and Neat.
I don’t think the fascination in viewing desert will last for a life time. And i think this is not a responsive way climatologically to the site.

Perhaps someone with intimate knowledge of US building codes could tell me why there are fire sprinklers in a single residential house?

I do like it, there is a certain honesty about it. I don’t I would ever tire of that view……the colours would change by the hour

A while ago this project was featured in the New York Times and I downloaded and studied the photographs then. Somes spaces are omitted from these images that were included in the Times, and that is a pity. It is absolutely worth seeing the ground floor spaces, close up images of the exterior, and most importantly the walled garden.

I consider this a seminal work of American architecture. The concept of self-contained living on the plains is not new (think Conestoga) . However, this very American idea is here retooled using means that are appropriately simple, elegant, and complete.

The program is a live and work space for a fine artist. Everything necessary is at hand eliminating the need to focus on anything else but making art without being trapped in a studio all day and night.

Ted Kundig must have really worked through process with his client. It is so easy to imagine how a day unfolds here, broken up between sleeping, working, eating, and respite. Spaces are solitary and contemplative where they need to be, most notably in the Arab or Paradise Garden and studio, and then opening up to these unbelievable and inspirational views in the great public room.

It is fascinating his how OSKA have connected the self-contained covered wagon idea (I did not say self sufficient) to the modernist dream of “a machine for living in the garden”. This interpretation takes the idea of living in such a machine out of the abstract and puts it very squarely in terms of process. Everything here is process; how does the day unfold and how does each element contribute to the output of this -factory-.

Recently I downloaded Vincent Scully’s lecture on Philip Johnson from Yale University on iTunes U. (If you haven’t heard these lectures they are a free and an unprecedented opportunity to enjoy an experience that would otherwise be closed to most of us. You need an iPod but that costs rather less than an education at Yale.)

There is an interesting comparison to be drawn between Johnson’s glass house and this house. The reason I have referred to -living- in the abstract is that Johnson’s masterpiece is all about solitude and the contemplation of art. Not much else could really happen there. This is living a life of letters, very much the essence of the 19th century man in 20th century trappings.

Kundig has brilliantly taken many of the same ideas and fused them both to the past and present. The perimeter of the public garden is defined by the walls of the valley. Here the glass house sits raised atop another structure that just happens to be the family store. The studios have their own logic and rhythm that is connected to contemplation and working. Johnson’s guest house, the most likely place to really sleep well in New Canaan, is here moved topside and transformed into private quarters for the owner.

Unfortunately these photographs do not do justice to the feature that gives this project its real shine. The main structure viewed directly is a perfect cube, a geometric solid from which the fenestration has been very precisely incised. From the side it is a perfect rectangle. Disciples of the Golden Section will find this program relentlessly perfect in its pursuit of proportion.

Proportion and appropriateness seem to have been the twin engines of making this building. There is absolutely no ostentation or artifice in this construction. The materials are simple and honest while being used with great bravado and force. Indeed those are the values that give this structure its strong sense of place.

Terry Glenn Phipps

The building sits as one with the surroundings. I would have liked to have seen more photographs from different perspectives. I have no more to say, as Terry Glenn Phipps’s fine words have done a wonderful summary in every way.
salpickering

Wonderful. Just….wonderful and beautifully crafted.

that is all.

EXCELENT PROJECT!! AN PERFECT GAME MATCH OF MATERIALS…
REAL ARCHITECTURE

This a really marvelous design,this is a house everbody want’s to live in.

in about 5 years time people will start to realise how good this house is, the materials, relationship to context, scale, detailing, it’s very very good….