Guest-blogger Ted Cleary, ASLA, of Studio Cleary Landscape Architecture offers
insights into midcentury modern garden design.
Today’s post is the wrap-up of his first “Case Study Garden”.
MCM enthusiasts will
be familiar with Arts & Architecture magazine’s legendary design feature
known as the “Case Study House Program”. From its inception near the
war’s end in 1945, through 1966, the CSH Program showcased innovative modernist
designs, many of them modest, others more grand, meant to address the postwar
housing needs of the typical American family.
Like the CSH examples, some unbuilt, others still existing, these Case Study
gardens strive to offer solutions you can apply to your own outdoor spaces.
In Part One, we looked at a very traditional home, in the French
Provincial style, whose owners nevertheless have a very modernist
sensibility. Besides giving me a clear
direction as to their desires, their contemporary art collection reinforced the sort of
taste they shared. My challenge
was: “How can I get these these two
seemingly incongruous directions to ‘speak’ to each other in some complementary
way?”
The existing lower level’s outdoor space was an
inadequately-small bulbed-out patio, with a formless curving wall wrapping
around one side of it to hold back the significant grade change. But the
clients had an ambitious program, for both an active family-with-kids and for grownup entertaining:
full outdoor kitchen and cocktail bar, and various bells & whistles that
are part of many clients’ wish-lists such as pizza oven, TV, outdoor heater,
and some kind of fire feature. A pool
was also mentioned as a possible future-phase item (seen here at the far-left of the Conceptual Plan).
 |
| proposed new design |
The design solution
is a multi-layered composition of orthogonal elements. The large Holly tree at the end of the
existing patio, a nice specimen in an otherwise open yard, was worth saving and
working around. That high curved wall is replaced by a
com-fortably-lower right-angled one, creating seatwalls that wrap around two
sides of a stepped-up terrace. Family
and friends sitting at both terrace and bar can enjoy the natural-gas linear fireplace. Square planters step
down and around the existing columns adjacent to the upper deck’s stairs
down to the yard. Taken together, all these elements transition
down to the lower level in a terraced, gradual fashion.
The kitchen area becomes “defined” by its square, flat
canopy overhead. This not only provides
some shelter from sun or an unexpected rain, and a logical place for recessed
task lighting (controlled by dimmer
switches....always include dimmer
switches!), but also a more cozy sense of enclosure, so the cook and his
companions at the bar don’t feel so exposed next to the looming deck and
three-story house. An “oculus” --- a
simple but dramatic circular opening in the roof --- relieves some of the heavy
dark feeling of the kitchen, located off to the side away from the cook. The flat
roof is not wasted; it becomes a “green roof”, covered in an interesting
tapestry of sedums that makes for a
much more enjoyable view down onto it from the home’s occupants.
At the bar, a formed-in trough in the concrete countertop aligns
with a simple “waterfall” on the wall (really, just iridescent tiles that mimic
one), to serve as a place for chilled water or ice among beer and wine. One of
the roof columns is larger, housing a pizza oven; at the other end, a “spider
leg” column, an element devised and often employed by architect Richard Neutra,
is for both interest and function, opening up the space and circulation.
Could you envision integrating a modernist garden into your tradional home’s outdoor
space? If you look beyond the obvious,
and find fresh ways to reference the existing --- in this case, with the same
brick as used in the house, but assembled in a ‘cleaner’, less
ornamental way, and with bronze-painted metal elements that echo the color
& material of the house’s standing-seam metal mansard roof --- it might just feel more “right”
than you first thought.
All images credited to: Studio Cleary Landscape
Architecture
Written by: Ted Cleary, ASLA
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