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Private Residence
Silver Spring, MD
View Project Photo Gallery: Before (3) After (10)

Reflections on the nearly completed house

This project is an expression of dualities, and perhaps an attempt to resolve ambivalences and paradoxes.

At a glance, the building is utterly platonic. It is defined by forceful bilateral symmetry—the most basic of geometries. Reliance on triads is throughout: the three large gables, three equal intercolumnations of the front porch, tripart rear porch. On the interior, three levels, three equal structural bays dividing the zones of each living area on each floor. Openings are grouped in threes; the gable windows, the three principle openings between living and dining areas (the center of which further subdivided into three), three skylights in the loft, the tripart motif of the stairrail. Three carriages per flight. Even the regretful afterthought that the five large windows of the living room bay might better have been three pairs. Indeed geometry is the designer's best friend—and also his indispensable crutch.

But to what extent does the platonic organization of space superimpose itself on its inhabitants? Should the kitchen module be narrower, the living room wider? Guest bedroom narrowed for more room in the master? Has comfort and utility been sacrificed for the sake of form?

Fig 1: A sketch of the Residence.

Fig 2: This image shows the relationship of the massing of the Silver Spring house and the Imperial Villa.

The building also links historicity and modernism. The principle elements of the house (Fig 1)—the gables, valleys, hips, and overhangs—are a synthesis of at least four related prototypes. Most prominently, the house pays homage to the irimoya roof form—the pedimented roof supported by a sheltering,

Fig 3: A gassho roof.

hipped apron—and its most beautiful expression, the Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto, Japan (Fig 2). But these gables are more forceful than Katsura—steepened not only to provide more living space on the upper floor, but also harkening to the minka dwelling, a Japanese folk style featuring the steeply pitched gassho ("praying hands") roof (Fig 3). This form is manifested—consciously or not—in at least two Takoma Park homes. One, the McKenny House (Fig 4), is known to the designer only from two photographs; it is a compact, steeply pitched, front gabled shingle style, which once sat on the site of the Gazebo park.

Fig 4: The McKenny House. (click to enlarge)

Fig 5: Albany and Buffalo Aves. (click to enlarge)

The other is a noble queen anne (Fig 5), prominently sited on the corner of Albany and Buffalo Avenues—with the steep gable divided horizontally and projecting outward above the second floor windows.

But the detailing of the house on Park Crest reflects the designer's struggle to free himself from historical styles: still using traditional moldings, but trying to reduce their use to the essence. He feels most comfortable where they are eliminated altogether: in the triple openings between stairs and fireplace nook, at the skylights of the loft. Of ornament, the most successful being the simple horizontal screen above the passageway between foyer and dining area. He prefers the simple geometric form and elements of the blue bathroom to the sentimentality of the wainscoted, clawfoot tubbed bath (although he does like the femininity of its fleur-de-lis-esque mirror).

As ordered and platonic as the building is, its designer is perhaps fondest of the more natural elements. The idiosyncratic stonework—purely human, tactile, organic, in immediate juxtaposition with the ordered, hardlined, and geometric. Initially he would have preferred to see a more rigorous horizontality in the coursing of the stone retaining walls—but the effect of the serpentine wall along the driveway and garage, with its sloping courses and cap—enlivens the dead stones—and turns it into a benign, recumbent serpent or dragon, guarding the north boundary. On a smaller scale, the texture and color of the handmade tiles and rustic grouting and humanize the harsh angles of the fireplace nook, and counterbalance the masculinity of the blue bath. Similarly, the slightly irregular coursing of the brick driveway feminizes the utilitarian wing of the house. On the elevations, the roof and sidewall shingles, with a hint of randomness in their textures, soften their angularity.

The designer sums up these polarities in the idiosyncrasies of the front elevation. The extrusion of the porch roof violates its perfect symmetry, but announces and shelters the entry. Even more compelling is the step down of the brick retaining wall: it acknowledges that this manmade, ordered structure, springing up from a gash in the earth, is rooted on its natural site.

Alan Abrams
May 31, 2005