As I write this, I am looking out at the remnants of the last snowstorm slowly melting away on the little balcony.  The pieces of stone are heating up in the Colorado sun and radiating that heat, retreating the snow around them like a small territory claimed by each rock.  The daily and nightly ritual of melting and then re-freezing has made the last vestiges of snow into a miniature glacier, slowly retreating unto itself, stubbornly clinging to the rusty drain cover.

It is easy to loose sight of the existential nature of the work of architecture sitting at a computer in a conditioned office.  At a fundamental level, it is not design or form or composition that selects the materials from which we build, but their ability to resist the rain and snow, the sun and wind.  The stone and concrete, wood and steel and glass all work diligently to allow us to live insulated from the elements.  Working with computer models and drawings, even pencil and paper we forget the weight, the touch and smell of these materials.  My little balcony reminds me not just to take a break some time and sit out in the sun, but also to come out and heft the stones around, listen to the drip drip of the melting snow and to love the real materials that we make buildings out of, not just their representations on screens and paper.

This weekend house is located in the wind-swept South Park basin in south central Colorado.  Three couples, one with children, two without, wanted to create a simple vacation house where they can spend weekends together and have closer access to Colorado’s high mountains, ski resorts and flyfishing streams.

The house consists of a large, open pavilion that houses the collective functions of kitchen, dining and living areas including large covered outdoor spaces.  Surrounding this pavilion are three stone clad “houses”, one for each couple that contain sleeping, storage, bathing and sitting areas.  The small house towers are quite small and are oriented to take advantage of unique, distant views.

The stone towers create a solid, secure compound that can be seen across miles of the open basin.  The stone masses are reminiscent of Italian medieval defense family compounds as seen in San Gimigiano and central Tuscany.  Arranged in the center and sheltered by these towers, the central living spaces make a public square for interactions.  The entire house can be occupied by a single couple on any given weekend without the overall house feeling out of scale.

The house is made of native Colorado buff sandstone.  The central pavilion has steel coiled shutters concealed in the overhanging roof to allow the whole building to be completely sealed and secured.

Starting from the eastern edge, you can get ready for your trip to the West by dressing the part

as the city of Aurora, on the eastern edge of Denver welcomes you to the region with the hazy mountains in the far distance

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As you move closer to Denver, the establishments are a bit more respectable

even as you pass the exit for the airport

on the way to the urbane sophistication of the city

Of course there are not many of the older places left as you get closer to downtown Denver, the speculative real estate market has no patience for keeping these aging, low-density dinosaurs around for long.  As you pass through Denver headed west you are welcomed again, this time by suburban Lakewood.

(looks like Bugs had a hard night boozing along the wickedest street)

The path is in sight of the Rocky Mountains now, the legendary West unrolling in front of you with its requisite cowboys

all the way to the end of the trail

to the sagebrush and mountains beyond

Not exactly the “street of dreams” or the “miracle mile”, Colfax is more of a passage than a destination.  After traveling west across the vast expanse of the midwest, Colfax rises up, trying to desperately slow down the traveler and provide whatever rest and relaxation, flesh and goods and liquor the remaining journey may require.

As far as the construction progress is concerned, this project started like many with an accurate layout of the house on the property.  Obviously we have figured this all out in the design stages many months ago, but it is always instructive to see the placement stakes on the land itself.  Those simple little stakes lead the way for some heavy-duty work:

Excavation can be a tricky business.  We have a soils report that we rely on to tell us the profile of the subsurface conditions including bedrock and water table issues.  However, only when equipment is actually rolling do we get to see the actual conditions and often have to make revisions on the fly to accommodate conditions or take advantage of opportunities that arise.  In the case of this house, the soil conditions for supporting the house were deeper than originally anticipated so we had to dig a bit further and create taller foundation walls.  Our contractor realized immediately that this deeper foundation could result in more full-depth basement space and less crawlspace.  So after a quick conference with contractor, owner and architect …

Well, we’re still working on it.  The proposed change looks like it makes sense and the cost is not too formidable.  So, while the concrete foundation walls are being poured and slowly coming up to full strength, a lot of phone calls are made, calculators worn down and potential changes are weighed and reconsidered.

It is simple to say that we should just make a really complete and thorough set of drawings and turn them over to a contractor to execute.  In my twenty or so years of experience there is no substitute for being fully involved in the construction process as a reliable partner to the contractor and owner in helping solve issues that inevitably bubble up.  Architects, if you think your drawings alone will get you a good building made, I am afraid you are solely mistaken.  It is the relationships you develop on the jobsite, with your client and with the inspectors, reviewers and every single tradesperson that will result in a building you can truly be proud of.

So the best marker of construction progress is not so much a series of photos or payout requests, but the growing trust and belief in the team itself to execute not just a set of drawings, but a shared vision of a project, a building and a home.

The second question is easy to answer:  I write these posts mostly in the evenings after my kids  have gone to bed.  Having worked until past midnight in endless numbers of architecture studios and offices, staying up doing architecture work has become a habit.

The answer to the first question is a bit more complex and certainly more difficult to articulate.  In the simplest sense, this is a kind of dialogue that I would have with colleagues if I wasn’t so happy as a sole practioner.  So while I might hire someone to do some drafting, for the most part I work alone and these posts are substitutes for some kind of inter-office dialogue.  I relish the freedom and focus that practicing alone allows, and if this blog helps me maintain that in a sense then more power to it.

To be honest however, the blog is something more than that as well.  Over my career I have seen architects, everyday working architects, retreat from the public sphere.  Not that we were ever that immersed in it, only a small handful of star-architects have ever been even at the periphery of popular culture.  But there was a time when architects felt confident in who they were and what they did, and that expressing that publicly was not fraught with misgivings and hesitations. The rise of a professional architectural press, more press than architects, and the increasing dominance of architecture academics in the realm of research and writing, has driven the working architect from the field.  The tools of deconstruction can too easily be used to undermine the experience and knowledge of an architect by one more deft in the execution of analysis but maybe not the making of buildings.

I know this makes me sound a bit like the old curmudgeon architect, without patience for critics and iconoclasts, but nothing could be further from the truth.  Maybe not all architects, but I as one, feel the need and responsibility to help explain and articulate what we do and how we do it to the larger public.  Our opacity has long ago been stripped of any claims to authority and reads simply as either hopelessly alienated or paranoid.

Lastly, and I think for me most importantly, talking about architecture helps me to step outside of the world of drawing and models and sketches and attempt to dwell more in the world of my clients.  For while reading a drawing and its implications is second nature to me, for many of my clients a drawing can be a mute string of runes.  By writing these posts, I  am forced to put into words my thoughts and impressions, give shape and form in an accessible dialogue to the  forces and forms that seem so obvious to me, but not at all to “normal” people beyond the enclosed, self-referential world of architects and architecture.  So while much of this blog is serious Inside Baseball architecture stuff, it is a step into the realm of words and writing, an alien, and often unwelcoming place for us architects.  If that sounds a bit falsely heroic I don’t mean it to be.  For while I know that what I write probably only appeals to geeky architects, my attempt here is to try, as small as that might be, to step outside it all, in form if not in content.

Oh yeah, and chicks dig it.  or maybe not.  I don’t know.

Living in Boulder and having low overhead and a punishing work-schedule has insulated me from much of the economic disaster of the last number of years.  This is the fifth year of M. Gerwing Architects and I have been truly blessed with enough good clients and intriguing projects to both keep my spirits up and keep the doors open during the worst possible time to start an architecture practice since the Great Depression.  But I know that I am the exception and even in my fortune I am only a project or two away from dissolution.

I have written in past about the recession and its impacts on architects, especially the lost generation of younger architects.  In doing so I have been incredibly frustrated and incensed that the American Institute for Architects does not track unemployment in our own profession.  Timberg calls it right when he accuses the AIA of polly-anna-ish optimism at best and downright incompetence in my opinion.

At the risk of being the kill-joy, I urge you to read the best piece of the recession and the plight of architects and architecture, Scott Timberg’s Art in Crisis.

(image from the same article, John Nazca, Reuters)

For me the most interesting event was the Saving Places luncheon.  (Mind you not the food.)  The keynote speaker was James Loewen, sociologist and author.  He gave an impassioned plea for inclusion and precision in the presentation of historic places, especially the painful omissions and/or outright misrepresentations of Native Americans and women in historical markers and interpretations.  A read through his Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong will be an interesting read.

The other event of the luncheon was the video presentation of the yearly “most endangered places” designated projects across Colorado.  These brief presentations  highlight more the stories of the people attempting to save the featured building or structure than concentrating on only the physical aspects of the resource itself.

What I was left with was how interesting and frankly touching are the stories of the people for whom an effort of preservation has become a meaningful aspect of their lives.  As an architect I think it is very easy for me to concentrate on the physical building and its character and details rather than the human aspects of the history of the place.  What is surprising here however is that I am not as interested in the story of the historical persons who might have lived in the building but rather the stories of the people for whom the effort of saving the building has become an important part of their lives.  The inclusion that James Loewen makes such an elegant plea for should include the second story of the place or building – the effort of the people to save or at least somehow mark the place.

Como roundhouse, CPI Saving Places project, photo by Jeffrey Beall

Preservation, at least at these kind of gatherings and conferences, has become such an institutionalized and professional pursuit that it is easy to forget that its genesis was, and often continues to be, a grassroots, activist-lead endeavor.  I have written about Richard Nickel’s pioneering efforts in Chicago and at the conference I heard touching stories of some folks down in Pueblo who have embraced the preservation of their down-at-the-heels neighborhood for whom  this effort has become the catalyst of self-discovery and community pride.

As a board member of my local preservation commission in a wealthy community, the projects I see are largely opulent proposed additions to fabulous, and fabulously expensive, large and expansive Victorian houses.  Our role is more often that of the preservation police, guarding and protecting historic districts from misguided contractors and careless homeowners.  Preservation as an aspect of positive community activism seems like a distant planet.

For some, preservation is rooted in identity and feels like a life and death struggle, a small cry against the erasure of self and place.  That is a kind of preservation worth preserving.

Completed in 1970, the Menkick House is among Haertling’s finest works and ranks alongside his Volsky House, Benton House and Willard House as one of the finest examples of late Modernist Organic architecture in the United States.  Placed against a large, vertical rock outcrop, the Menkick House dramatically highlights this with its expressive horizontal emphasis.  Heartling wisely located much of the plan of the house on a lower level so that the overall size of the house does not overpower the presence of the rock and from the street a great balance is achieved.

The plan and building form are reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian work in the middle period of his career and the house’s use of the large rock outcrop is a vague allusion to Wright’s similar use in Fallingwater.  However, Haertling’s house sits rather comfortably within a relatively dense suburban neighborhood on the edge of the foothills.  It is difficult to imagine Fallingwater with any adjacent structures and in fact the later guest house designed by Wright does seem to crowd the expansive plan of the original house.

One can only hope that the new owners will treat the house with the respect it is due.  As the building sits in Boulder County, just outside of city limits, it does not come under the potential protection of the city’s Landmarks Board.  The County’s record of preserving Haertling’s work is a bit blemished with the allowed demolition of the albeit much compromised house in Eldorado Springs designed by Haertling and Tician Papachristou.

From the street, the house looks to be in excellent condition and I know some work has been done on the interior over the years.  Someone will get to own a really great piece of not only Boulder history, but one of the finest houses of its era in the United States.

Some photos ‘borrowed’ from the great website on Haertling, Atomix, and ModMidMod.

We are in the last 4-6 weeks of construction, with all the finishes coming into place – painting, tile, carpet, hanging electrical fixtures, etc.  This is usually the most anxious time for homeowners as the final design comes significantly closer each day with every new tile, cabinet and countertop.  However, though it may look like move-in can occur any day now, it still takes some 4 weeks or so to complete these final tasks.  From this point on, almost every thing on the project is absolutely sequential.  Each trade, from painters to cabinet installers, needs complete unhindered access to each room and they must complete their work before the next trade can come in.  This can be very frustrating for homeowners as they are so anxious to finally get done with the construction but there are not that many folks on the jobsite.

The final task, the Punch List, is my job and hopefully takes place without the owner’s boxes filling up the rooms.

The Punch List is an exhaustive, room-by-room review of everything on the project.  I review every wall for defects, the ceilings, floors, trim, doors, etc. until we can get a complete picture of all of the final touch-ups that need to be completed.  Every sink is turned on and off, windows opened and closed, all systems run on and off.  In the end this results in a multi-page document that is the Punch List that the general contractor will have to complete.  For a good contractor this document can be short, running 4-5 items per room.  A contractor rushing to finish a project can easily make a Punch List expand to 20-25 items per room.  It usually takes me a full day to complete a Punch List and to keep us focused on every detail I typically request a day when no work is being done, no movers, no tradespeople, on owners.

I’ll post again when we get to the Punch List and talk a bit about expectations of completing that list in a timely fashion.

The new studio addition, while large, attempts to make subtle connections back to the original older home, using design aspects of the older house, specifically the mansard-set dormers, as cues for creating the new structure.  The connection to the new studio is pushed farther back from the front of the entry porch allowing the older structure to set itself apart more distinctly.  The interior of the connection between the old house and the new studio combines aspects of both new and old, revealing the old stone exterior walls on the new interior passage.

Overall, the entire design adheres to the best practices of historic preservation – saving and preserving the old while letting the new relate to, but not copy, the original construction.

Project Architect:  Mark Gerwing, AIA

Builder:  Cottonwood Custom Builders, Jeff Hindman and Tom Roberts project supervisors