A House in the Landscape - Crafting a Sense of Place

February 5, 2020 Mark Gerwing

A House in the Landscape

One of the most satisfying aspects of my job is the opportunity we often have to design a house amongst Colorado’s more rural landscapes. Sometimes that is out on the plains, with the building sitting out on that immense expanse, looking back at the Flatirons or snow-capped mountains beyond. Occassionally it is up in the high alpine terrain of the Continental Divide, creating a house that can nestle down in the stunning but often harsh landscape. And quite often if is in the foothills of the Front Range, framing a panoramic view that stretches from the plains to the highest mountain tops.

Unlike other city or suburban house sites, these larger properties inspire us to create not just a house, but a domestic territory, a crafted sense of place that surrounds the house, extending the living spaces out into the landscape

Designing buildings that have deep and meaningful relationships with their contexts - being a natural landscape or an established neighborhood - is as essential to any project as much as making sure the windows work and the garage can fit a car.

The opportunity to design these larger landscapes begs the question “when, or just exactly where, does the house begin.” Do you feel at home when you walk through the front door, or does it happen when you pull on to your drive? Does that feeling of security and solace that a home provides extend beyond the walls and views and push into the landscape, carving out spaces and experiences that stretch the notion of home well beyond where walls and roofs extend?

And the corollary of those questions: how does the landscape come into the house, beyond providing views?

Traditional houses often are marked by a stark contrast between inside and outside. It is abundantly clear where the threshold between the house and the world sits. A significant part of the project of Modernism, and especially the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, was to begin to breakdown this distinction between interior and exterior, dissolving the box of a room and extending the house into the landscape.

A house with a clear boundary between interior and exterior can be a place of quiet and safety. The outside world is held back by strong, definitive walls and windows. The house may not flow seamlessly into the landscape, but the riotous and invasive outside world also can not flood into the house. These houses, like traditional cottages, have a sense of cozy security that can be especially comforting in harsh landscapes or chaotic urban environments. They can also feel too compressed and too insular when not carefully handled.

A house that flows into the landscape can feel like it is in harmony with the surrounding nature. On sunny and mild days, those spaces are glorious. However, on stormy nights or sweltering days, it is nice to have a safe retreat, a solid fireplace to sit by or a deep and cool shade to retire to.

In all these cases, we try to find the tricky 4- or 5-way balance between all these forces and expressions. It is a bit like balancing a wide tabletop on a single pointy post - finding just the right location that makes it all work. That is the kind of problem, of art and science, space and place, security and harmony, that stretches architects to make inspired places.