Working Drawings
Working drawings are tedious but necessary if a beach house is to resemble what you hoped it might. The term I presume means those drawings builders ‘work’ from. They used to be called ‘blueprints’ back not so long ago when ammonia was still the printing medium. Before that, draftsmen (always men) drew on parchment with ink quills—oh I kid—they used 2B leads and T-squares. Before that was when they used quills…
Though why the participial adjective ‘working’ is used instead of ‘work’, I haven’t a clue. Perhaps a ‘work in progress’?
While I’m skeptical that it’s always necessary to write an outline for most stories, I do believe in working drawings, being old-fashioned that way. A better method getting into a story for me is to create the initial scenes I’m thinking about, bare to begin with, then fleshed out as I go.
The more conventional a design is, the fewer details are required to explain it. Because I want the main living level to have exposed structure, I need to work through (work-get it?) all the connections, post and beam, rafters, and so on.
Years ago I read a biography of Antoni Gaudi, the great Catalan architect who is said to have visited his job site to confer often with the craftsmen. One story was how he asked the new iron welder to show him what he could do and proceeded to talk him through creating the wonderful ‘dragon’ gates.
So, to weave a little Art Nouveau architecture into the story:
The dragon gate at the Güell Pavilions—photo by Thomas Ledl, CC BY-SA 4.0
In 1884 when Güell, his patron, encouraged Gaudi’s imagination, one couldn’t computer model the creations he dreamed of—of which he dreamed, whatever. What I admire most about his work is how he brought medieval gothic forward into a surrealistic realm of non-orthogonal, organic geometries.
So here I sit in my drafting room, the room that’s for evening TV watching among other functions when not so engaged, working my Revit model and drinking lots of coffee to stay awake. Like I said, tedious but necessary.
…
Out on the deck earlier this evening, I noted our neighbors have taken to limbing up all their trees to improve the view. Like lolly pops on their sticks. I shan’t say more.
…
While noodling over how to frame my still theoretical beach house overlooking Currituck Sound—from a safe altitude—days passed while I went back and forth on beam spans and such, pausing frequently to examine 3D versions and views. I was making steady if sluggish progress, pretending genius can never be rushed.
One thing bugged me, though, the stair piece, sticking out there like Napoleon on a hilltop. It did what is required of a stair but wasn’t too exciting. One shot at glory per design is all you get—unless you’re Gaudi. Sigh. He was run over by a truck and died, of all the ignominious ways to go.
For several weeks, I grumped about, putting off the issue, waking up, drinking coffee, reading email, walking the beast who must be obeyed—the canine one—and working on everything else I could think of. “Why, my dear, do you need your toenails painted? Can i fetch you a doughnut?” Speaking to the other one.
At a point now lost to the fog, it came to me that were I to peel open the end of the stair pavilion and wrap it just a wee bit in glass, it might add a touch to the design. Like several architects I admire.
Not like I was trying to repeat the Apple store in Manhattan by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson that created such a fuss in the architectural journals. Or its precursory pyramid that I.M. Pei designed for the entrance to the Louvre in Paris—just one careful move was Pei’s mantra.
Less is always more, except when it comes to hurricanes. But just a wee modest bit of glass, all right?
We can’t afford the structural glazing used in that beautiful minimalist glass jewel in Manhattan (with the store proper sunk below the plaza). I expect they used 1” thick glass lites (2 lites = one insulated pane) each lite itself comprising multiple laminated layers of heat strengthened glass with polycarbonate interlayers and silicone as a glue between the joints.
I wanted to use structural glazing for the Silver Spring Library but was told it exceeded the budget. From the exterior, it’s not so obvious, all that steel and aluminum behind the glass—though it drove Randy Haist crazy ‘working’ the details.
Silver Spring Library—Fenton Street Pavilion—photo by Eric Taylor © 2016
Steve Jobs was still around to see his first store, which had to fill his haute couture heart with pride. I imagine Philip Johnson would be jealous, if he weren’t dead, what with his glass house in Connecticut—the one Frank Lloyd Wright asked of at a party, “Why Phillip, are you still making cute little glass boxes and leaving them out in the rain?” Though it couldn’t have fazed the ego Johnson carried like sceptre and crown.
The majority of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson’s residential work looks nothing so stripped to an essential glass box like that Apple store. Bohlin Cywinski are more about employing glass to accentuate the wood framing, so I’ll give a nod in their direction with the stair design. Ah, and they come from Pennsylvania, which means from my family’s country, the last bit coincidental to the story, though it makes me happy.
Hard to complain. Gothic builders were happy with small, cleverly placed colored bits of glass set in lead.
…
The weeks after that first revelation, while daydreaming or just -walking the dog, I was back and forth on how to detail the beast. I can’t be thinking, ‘what would Gaudi have done?’ since no one can build like that today. I’ll admit to a liking for wood. Anyone who knows me must know that.
An Arts and Crafts masterpiece, Greene and Greene’s Gamble House in Pasadena is a distant relative of the Germantown Library, which began a pursuit for exposed wood framing and grand spaces.
When D and I discovered Hardwood Artisans, who craft their furniture the old-fashioned way with exposed wood joinery, an empty piece of my soul became better filled.
And glass, yes, it’s a necessary light yielding material, and in the middle of a normal January morning when it’s still cold and gloomy at the hour Layla and I set out, whatever light there might be requires a window, preferably several large ones to cheer us both. With coffee for the one of us.
This beast of a fictional beach house will be flooded in light from midday until sundown, given the site’s western orientation. No need for more. I don’t expect we’ll be there so often in the summer, at the sun’s zenith, but it could happen.
Yet it appeals to me, this bit of glass thrust out from the main house like a lantern even when the lights are off. When our contractor sees it, he’ll shake his head and raise his price—or not.
So the same problem I faced designing the Lake Barcroft house, that of a need to keep the wind’s moment forces from wracking it to pieces, is made far worse on the Outer Banks, due to those pesky hurricane winds. I admit Randy Haist, the structural engineer, had to face the problem where we now live; I just drew what he told me to.
Since the joints in a wood frame are its most vulnerable parts, I’m trying a different strategy for the beach house, involving structural steel connections and cross bracing to make the glu-lam wood frame behave more like an all-steel frame. Behave, I say! The majority of these connections will be tucked behind the windows, reinforcing the individual window sections on a near one-to-one basis, while giving the outward appearance of a lighter frame. That’s the strategy, anyway.
There’s no truth to the rumor that all those years I played with my Erector sets, (I had two or three all together) had any influence on my liking of exposed structures. None whatsoever.
Did any a’ ya’ll ever use those little bitty bolts and nuts to pass for a day’s entertainment before Barry came over to go play football?
51 North Dune Loop stair pavilion interior—image by William E. Evans, © 2022
51 North Dune Loop shadow study—image by William E. Evans, © 2022