The Deep Dive: A Contemporary Greek Drama

As any issue of Dwell proves, the choice of material or joinery method can transform a good project into a design for the ages. The Deep Dive is a forum where design and building pros can obsess over those details. Here we ask expert colleagues to share the inspiration behind house elements that delight clients—as well as the nitty-gritty information about how they were built.

According to the July/August feature, "In the Shenandoah Valley, a Mountain Home Channels the Spirit of the Aegean," anthropologist James D. Faubion had been sketching a home for himself and playwright William R. Duell based on the couple’s many trips to Greece through the years. "Absent, however, was any indication of how the house might be built," the story’s writer Samuel Medina reports, and architecture firm Schaum/Shieh wound up using James’s meticulous drawing as a reference, rather than a direct roadmap, for designing the Virginia home featured in our latest issue. 

Schaum/Shieh partner Troy Schaum says that James’s original vision for the 2,500-square-foot residence was inspired specifically by the New Acropolis Museum by Bernard Tschumi, and his drawings featured stacked volumes and cantilevers not unlike those the deconstructivist architect had created in Athens. In addition to questioning whether James’s tribute could be constructed affordably, Schaum recalls thinking a more modest building might honor the mountainside site’s inherent drama equally well. "Simple ideas, simple geometries, engage and partner with a landscape to produce complex effects," Schaum notes, "It seemed nice to work more closely with the land, and to generate different spaces depending on whether they are on the uphill or downhill side of the line."

The "line" described by Schaum is a 125-foot corridor that, Medina writes, "forms the spine of the house." Seven volumes cling to the corridor, alternating between east and west orientations. Besides enclosing different functions in a very legible way, the single-level arrangement creates outdoor rooms—corners, courts, and outlooks—that nestle into the architecture. "Jim and Will were immediately struck by the pockets of landscape, and they saw that as an invitation to imagine gardens set within them," Schaum says. The clients embraced the de-Tschumi-fied scheme, though Schaum notes that the collaborators did visit the steep site together, using ladders and platforms to confirm that living nearer to the ground would still capture Shenandoah views.

Schaum/Shieh’s plan preceded other major design decisions. "A total approach to space making feels a little suffocating," Schaum says of developing gestures asynchronously, and he notes that slight "clashes between systems" are intended to produce harmony rather than spectacle. "We’re really interested in spaces that reflect a more contemporary understanding of presence and self and community," he adds of his and Rosalyne Shieh’s practice more generally, "where there can be differences that live next to each other or collide to form more inscrutable relationships."

In the case of the Shenandoah commission, Schaum/Shieh explored multiple roof shapes and orientations after establishing the footprint. The design team and homeowners ultimately rallied around a shed roof that includes two ridge beams that are connected by a curved peak. Each volume is topped by the same roof assembly—in which the flat planes are underpinned by 2-by-8 lumber, and the curve between the ridge beams was fabricated from a thicker 2-inch member via jig. The module is rotated and clipped differently on the volumes to create a more complex appearance. Schaum/Shieh scrapped an internal gutter due to cost, and instead facilitated roof draining by adding a lip to the ridge.

Besides using design to express a pluralistic society, the architect explains that he and Shieh "have a real interest in the intersection between landscapes and objects, so there’s an idea that the roof and the overall house are embedded in a landscape and that the landscape field is constrained by the actual building." Schaum/Shieh works extensively with the Judd Foundation and Chinati Foundation, and Schaum notes that this understanding of architecture and wider "spatial fields" was informed by Donald Judd’s artworks.

The Shenandoah roof contains meanings even beyond the surrounding landscape or historic minimalist art. One concerns the love of Greece that informed James’s original drawing: When James and William were reviewing roof options, they demurred to a design with eaves—a strategy common to Virginia—because a clean roof edge was reminiscent of the Grecian buildings they had seen on their travels. Eschewing regional precedent also says something about the homeowners’ relationship with the place at hand, Schaum observes. William grew up not far from the residence, while James was raised in a similarly rural area of Oregon, yet the men have cultivated rich identities as educators, activists, and makers since then. "I think the incongruities with local convention reflect their personal attitudes about what it means to return somewhere after all they’ve lived through," as Schaum puts it. "I hadn’t anticipated it, and it’s amazing." 

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