The Deep Dive: Past Is Present

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.  

In the July/August Construction Diary, feature writer Tommy Craggs traveled to Sea Ranch, California, to report on a new home that embodies the same spirit of experimentation that propelled the community into existence in 1964. Inside the main house that architect David Ross designed for he and his husband, artist Mark Dutcher, a 32-foot square is divided into four equally-sized spaces with large interior barn doors that transform boundaries between rooms into mere suggestions. The plan is in fact a "continuous loop" of movement, Craggs writes, which contributes vitally to the house’s identity as a "monument to dynamism, contingency, and transience."

In addition to landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, who devised the master plan for Sea Ranch, as well as graphic designer Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, credit for the northern California community’s look and feel goes to architects Joseph Esherick, Donlyn Lyndon, Charles Moore, and Richard Whitaker. David’s admiration for those original makers is immediately apparent to visitors of the house, which the couple have dubbed 4Square, thanks in part to the gable that soars above the rear door. The gable’s shed roof, lack of overhanging eaves, and perfect alignment to the building’s north elevation all hum with the energy of Condominium One, a seminal Sea Ranch project that Moore designed with Lyndon and Whitaker as principals of the San Francisco–based firm MLTW. 

Moore’s particular influence on David extends beyond that image-making gesture. He recalls that Moore was considered passé and largely excluded from his architectural training, and that, since then, most of his study of the architect has been self-directed. "I’ve just found his work so playful and full of life," David explains. That research led him to Moore’s personal residence in Orinda, California, the interior of which is unbelievably less compartmentalized than 4Square. "The Orinda house is wild; the open-air quality is just so cool," Mark agrees. The artist adds that in his own survey of Moore’s buildings, he had seen photos of the midcentury architect painting patterns and murals directly onto walls and painting them anew a year or two later. "That certainly influenced my thinking about how I wanted to see color and art and whimsy inside our space."  

Both David and Mark also speak fondly of the "saddlebag couch" that hooks into the southwest corner of 4Square, and which derives from several units—including the residence that Moore himself occupied—at Condominium One. Not merely a furniture piece, the couch at 4Square is a semi-independent volume that cantilevers from the house frame in a partial trapezium shape, and whose 7-foot ceiling transforms the long seating surface into a peaceful anabranch of the soaring interior’s river-like circulation. "It’s a really special, cozy place to sleep or sit with our two dogs," David says of the saddlebag couch, adding that Moore had invented the term.  

In Sea Ranch, David aligned the main house and studio to the rear and side property lines, respectively. He then confirmed the decision by studying solar paths and sightlines, especially making sure that morning sun would shine in 4Square’s east-facing kitchen and that the south- and west-facing living room enjoyed maximum daylight as well as a view from its saddlebag couch to Mark’s studio. "I took the property lines as a cue for setting the house," David says of basing decisions on external sources without necessarily kowtowing to them. David says he can trace 4Square’s inspiration to something even more essential than his trips through Japan or the half-hearted introduction to Charles Moore he received in architecture school. Instead, it’s to his boyhood visits to his grandmother in Indiana, where David was caught off guard by a guest bedroom with a giant curtain that shielded a brick wall rather than a window. "We wanted to do something unexpected like that with this house, even if some people wouldn’t like it," David says."Precedents are not always academic; for me it’s also deep memories and tangible experiences that inform a design."