Environmental & Architectural
Phenomenology Newsletter
Selected Reviews
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Max Jacobson, Murray Silverstein, and Barbara Winslow, 1990. The Good House: Contrast as a Design Tool. Newtown, CT: Taunton Press. |
Reviewed by David Seamon
The three architect-authors of this book seek to understand and to provide design strategies for houses that evoke experiences of satisfaction, attachment, pleasure, and joy. What is it about a house, ask the authors, "that makes it a good place to be in‑-supportive, vibrant, and appealing to both the intellect and the senses?" (p. vii).
For architectural phenomenology, The Good House is significant because the authors argue that successful home-design strategies regularly involve variations on one central theme‑-the expression of contrast. As the authors explain,
Strong design seems to grow from elements in a state of contrast at all scales. From the overall shape of a building down to the details of trim, a good house is composed of sharply contrasting qualities, all working together. For example, to create a room that is light and expansive, also create (to some degree) its opposite, a place that is dark and enclosed. And then link the two. Likewise, to experience warmth we need the cold: to experience order we need mystery. Good design, in these terms, is the production of harmony through the orchestration of strong contrasts (p. ix).
To demonstrate the significance of contrast in house design, the authors break their book into two major parts. The first section, called "Theory," introduces the theme of contrast in general terms and presents, chapter by chapter, a set of design strategies grounded in six specific contrasts: inside/outside, exposed/tempered, up/down, something/nothing, light/dark, and order/mystery.
The second section of the book, "Practice," seeks to demonstrate the theme of contrast concretely by examining several specific houses that "succeed in being strong and memorable" (p. viii). Nine of these houses the authors have designed themselves in their 16 years of architectural practice. In addition, the authors interpret four other houses: the Noyes House, by Eliot Noyes, 1955; the Hamdy House, by Abdel Wahed El-Wakil, 1978; the Schneider House, by Bernard Maybeck, 1907; and the Havens House, by Harwell Hamilton Harris, 1939. The authors justify the selection of these four houses because they involve a range of climates, styles and complexity of program; and because the authors believe that the houses are "fascinating buildings from which there is much to learn" (p. 78).
Above: A Bernard Maybeck house used to illustrate the windblown/still contrast.
ELEMENTS OF CONTRAST
In developing the importance of contrast in house design, the authors argue that there are two underlying commonalities that run throughout the specific contrasts and houses presented. The first commonality is that the good house is full of contrasts in regard to "every dimension of perception and measurement":
You can walk through a building and simply notice that, as you descend two steps into the living area, you go from a small, low ceilinged space to a larger, higher space; that you move from a dark interior to a lighter window bay. As you continue out to a more open and cooler yard, you'll notice the changing, contrasting qualities. The good house provides both warm and cool, high and low, dark and light, large and small (p. 4).
The second commonality is the fact that the opposing ends of the contrast are brought together by some architectural element that serves to enrich the contrast:
It's not just that there is a large room as well as a small one, but that they are linked by special doors in a way that enables both to be experienced together. An interior is linked to its exterior by a covered porch that allows you to experience in and out simultaneously. Or the private upstairs rooms are linked to the public downstairs rooms by a balcony that enables the children upstairs to spy on the evening conversation of the adults below. Notice that in all these cases the connecting link between the contrasting pairs is itself an architectural element--the doors, the porch, the balcony--and that it serves not to dull the contrast but to enliven it (p. 5)
The authors use these two commonalities as the organizational device for presenting the six specific contrasts mentioned above. First, the authors consider how the contrast expresses itself in the environment and what design strategies can enhance it; second, the authors identify a range of design strategies whereby the connecting link can contribute to this enhancement (see figure, right, for one example).
In regard to inside/outside, for instance, the authors first seek to show that this dialectic is perhaps the most important architectural contrast because the task of an environmental designer is almost always to create some sort of interior in the midst of an exterior. Next, the authors suggest four strategies for strengthening insideness and outsideness. For example, to heighten insideness, the designer might: (1) increase the concavity of the space; (2) define its corners and edges; (3) increase opacity; and (4) decrease the size of the space and provide access through a series of transitional spaces.
The authors then present several architectural strategies for linking inside and outside in a contrasting whole. These possibilities include: (1) inside standing alone in a field of outside; (2) inside cradling outside; (3) inside and outside interlocking; (4) inside enfronting outside; (5) axes of symmetry; (6) in-between places; (7) interpenetration; and (8) intermixing of elements. One simple example of using these strategies is provided by the authors in regard to designing a deck railing--the the drawing below.
Above: The authors provide these drawings to illustrate the use of the something/nothing contrast in designing a deck railing: First, create contrast between boards and spaces between; second, make the spaces narrower than the boards to enhance their contrast; third, join the contrasts together with a new part‑-in this case, a hexagonal shape; fourth, contrast shapes by alternating their position through the contrast of up/down.
In their last theoretical chapter, "The Contrasting Whole," the authors emphasize that all the six contrasts discussed separately are, in fact, usually interrelated. For example, up is often linked to light and exposure, while in may be related to shelter and order. Clearly, however, there will be exceptions and variations. In addition, various combinations of these qualities may support and be expressed through particular architectural archetypes, thus one can speak of the building foundation that is short, thick, heavy, and hard; or the north side that is shady, cool, low, and blank; or the library that is dim, warm, ordered and full of rich detail (p. 72).
The central design implication is not the development of some set of ironclad rules that require particular contrasts to be present always together but, rather, the recognition that "the dimensions of contrast within some part of a building can either cooperate and reinforce each other, or they can fight each other" (p. 72). The authors conclude that when the many different aspects of contrast are integrated in a thoughtful and sensitive way, the resulting design is more likely to be "poetic, resonating with many overtones of harmony" (p. 73).
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Above: An interior view of one house designed by the authors; contrasts used include openness to nature vs. secrecy from the city.
TEACHING, DESIGN, AND THEORY
The Good House should be a useful classroom text, both in design studios and theory courses, particularly for lower-level students. The theme of contrast is simple, yet the authors convincingly demonstrate how its many different manifestations can provide a useful language for describing architectural and environmental experiences.
Especially for beginning students, these experiences are often visceral, intuitive, and difficult to describe in words. The Good House provides one framework for giving shape and structure to these experiences. In this sense, the book provides one conceptual underpinning for students' speaking about and directing their design work.
If the book offers an ordered relationship between understanding and designing, it is also useful because the authors seek to translate this relationship into concrete design strategies, though several of the explanations seem truncated and, especially for beginners, not as clear or as usable as they might be. The authors' interpretation of specific house designs is, overall, more convincing, particularly the authors' discussion of how they drew upon contrast in their own residential designs. These interpretive examples should suggest possibilities for students as they design their own houses or evaluate others.
For environmental and architectural phenomenology, The Good House is important because it demonstrates how underlying experiential commonalities can provide innovative conceptual and design insights in regard to the built environment. The authors recognize the ambiguity of architectural contrast and its enormous range of combinations and differing expressions as shaped by culture, history, individual creativity, and geographical environment. Yet the authors also demonstrate that contrast-as-experienced cuts beneath these many sorts of differences and provides a legitimate independent focus for exploring architectural and environmental experience.
As architects, the authors emphasize the practical design value of contrast. The book, therefore, is not rigorous academically and, in this sense, is only a short start toward a phenomenology of contrast-as-experienced and what its many existential dimensions reveal about architectural and environmental meaning.
In this regard, particularly in theory courses, the book would be usefully presented alongside other work of similar aim and expression‑-for example, Thomas Thiis-Evensen's Archetypes in Architecture, Edward Relph's Place and Placelessness, Lisa Heschong's Thermal Delight in Architecture, and Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language. All of these authors believe that an empathetic explication of underlying, common patterns might offer a revitalizing new way to see, understand and design. These books support, echo, and extend the argument of The Good House, which, in turn, offers the same reciprocity to them.
As with the synergy of contrasts that makes a whole greater than the parts, so is the case with the growing number of qualitative studies that, gathered together and shown to speak to the same interpretive whole, might eventually lead to a thorough and groundbreaking phenomenology of architecture, place, and environment.
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