Hubert Savage, Architect (3)

 

 

Magdalen College Hall, Oxford, built circa 1500 (note flattened Tudor arches)

 

 

Tudor Gestures

One aspect of Victoria's Arts and Crafts architectural tradition was about summoning continuity with the past, without trying to mimic its style or copy its building practices. This was more complicated in the new world than it was in Europe, where traditions of local building dating from medieval times and even earlier were living parts of the built environment. Hubert Savage shared the local aspiration for a reassuring modicum of historic continuity, achieved through a smattering of details from the Tudor era (Savage was an emigre who trained in Britain as an architect). 

 

 

 Aberconwy House, Aberconwy, Wales: 15th century room

 

Generally, Arts and Crafts architects eschewed copying specific styles, preferring instead to emphasize local building practices and local or regional materials. They also liked to achieve effects by expressing the inherent qualities of the materials used in construction and decoration of the building. On Vancouver Island, these materials always involved use of old-growth fir, stone if could be quarried nearby, and to a more limited extent, locally made brick for utilities like chimneys and fireplaces. Arts and Crafts architects preferred local building practices to the more exotic and remote, because staying with the way buildings were traditionally built increased the likelihood of a new building fitting in. A convincing continuity of tradition could also be crafted by incorporating a few elements gesturing in the chosen direction. In Victoria, that direction tended to be Tudor (an era that fell roughly in the sixteenth century in England). As the use of Tudor details was intended to be decorative rather than functional, it was important that they not be laid on too heavily. Hence, a few details giving a building a distinct look or character thus reflected the progressive design idea of 'alluding' to a prior era, which established the desired continuity. Allusive Tudor imagery (for example, Tudor boards used in the gable ends, or similar boards used elsewhere on the exterior) had been found to work in the Victoria housing market, convincingly so by the works of talented society architect Samuel Maclure (see photos below, where Tudor-style boards are shown gracing three smaller Maclure structures). 

 

913 Burdett Avenue, Victoria, chalet for Cecil Roberts, built in 1905

941 Meares Street in Victoria, bungalow for William Christy, built in 1906

2141 Granite Street, Oak Bay, built in 1912, colonial bungalow for A.O. Campbell

 

The use of Tudor boards was standard practice back in 1913, imparting a feeling of familiarity to what was a largely British clientele with the resources to commission architect-designed homes. These architects strove to incorporate a smattering of Tudor details into structures that were otherwise thoroughly modern in their layout and equipment. Savage's use of a limited palette of such details for his own house thus nods in a similar direction. Hence, Tudor boards used in the cross-gables across the frontage are obviously not meant to be taken as authentic half-timbering (which reflected a particular method of using oak planks to construct buildings) but were a device serving to panelize gable space in a way that was not inconsistent with Tudor.

 

 

Authentic Tudor building, with arch and timber details in oak, reconstructed

 

I think Savage designed the original panels between the Tudor boards to appear as plaster (maybe the spaces between the vertical boards were originally of plaster-on-lath, a common wall treatment in houses in 1913). But whatever Savage's original approach had been, the effect had been updated by the time I got there. Now the panels between the Tudor boards were of plywood painted in a tone that appeared to be undercoat-white, of the modern grade known as 'good one side'. 'Good one side' plywood utilizes the inferior product of younger trees grown in replanted forests - or second growth timber, as it's known hereabouts. This product comes with lots of knots in it (the residue of branches) which are patched-over in manufacture, with the patches reserved to one side of the plywood (hence the grade 'good one side'). It's notionally intended for uses requiring just one good face. The strange thing here, however, was that whoever bought the replacement plywood hadn't paid close attention to how it was used - so the replacement panels had been installed with the patched side facing outwards! And these patches were at the point of showing through the now-faded colour scheme. The problem of patch show-through was resolved by the suggestion of Mike Abernethy, of Double A Painting, a heritage paint contractor who has worked extensively on the building, and oversaw the first full repainting. Mike proposed mixing coarse-grained sand into the exterior paint, which he felt would dry to mimic the look of plaster. It took considerable work on the part of his skilled painters to keep this heavy sand suspended in the paint, but the strategy worked like a charm!

 

Panels mimicking a plastered look, masking the visible plywood patches

Patches be gone, and via the magic of suspending sand in the paint, they were!

Another element of Tudor imagery in the Savage bungalow is the extensive use of clear leaded glass. This includes diamond-shaped panes in a fixed window on the north wall, rectangular-shaped panes in the dining room, and hexagonal panes in twin bays on the front elevation, and in a single fixed window on the south wall. The use of Tudor-style leaded-glass throughout the bungalow contributes enormously to its overall atmosphere, adding classy, artistic touches that enrich rooms while distantly evoking Tudor times. The Tudor era was smitten by the possibilities of joining small pieces of glass into panes that were held in place with lead cames, at the time such glass was becoming widely available (see next photo). 

 

 

Tudor-era building, leaded-glass windows, with opening casement windows 

 

 

Manufacturing larger sheets of glass by using lead cames to hold small panes, which in turn could be framed with wood, allowed designers to open the walls and bring more light directly into buildings. In the rainy, often overcast English climate, this was a revelation that took those who could afford such glass by storm. Look closely at surviving Tudor-era buildings and you will see this new effect being actively explored (cf. photo above). The overall feeling a particular window evokes derives to some extent from the shape and size of the individual panes it's made of, which are nearly always in a repeating form. As a result, the use of clear leaded-glass panels still evokes the Tudor era, and Arts and Crafts architects were very much alive to the possibilities of such glazing. But the phenomenon had as much to do with the unique impacts of the leaded-glass, so not simply out of nostalgia for bygone days.

 

 

Play of light reflected from leaded glass panes

 

 

"Think of the beauty of leaded glass compared with the lifeless hard mechanical perfection of polished plate. This beauty has nothing to do with its old-fashioned look, with romantic associations, or quaintness of effect; it is simply an inherent property of all leaded glazing, due to the wonderful and never ending charm of the play of light and shade on the different panes, each one catching the light slightly differently from any other..." Barry Parker & Raymond Unwin, The Art of Building A Home, 1901.

 

 

Hexagonal panes running horizontally (right, above) at dusk in early spring 

One unique configuration of Tudor-style leaded glass at the Savage bungalow is the trio of fixed windows with hexagonal panes, two of which appear in the projecting bays bookending the verandah, and the third as a standalone window in the south wall of the living room (seen in the photo above). I have been unable to find a precedent for the design among pictures of surviving Tudor-era glass (unlike the rectangular panes shown below, or the diamond-shaped panes on the north wall) so this use may in fact be a Savage-original. In Tudor-era buildings, the leaded-glass panes tended to be run vertically (as for example the casements shown below, second and third photos) whereas in Savage's use the hexagonal panes run horizontally, thus occupying more width than depth, in a pattern that reinforces bungalow lines.

 

 

Hexagonal window in one of two bays flanking the projecting verandah

  

Transom above opening casements, with stays

  

Casement windows framing a built-in locker seat that invites sitting

 

 

There are also vertical panels of leaded glass in casement format (casement windows are hinged on one side, so they can open, and come with locking and holding devices, called stays or adjusters) in the dining room, as well as the fixed panel serving as a transom above the built-in window seat (see last two photos above). This arrangement forms a cozy niche in a glazed area that invites human use, especially as the casements face due south and are set into a projecting bay. The device of a seat crafted into a bay window also serves as a light trap, magnifying the amount of daylight entering the room.

 

 

Diamond-paned glass graces the walk-in closet

 

 

At the rear of the house there is a diamond-paned window in clear leaded-glass (the only north facing window in a bedroom; the main bedroom has no north-facing windows). Whenever the walk-in closet was added (the exact date isn't known) two small diamond-paned windows were installed as casements (see photo above). Overall, Savage's use of Tudor-style glazing is spare but inventive, reinforcing the theme of continuity with Tudor times, adding considerable feeling to the place and enriching its details immensely. And because these windows are all made of clear glass, they neatly sidestep association with Victorian times where coloured-glass effects were widely explored. They are thus, if you will, that much more pure in their effect. We appreciated the subtleties of the leaded-glass windows, so it was natural for us to add more when addressing situations where windows needed to be replaced, as they did in what became our conservatory. At the time of the initial exterior renovation, back in 1999, I had David Helland, our skilled joiner-carpenter, fabricate matching casement windows with rectangular glass panes (similar to those in the dining room) as replacements for the aluminum sliders sitting on either side of the small picture window. On plan, the original concept called this back porch a "summer tea room" that was open to the elements, but could be shuttered in winter. David did a fantastic job of making and installing the new casements, which we dressed with hardware in an oil-rubbed bronze finish. 

 

 

New leaded-glass casement, conservatory room

 

 

A further use of details that evoke a Tudor-era theme are the arches over inset wall shelves in the dining room, spare bedroom and the kitchen (photos below). This was another of Savage's many artful touches, tastefully spread throughout the house. The Tudor arch is one that has been flattened to come to a low point (in contrast to Roman or Gothic arches, which are either rounded or brought to a sharper point) done in a style that is said to be of Moorish origin. Many themes of Medieval architecture came from contact, via the crusades, with the more architecturally sophisticated Middle Eastern nations.

 

 

 

Tudor-style arches at Hatley Castle, designed by architect Samuel Maclure

 

The arch as a device over inset shelving reinforces Tudor-era continuity, but again, not as functional replication. In fact, taking advantage of the wall cavity to create inset shelving is actually very Californian, adding another American Arts and Crafts touch to the bungalow. These arches gesture in the direction of Tudor without literally trying to copy what would have been done in that era (pictures below).

 

 

Tudor arch above inset shelving, dining room

 

More severe (deco-era) Tudor-arch over shelving under diamond-paned glass

 

Tudor arch set over incised shelving in the kitchen

 

There are, of course, other Tudor references embedded in the building's interior: the matte black wood panelling, plate rail, boxed beams, and the mantle piece and mirror above the fireplace, for instance. Matte black wood was a favoured device of many British Arts and Crafts architects, and Savage and his coterie (the James brothers, both of them architects and close personal friends) tended to prefer this type of treatment in houses they designed. Rosemary James Cross (P. L. James's daughter) confided to me once that in the early days, the architects' wives would organize blacking parties where the woodwork (in the Savage bungalow, matte black woodwork was dominant in the entry hallway, living room, and dining room) was actively re-coated with black shoe polish! You can just imagine the ladies having a go at the walls with rags and black shoe polish!

 

 

You can see the ladies having a go at this room, blackening the walls

"In the English Arts and Crafts tradition, Douglas [James] insisted on having interior wooden trim finished in black...the black finish to interior woodwork has been preserved in most cases." Rosemary James Cross, The Life and Times of Victoria Architect Percy Leonard James (2005). 

 

Books for Looks:

 

Rosemary James Cross, The Life and Times of Victoria Architect Percy Leonard James, Dear Brutus Publishing, 2005.

Martin Segger, The Buildings of Samuel Maclure - In Search Of Appropriate Form, Sono Nis, 1986. 

 

 

Hubert Savage, Architect (2)

 

 

The instinct for beauty 

 

 

Dove Cottage, once the home of poet William Wordsworth, Lake District, England

 

Many architects helped shape British Arts and Crafts architecture, but there were recurring themes: building in ways typical of the locale, with local materials, was one (timber or stone sourced directly from the site intensified this effect); shaping a new house to suit the site, by drawing design-leads directly from topography and scenery, was another; integrated design of all details, including interior finishes and decor, in order to unify the outcome, was a third. Construction based on these principles, executed by highly skilled craftsmen, was how to go about producing a building that was authentic. These were not the only themes followed by Arts and Crafts architects, but they were among the most universally applied. Foremost among those shaping the direction in the early twentieth century were Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin - architects working in a shared practice who were selected to design the first-ever Garden City (at Letchworth, some thirty miles north of London). The ideas galvanizing the Garden Cities movement came from the writings of Ebenezer Howard (Garden Cities of Tomorrow, 1902). Parker and Unwin first came to public attention by authoring an influential book entitled The Art of Building A Home (1901) advocating techniques that were steeped in the Arts and Crafts perspective. The pair were later invited by Gustav Stickley, editor and convener of The Craftsman (an influential American Arts and Crafts magazine) to recast the book as a series of articles for publication. Barry Parker, in an article appearing in 1910, remarks that "every house should to a very large extent be thought out on its site". This continues a line of thinking he elaborated in The Art of Building a Home: "The site is the most important factor to be considered, for it usually suggests both the internal arrangement and the external treatment." 

 

 

Parker & Unwin, master plan of Letchworth, the first-ever Garden City

 

It was a credo for Arts and Crafts architects that a pristine site could yield important design-cues, enabling a house to fuse more fully with its setting. This was a precept Savage undoubtedly knew of, and one his particular situation of designing a dwelling for personal use in the midst of unspoiled nature allowed him to fully implement. In the creative act of designing a bungalow for himself and wife Alys, he was blessed to have a picturesque setting with a defining ridge surrounded by old oaks. Parker goes on to suggest how to turn the unique qualities of the setting to full account: "In fact, to produce a good plan, one should go to the site without any preconceived conventions, but with a quite open mind, prepared to think out each fresh problem on the spot from the beginning, and to receive all the suggestions the site can offer. I hope you will pardon me if I seem to insist unduly on the importance of so elementary a principle as that of building to suit each site." Building to suit the specifics of the site was just what Savage had in mind for his new bungalow, with the overall aim of raising a building that fitted the physical circumstances as a hand does a glove.

 

 

Picturesque English cottage in Selworthy, Summerset, photo circa 1888

 

Parker's article in The Craftsman continues: "the designer must go on to the site and let it dictate to him what shall be the interior arrangement of the house, and largely what shall be its exterior treatment. The site must suggest the interior arrangement because the contours and falls of the land must have their influence on the design, or the house can never be one which will look as if it had come there naturally, and were a pleasant part of its surroundings...". Parker's objective here was the forging of a bond between house and setting, so they became so indissolubly linked that they appeared to have been made for one another. The same naturalistic approach to siting was taken in the layout of traditional English villages, or even for individual cottages (see photo above, noting how the cottage is stepped down the land). The technique involves fitting a house artfully onto its site, chiefly by close observation of the site's natural features. Given that the Savage bungalow appears remarkably comfortably placed in its natural setting, it's most likely that this was the approach taken. Letting the site signal the design of a house wasn't as easily done back in town (if at all), because development tended to occur on the narrow, more uniform lots that were rapidly becoming the industry norm. The process of 'tract development' was driven by consolidation of the building industry in the hands of contractor-developers who preferred to standardize lot-widths, even if that meant blunter proximity to the adjacent houses (smaller lot sizes allowed the optimization of real estate yields). This whole process tends to result in a sameness of design for neighbouring houses.

 

 

 

Vancouver, 1942: five of six new-builds share identical features in their facades

 

 

Many decades prior to Parker and Unwin's extolling of the advantages of naturalistic siting of houses, Uvedale Price, in his masterly Essays On The Picturesque (1842) commented on the opportunity given an architect, when building in open countryside, to strengthen connections between the building and its surroundings by uniting the structure with "the general character of the scenery" and "with the particular spot and the objects immediately around it". Price felt that a building designed expressly for the countryside had unique potential to "do what has so seldom been done" by any architect: "accommodate his building to the scenery, not make that give way to his building". Achieving this outcome would require "an architect with a painter's eye, to have the planning of the whole". Should this condition be met, however, "many are the advantages, both with respect to the outside and to the inside, that might result from such a method...it is scarcely possible that a building formed on such a plan, should not be an ornament to the landscape, from whatever point it might be viewed". He contrasted the opportunity of building in the midst of scenery with the houses that were being put up in cities, standing pretty much right on top of each another, so that they lacked any opportunity to acknowledge their immediate surroundings. In this sense, the urban approach to building contradicts the potential charm of houses by impeding the relationship they could develop with their surroundings, should sufficient context be allowed to remain. The modern process of gridding landscapes to maximize yields tends to transform natural contours and vegetation into unwelcome encumbrances - things that are best removed in order to ready land for development. An extreme example of this subdivision-style layout, on lots of severely truncated width, appears in the next photo, of a restored section of Vancouver's old West End. 

 

 

No room left over for residual scenery in Vancouver

 

Subdivision plan, circa 1912, Quadra-Cloverdale: note uniformity of the lots 

 

 

As an Arts and Crafts architect designing a house for family use, Savage could implement the opposite notion by simply allowing the site's contours and scenery to guide his choices. The actual ordering of rooms into sequences had to do with both their function and the frequency of their use, as modified by the amount of light that could be gathered by placing them in specific locations. This prompted Savage to put the bedrooms towards the north end of the dwelling, while the more public spaces (living room, dining room, kitchen and rear porch) were placed to the south. Savage would likely have been comfortable evolving the elevations (the building as seen from the outside) only after he nailed down the flow of rooms (or floor-plan). Foremost among the factors he would have considered was the opportunity to obtain views to scenery by means of the placement of windows. In this process, Savage wasn't governed by requirements for symmetry, so he could open a window wherever he felt it would be beneficial (relying on his talent for "informal grouping", which was mentioned in my first post in this series). Other architects in the Arts and Crafts tradition felt similar freedom to open windows wherever they were wanted: Harvey Ellis, for example, a talented architect and designer who wrote and designed houses for The Craftsman, regularly cited the maxim: "not symmetry, but balance."

 

Parker and Unwin continue: "The position of each room in relation to the points of the compass and the outlook should be determined on the spot." This is a key concept of house design: the architect first familiarizes himself with the site's specifics, enabling him to comprehend its character, which can then lead him to design a sympathetic structure. Necessarily, he would allow for the possibility of view corridors informing both floor plan and the placing of windows. I believe that's just the approach Savage took to building in a pristine landscape. 

 

 

Bedrooms to the north (right) public rooms to the south (left): site-specific plans 

 

Well before the process of construction began, Savage would have been out on site, compass in hand, sketching prospective layouts and verifying potential placements and exposures. Looking around in full sympathy with the stunning immediate and distant scenery, he would have considered how to minimize the damage from construction while maximizing the access to view corridors from inside. What a great problem for an Arts and Crafts architect to have! Parker and Unwin also declare: "...no sacrifice is too great which is necessary to enable us to bring plenty of sunshine into all the main living rooms." This statement, expressing a typically English sentiment, had become an obsession once it was possible to fabricate larger areas of glass (given their rainy winter climate). But this was also a universal sentiment among those living far enough from the equator to feel the ongoing need for exposure to sunlight. Savage was also in the enviable position of building on an upland site, on a ridge bathed in sunshine, with abundant views. Parker and Unwin further elaborate on access to light and views: "But we do not today so much build shelters for people who live out of doors, as dwellings whence they may occasionally go forth. A primary consideration then must be, to so place the house as to afford its occupants the greatest possible enjoyment of such beauty of adjacent country or grandeur of distant view as the site can command. While doing this, however, we must place and design the house in such a way that it shall not stand out as a disturbing excrescence, but shall look at home in its site, in harmony with its surroundings." Or, as Price put it incisively decades earlier, so the house would appear as "an ornament to the landscape".

 

 

 Designed by an architect with a painter's eye, as an ornament to the landscape

 

Savage's half-acre gets more light than many another due to its substantial elevation (a fact of geography that modifies sun angles, allowing light to reach further into rooms - especially in a house running south to north that is simultaneously not very deep). Also, the site comes with ample views to distant large-scale scenery ('grandeur of distant views') such as the Olympic mountains across the straits of Juan de Fuca, or closer by, glimpses of Portage Inlet, an inland waterway that's part of what's now known as the Salish Sea - atmospheric features that could be taken in at a glance from the principal windows of the bungalow. And recall that when Savage first built, there were no other buildings standing anywhere nearby, so nothing impeded him from exploring those views. Parker and Unwin continue: "This consideration of the house as a detail in a larger picture will bring us to a determination of its general form, its treatment and its colouring. Some positions demand a lofty building, while others seem to suggest that it be kept as low as possible. And in the country, certainly, the low house is more successful, more in harmony with the scenery."

 

 

Savage wanted his bungalow to connect intimately with the natural setting

Same windows, from outside, showing lively movement of the wall planes

 

 

Savage took full advantage of the natural aspects of an exceptionally well-endowed site. Rising elevation from the road and the building's placement along the ridge resulted in a structure with long walls facing east and west, which optimized the light reaching into rooms. As noted above, he was free to place windows wherever they would be advantageous, so he must have been intrigued by how this wall-porosity would shape the experience from inside. Using windows, as singletons or clustered in banks, to admit light to the interior while capturing views to scenery kept the inhabitants directly connected to the immediate surroundings. Savage evidently shared Parker and Unwin's perspective on natural light, but he didn't have to make sacrifices in order to get it into the building. As a result, there are many different shapes, sizes, and treatments of windows in the Savage bungalow - some thirty-two windows in all (by my own count), many substantial, in a house whose footprint is less than 1600 square feet! A number of these windows are hinged casements, but even more are generous double-hung sash windows (five feet high, on plan) which open and close easily due to the counterweights hidden within their elegantly trimmed frames. Both panes of glass thus open, so residents are able to explore the 'stack effect' that optimizes cool air circulation on hotter days (especially if the attic door is open as well, giving hot air another building level to rush into). Cumulatively, the windows are generously distributed (except for on the north face, where their presence is limited to two small panes of glass, one of which is serves as an end window in the attic) and work so as to provide their intended effects.   

 

 

Small picture window in the conservatory looking out to the rear garden

Even in December's light, the view from the conservatory feels dramatic

The kitchen and other windows showing remarkable porosity of the walls

Kitchen windows in May, with views to the protected back garden

Kitchen windows, rear door, conservatory windows seen from the garden

 

The Charm of Vista

 

In an authentic Arts and Crafts approach, the architect allows the sequence of interior spaces to develop out of the site itself, while exploring the opportunities to open views to specific features (so as to exploit what Parker and Unwin call "the charm of vista"). They recommend that the living room, given its centrality, be placed optimally to garner maximum light: "The living room, as the most generally occupied, and therefore most important room, is placed at the south-east corner, having the double outlook to the south-east and south-west, and getting all available sunlight and the best of the prospect." As it transpired, this is pretty much where Savage placed his living room, with windows facing east (for morning light) and south (for afternoon light). Of course, the living room doesn't occupy the full width of the building (which, after all, is only a small, artistic bungalow) sharing space with the dining room and the utility-room/rear porch, so it just receives indirect light from the west. But it is never dull in there!

 

 

Living room oaks in fall, pictured through wavy 'old' glass windows

 

 

 

Main bedroom, views to an oak forest from a bank of windows set in a bay

Visible front window shows how thin the house actually is

 

One result of Savage's configuration of windows is the ample light harvested in all rooms. His bungalow was, after all, ideally situated to take in natural light, not at all deep (see photo above showing the building's thinness) but long and oriented so that sunlight penetrates it from both east and west. Indeed, he gave it so many significant windows that the light-gathering function is effectually accomplished. What follows are a few pictures showing how well he succeeded in bringing natural light into the bungalow.

 

Morning light blasting into the entry foyer

January mid-day light blasting into the living room: virtues of a ridge site

 

Warm light reaching deep into a central corridor

 

January light blasting into the small dining room

 

 

Savage presumably worked through a flow of rooms and only then developed elevations for the bungalow. We can't be sure of this however, as no building elevations have surfaced to date, making it harder to know for certain whether they came after he settled the floor plan (certainly, however, this was the way Arts and Crafts architects tended to approach design of buildings). And the elevations as built do feel organic, blending seamlessly with the building's immediate context (the cross-gables on the frontage, for example, seem to mimic the shape of the fir boughs visible behind the structure in Marigold Park). We have to accept the possibility that there may only ever have been sketch-plans of the bungalow's exterior, the detailed design of which may have been worked out during the actual construction. The woodwork inside the building is absolutely flawless, a tribute to the skill of the carpenters working only with hand tools who obviously knew what they were doing. The same can be said of the bungalow's exterior, and the trio of cross-gables defining the main facade stand as a brilliant interpretation of bungalow form set cross-wise, on an upland ridge, in a truly picturesque landscape.

 

 

Brilliant articulation of bungalow form set cross-wise in a picturesque setting

 

Another view of the cross-gabled facade 

 

"We could" says Raymond Unwin, "if we really desired it, so arrange a new building site that it should not be an actual eye-sore, and might manage that it should have some little of the charm of the old village." One goal for Arts and Crafts architects was to fit new structures into existing landscape in ways that didn't result in a competition for attention, but actually embraced the site itself. The trick lay in making the building feel so comfortable in its setting that it gives the impression of always having been there (rather than, say, remaking the landscape to fit an arbitrarily defined building lot, which is what we do nowadays). The latter outcome, the result of town-development practices ("through not co-operating with the scene") treats the site with zero respect, as if all land were infinitely malleable, manipulable, and gradable. In a bona fide Arts and Crafts approach, the scenery is treated more respectfully, reverentially even, and as a result, the building comes to be "pleasing in the landscape".

 

 

A building fashioned by design to appear 'pleasing in the landscape'

 

Elsewhere in Century Bungalow (in a post entitled The Romance of Possibility, August 2016) I commented on the charm and beauty of the site's natural contours, with its mature oaks front and back. It's an inherently picturesque landscape (an exceptional one too, despite being reduced from its original grandeur to the dimensions of an RS-6 lot) - a lot that's still magically protected by Savage's original organic building placement. The architect with a painter's eye who first composed this scene took utmost care in his handling of the site, avoiding the re-contouring that excavation or grading would have entailed. This was, after all, Savage's one chance, as a professional architect, to build a home for himself in a truly authentic Arts and Crafts manner, and perhaps one of only two instances where he got to shepherd a beguiling natural landscape through a complex building process while ensuring the site remained substantially undisturbed (another instance of the quality of work Savage was capable of is Stranton Lodge, a small nearby English Arts and Crafts cottage designed for his friends Thomas and Maud Hall in 1934, a building I hope to canvass more extensively in a subsequent post).

 

 

Stranton Lodge, by Hubert Savage, 1934, seen here in February 2018

 

 

Intriguingly, on the topic of naturalistic siting of new buildings, Savage's choice of the ridge as a building site happened to align with Gustav Stickley's preferences for building placement, as expressed in an essay in Craftsman Homes and Bungalows (1995 edition): "the hillside site, affording...well-nigh perfect drainage, makes it possible to put into effect a favourite Craftsman theory - that a house should be built without a cellar and should, as nearly as possible, rest directly on the ground with no visible foundation to separate it from the soil and turf in which it should almost appear to have taken root." This preference was akin to the way of siting traditional English village churches, a method followed by Arts and Crafts architect William Lethaby at All Saints church, pictured below.

 

 

All Saints, Brockhampton, by William Lethaby: a building rising directly from the land

 

Ridge sites come with natural advantages, including superior drainage

 

 

Whether Savage knew of Stickley's writings or not, his approach to home building is remarkably consistent with Stickley's "Craftsman idea". The house obviously benefits from its placement on the brow of a hill, and running it along the length of the ridge does indeed offer possibilities of, if not 'perfect', then at least very good, natural drainage. This results in a dwelling that seems to absorb the foundational ridge into its being.

 

"No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together, each the happier for the other."  Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect, in An Autobiography, 1932

 

 

Rainfall tends to run away from a building built on a ridge, in patterns that are readily discernible if an architect takes the trouble of observing them (this would mean that the site is visited and absorbed into consciousness long before construction starts). If a house is well-contrived to disperse rainfall to ground (which many today are not) good drainage is pretty much assured. However, the Savage bungalow was also made to look 'settled into' the natural landscape, taking full advantage of the lay of the land (its 'contours and falls' in Barry Parker's poetic phrasing). On the west side, along the back of the building, the house (borrowing here from Stickley) "sits upon a foundation of field stone that is sunk so low as to be hardly perceptible, so that the house, while perfectly sanitary and well-drained, seems very close to the ground". Barry Parker, commenting on the layout of a traditional building, remarks "does not the old building seem almost to grow out of the ground on which it stands?" And that is just the way Savage designed his then-modern bungalow to appear.

 

 

The west and north facades appear to be resting directly on the ground

 

Gustav Stickley, in various articles in The Craftsman, declared how enamoured he was of the exact building placement - near or directly sitting on the ground - that Savage achieved at Grange Road. Of one such rural building, Stickley comments: "as the general effect of the house is broad and low, it is fitting that very little of the foundation should be visible. A far better effect is given if no attempt is made to establish too strict a grade line, as the house seems to fit the ground much better if the foundation is accommodated to the natural irregularities..." Not emphasizing the presence of a stone foundation by keeping it low (except along the south wall where the contour of the land makes it necessary) results in a building that feels well "accommodated to the natural irregularities" and as a result, appears to rise directly from the land (see photos above and below). Even along the south wall, where the stone foundation is deeper, a boulder that forms part of the protruding bedrock was made integral to the foundation.

 

"The point of the California bungalow was to get almost everything on one floor. Its exterior charm...was at least partly the result of the closeness of that floor to the ground. Good drainage of the soil...made it possible to put the little house on a very low foundation, thus emphasizing its mainly horizontal lines...The California bungalow seemed to hug the earth." Robert Winter, The California Bungalow

 

 

Front path that follows the "line of least resistance"

 

Boulder incorporated into the foundation wall

 

In another of the essays in Craftsman Homes and Bungalows, Stickley promotes an idea for building placement that simultaneously stands as an approach to gardening natural landscapes, one involving modifying the context minimally (so more or less the exact opposite of the British form of estate gardening, which is, to put it mildly, more systematic). "Most fortunate is the home builder who can set his house out in the open where there is plenty of meadow land around it and an abundance of trees. If the ground happens to be uneven and hilly, so much the better, for the gardener then has the best of all possible foundations to start from and, if he be wise, he will leave it much as it is, clearing out a little here and there, planting such flowers and shrubs as seem to belong to the picture and allowing the paths to take the directions that would naturally be given to footpaths across the meadows or through the woods - paths which invariably follow the line of least resistance and so adapt themselves perfectly to the contour of the ground". Stickley's method here is consistent with a North American Arts and Crafts approach to the gardening of natural landscapes (something few Europeans would have experienced at home, because Europe was inhabited for eons and therefore the landscape was much-modified). I'm convinced the Savages took exactly this sort of approach, evolving their little patch of heaven during a long tenure there. The course of the front path evidently does follow Stickley's "line of least resistance" through the landscape (see top photo, above) and as a result, feels snugly fitted to the land's natural contours. This approach results in an entry path traversing the entire front facade before accessing a switchback and a flight of steps, which finally arrives at a sheltered verandah. From the outset, and for many years thereafter, the final steps to the verandah were made of wood (cf. 1933 floor plan, where the steps are still identified as being made of wood); however, by the time Savage came to draw up a second floor plan, in 1951, the switchback and the steps leading to the verandah had been remade as broad, curving stone steps, appearing today pretty much as they do in the photo below. The stone steps make a decidedly more impressive contribution than wooden steps would have made.

 

 

Curving stone stairs complete the switchback path

 

Books for looks:

The Art of Designing A Home, Robert Parker and Raymond Unwin, 1901. 

The English Vision, The Picturesque in Architecture, Landscape and Garden Design, David Watkin, 1982. Watkin makes a strong case for the convergence of picturesque notions of landscape with Arts and Crafts architecture, especially in chapter 5, The Picturesque House: Vanbrugh to Soane; and chapter 6, The Picturesque House: Salvin to Lutyens. Of Edward Lutyens he says: "Lutyens was the last and perhaps the greatest exponent of the Picturesque. Whether he would have immediately recognized himself in that description is unclear, but there can be no doubt that his sensitivity to local materials, his love of irregular massing, and his concern to relate the plan and the form of a house to its setting both natural and man-made, were deeply part of everything we have described as picturesque." (147). Lutyens was perhaps the greatest Arts and Crafts architect to practice in Britain, and he enjoyed a long-standing partnership with Gertrude Jekyll, the premier Arts and Crafts garden designer.

Essays on the Picturesque, Uvedale Price, 1842.

Craftsman Homes and Bungalows, Gustav Stickley, 1996 edition.

The California Bungalow, Robert Winter, 1980. 

The Picturesque: Studies in a Point of View, by Christopher Hussey, 1967