My recently completed House of Tree project, lit by kerosene lamps

I’ve always loved designing and building cabins, and was thrilled to have two simultaneous commissions over the past year and a half, both of which are recently completed. I’d like to design more of these simple, hand-built houses and intend to promote these recent projects, so we hired the architectural photographer Tim Maloney to document them. Tim shot each project in a single day, working closely with Ene, who staged the interiors. I’ve posted my favorite images from each project below, beginning with House of Tree, a tree house/observation tower that I designed for a client in West Sonoma County, built by Tom Holland and Richard Ernst. The second is a Guest House in Marin County, designed by Dotter/Solfjeld Architects, for which I was commissioned to design and build the interior, including all built-in furnishings and fixtures. All images are by Tim Maloney of Santa Rosa-based Technical Imagery. You may learn more about the development of these projects by clicking on the links above.

HOUSE OF TREE:

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Tagged: architecture, cabin, deep craft, scott Constable, sustainability, treehouse, woodworking, wowhaus

I reserved the best of the clear and quarter-sawn stock for cabinets and doors

Today when my interior design project in Marin passed final inspections and the stress of pushing for completion began to recede, I was reminded of my initial inspiration- to make a place that has a distinct smell, identifiable with local flora. Whenever I travel back to the East Coast and spend time in old farmhouses and barns, I find a visceral comfort in the sweet, woody perfume of white pine and oak, still resonant in buildings over 100 years old. While the equivalent can be found throughout the Sierra, I wanted the same effect in the densely populated Bay Area, especially for the rustic interior I’ve prepared over the past year for a Guest House nestled among live oak, buckeye and coast redwood trees. I wanted the guests of the cottage to experience an instant calm the moment they walk inside, to associate the perfume of deodar cedar with the enveloping glow of its grain. I will be curious to experience how the smell of the cottage develops over the years.

Craft is most rewarding when it continues to engage all of the senses over time.

To read more about the development of the Guest House interior, click here and scroll down.

Tagged: aesthetics, california flora, deep craft, green woodworking, vernacular architecture, woodworking

Ene and me reflected in Anish Kapoor’s ‘Bean’ sculpture, Chicago, earlier this summer

Before I launch full bore into documenting A Year in Surf I wanted to update current wowhaus projects. I will maintain a running log of projects as they accumulate, but will soon shift the focus of deepcraft to my active pursuit of surfing. I think you’ll agree that surf culture is in many ways a unifying theme to the thrust of past and present wowhaus projects, which increasingly focus on watershed ecology, structural invention and making beautiful things and places.

Our fish sculptures (’Abundance‘) are coming to life as they are skinned with tile

Our wax ‘Stepping Stones’ are ready to be cast in bronze for our Oakland Watershed Marker Project

We’ve selected sites to install our ‘Stepping Stones’ relief sculptures, drawing attention to Oakland’s many hidden creeks comprising a complex, urban watershed

Conference Table for the managing offices of  ‘Marin County Mart’ (photo taken when the conference room was under construction)

I recently designed this conference table for the offices of Jim Rosenfield, owner of Marin Country Mart. The design developed collaboratively from concept sketches by Jim, with proportional and color consultation from Greg Turpan, who has been instrumental in defining the look and feel of the innovative shopping center. The table is 10 feet long and 34″ wide with 4 x 4 legs in solid Claro walnut. The top is lightweight for its size, being a hollow ‘torsion box’ with a honeycomb core of 1/4″ plywood making an internal grid of 3″ squares. To make a seamless surface on all six sides, the top is skinned with full length panels of MDF, with ‘folded miter’ corners. The top is finished on all sides with six layers of catalyzed urethane, hand-polished to a high gloss. I borrowed from hollow surfboard construction when conceiving the table. I’ve enjoyed working with Jim and Greg on the project and am honored to contribute to Marin Country Mart, which is fast becoming a major Bay Area icon.

Meanwhile, I’m nearing completion of a residential interior I’ve designed and built in Marin County, and permits are in place and construction is underway on an ‘Observation Tower’ I recently designed for a rural property in Sonoma County. Photos to follow soon!

Tagged: deep craft, furniture design, greg turpan, innovation, marin country mart, Oakland, public art, scott Constable, wowhaus

I can relate to the work style of a 1930’s American cabinet shop (public domain)

After over a year of design development with the architect and client, selecting logs of deodar cedar and having them custom milled and cured to outfit the interior of a new guest house down the coast, I’m regaining perspective on my original thinking behind how I approached the project: Shuffling the Tree.

As my cabinets, doors and built-in furnishings take shape, each part of the tree finds its corresponding use in built form, the planks having been painstakingly graded for grain character, color and structural integrity. The process of hand sorting thousands of board feet of air-dried, rough sawn lumber has been slower than I had anticipated, but well worth the effort, and I’m feeling less overwhelmed as I convert my neatly stickered piles into glowing wooden furnishings. I’m taking extra pains not to use any laminated sheet materials, constructing all casework in solid stock.

I’ve found that designing and building this way automatically bestows a building with a feeling of belonging-ness, as though the house stands in honor of the tree it displaced. When the material is locally sourced from the waste stream, diverted from horticultural salvage that might otherwise be burned as firewood, the building’s interior has the added benefit of reducing carbon emissions to the atmosphere. I call my approach ‘bioregional vernacular’, and I’m glad for the opportunity to test its scalability.

cabinets of deodar cedar w/face frames, stacked up while I prepare doors and drawers

To follow my progress on designing and building the guest house interior, please click here and scroll down.

Tagged: craft philosophy, deep craft, furniture design, scott Constable, slow design, sustainability, traditional craft, vernacular architecture, woodworking

My projects always begin with sorting the pile, touching the wood

Like cooking, working with wood engages all of the senses in symphony. Touch plays a major role in the early stages of a project, especially at the scale of fitting out the interior of a new building, like the Guest House that now requires my full attention and has my workshop maxed out to capacity. The start of my New Year has me managing stacks of Deodar Cedar I’ve had custom milled and air-dried for the project, and my days have been resplendant with re-organizing and grading the raw material, which I last saw as logs about a year ago.

After delivery, I estimate I handle each piece of milled wood at least five and up to ten plus times prior to installation, and I learn a little about how best to use each stick every time it passes through my hands. In many ways, this is my favorite part of the process, the most automatic, as the material practically grades itself into distinct piles based upon my assessment of touch, which leads naturally to visual patterning. Handling each stick gives me an understanding of where it lived on the tree, its structural integrity, moisture and resin content, which all informs how the wood will age when used daily in a home. Over the years, I’ve trained my hands to be the advance guard on seeing the wood and its color and grain, and I’ve learned to trust my sense of touch over my sense of sight when grading wood.

Ultimately, the logic of grading wood by touch informs how one interacts with the finished piece. Simply put, horizontal surfaces are designed for durability and a depth of grain that gains character over time, like a familiar path; vertical surfaces are designed for daydreaming, like clouds.

Tagged: aesthetics, craft philosophy, deep craft, innovation, scott Constable, slow design, vernacular architecture, woodworking

the house I built with George Smith, Germantown, NY, 1988-89

I’m a strong believer in apprenticeship as a paradigm for learning anything. Much of what I have put into practice in woodcraft and architecture I owe to my friend and mentor, George Smith of Tivoli, New York, with whom I worked side by side building small houses and furniture over twenty years ago. Constructed over the course of two years, the house pictured above is where George raised his young family.

In a traditional craft training like my own, learning to pay attention to more than the work at hand begins with apprenticeship. “Apprentice” shares roots with “apprehend” which means “to become conscious of, as through the senses; to perceive”. My relationship with woodcraft and with my mentor was pure sensorial experience. A good apprentice does not think so much as trust the teacher to bodily train in the sensibilities of the craft, however obliquely relevant at the time. To this day, the most valuable lesson I gleaned as an apprentice over twenty years ago is that on a staggeringly lovely day it’s best to close the shop and find a swimming hole.

To follow the thread of my most recent architectural project, please click here and scroll down.

Tagged: apprenticeship, craft philosophy, deep craft, scott Constable, traditional craft, vernacular architecture, woodworking

recently framed Guest House in Marin County, designed by Russ Dotter

My friend Russ Dotter designs houses that both anchor and enliven a site, as though the house and its surroundings grew up together through generations of mindful co-habitation. He has a gift for combining contemporary construction methods and a California modus vivendi with the classic ’stick style’ vernacular of the Eastern Seaboard and its regional resonances. I’m honored to have the charge of outfitting the interior of a Russ Dotter-designed Guest House in Marin County, sited on the footprint of an old barn alongside a seasonal creek, downslope from the main house, which was designed by William Wurster in the 1930’s.

roughed-out interior of the Guest House

While the main house undergoes extensive renovations, its interior designed by Wencke Solfjeld, Russ’s wife and partner in Dotter & Solfjeld Architects, the Guest House is framed up and I’ve begun to spend time on site, making final measurements for the built-in furniture and casework I designed last spring. I love getting a feel for the interior volumes during this raw phase, with framing exposed and rough openings for windows and doors. I know Russ devoted a lot of thought to maintaining a feeling of privacy while opening up to views. The little house rewards his efforts with many surprises both inside and out, with changes in level and shifts in scale and perspective as one negotiates the interior, which will eventually flow naturally to decks and stairs outside.

I see my charge for the design of the interior as adding nuance and detail to the narrative gesture Russ has articulated volumetric-ally. My furnishings and fittings will have a consistent hand, interpreting the site and its intended patterns of use through the language of woodcraft. The Guest House interior will make a contemporary spin on the rustic cabin retreat, mindful of the original barn and respectful of Wurster’s stripped-down, farmhouse austerity, but with added playfulness and a hint of eccentricity befitting the pedigree of the project.

To learn about the wood I’ll be using for the project, follow the thread by clicking here and scrolling down.

Tagged: aesthetics, deep craft, green design, Russ Dotter, scott Constable, vernacular architecture, woodworking