living-writing: Color Wheel House

Color Wheel House

"Color Wheel House" is the result of my latest attempt at house design, which I've been working on since August in fits and starts. For an idle architect, designing houses is probably the easiest way to keep one's potentially marketable skills in tolerable condition and not to suffer them to rust. As a way to explore the ever-growing arsenal of modeling tools available in software programs such as Autodesk's Revit, which, by the way, can be obtained for free in their educational outreach program, I systematically give myself design challenges, and for this project I explored the design opportunities in a steep site.

The circular shape of the house grew gradually from a simple long box positioned at the crest of a hill with a mono-sloped roof opening to the south and views. After several iterations, I settled on a circular shape design for its ability to open up the indoors to a greater panoramic view of the outdoors, to take full advantage of a steep site with spectacular views. Circular walls, however, present considerable difficulties for modeling and, for that matter, actual construction. [For the circular curtain walls in this project, I cheated by creating curved walls with glazing material, instead of painstakingly constructing each segmented glazed panel to make up the curved curtain walls.]

The name, Color Wheel House, was derived from the geometry of the design, not vice versa, and it in turn gave me the idea of painting certain interior focal walls in various colors, loosely in a color wheel fashion. There are many more ways to explore the color wheel conceit in the interior design but I chose to err on the side of restraint.

The front (north) side of the house is partially obscured and revealed by a series of circular garden walls, some pierced with vertical slots, and anchored in the center by a large deciduous tree with a circular bench built around it. The house appears to be a one-story structure from the front but it's actually two-stories high, as the ground drops steeply down right along the center line of the house's circular footprint. The back (south) side of the house is completely transparent but sheltered in the privacy of the thickly wooded surrounding. A 15-feet wide deck, on both levels, wraps around the south side of the house, extending the indoor space to the outdoor.

The upper level of the house consists of a carport, an open living-dining-kitchen area, a powder room, and the master suite. A circular staircase, protruding halfway out of the concave facade, is clad in glass which gives way, as the stairs wind down, to a half-circular wall painted bright red. An exterior staircase on the east end of the deck provides easy vertical access in the back of the house.

The lower level consists of an open recreational space with a kitchenette at one end, an office, a guest bedroom, a full bath, and generous storage space. A lap pool is embedded in the lower deck and a small sauna is nestled into the hill side, next to the exterior staircase.

Here are some computer renderings of the project. I hope you like them -