Workshop/Studio in British Columbia

 

It is unusual to think about architecture in the same terms as we would think about making a quilt – sewing together patches of unrelated materials, often scrap, in a collage-like juxtaposition – but quilting describes the ways in which the Workshop/Studio project in British Columbia was designed and constructed. 

 

The project took a ramshackle, collapsing old truck workshop and transformed it into a winterized, habitable artist’s studio.  The original structure was a wooden post and beam, wooden clad shed with fourteen-foot high ceilings, a flat roof, mostly dirt floors, and two plywood panel barn doors on the front.  Many of the rafters and much of the exterior wood siding was rotten; the entire building was leaning at a 10-degree angle to one side!  The first challenge was to decide what could be salvaged from the mess, and then decide how to incorporate new construction into the existing structure.  The technique was, from the start, the sewing together of old and new, collaging of found and salvaged materials with pre-existing ones.  The concrete foundation walls, the large supporting posts and the ridge beam were all in fine condition and could be saved.  After closer inspection, we discovered that the rafters were rotting at their outer edges. We realized that if we removed the rotten ends, we could use most of their length.  We also realized that the rot was being caused by the excessive amounts of moisture rolling off the flat roof during the spring melt.  By stitching rafter extensions onto the ends of the old rafters, we made the roof overhangs much longer so that when the snow melts, the water does not fall against the shed.

 

The front façade was composed of surplus windows purchased from a local custom window fabricator and recycled glass.  Both the steel frame for the two glass doors, and the façade, were designed like a quilt whose outer dimensions and component parts were fixed.  The challenge was to make a coherent looking design from disparate parts.  The deep red color used both on the steel and a wood frame helps stitch the pieces together visually.  Because the façade is facing southwest, it acts as a passive solar collector. 

 

The side and rear facades were constructed using salvaged cast glass door fronts from old Herman Miller furniture with occasional cedar lattice inserts.  The glass and cedar panels are wrapped around the supporting building volume like a large blanket suspended a distance from the tar paper underneath, forming an air pocket that heats up during the day and helps keep the building warm at night.  The cedar was used for visual relief and in places where cutting the glass would have been difficult – around the beam/wall connections for instance.  The patchwork pattern developed here, as on the solar façade, out of necessity.  Although the panels had originally been one uniform size, some had broken, chipped or cracked, and had to be cut down.  Even the application method is reminiscent of quilting techniques; strips of Douglas fir form the seams onto which the glass and cedar is fastened.  As on quilts, the seams are visible.  Furthermore, the glass, cedar and battens are layered spatially like woven cloth. 

 

Even the interior was made using sewing and collage techniques.  The building was designed to function as both a sculptor’s workshop and living quarters.  The columns march down the center of the interior space making a natural division into two.  We inserted one new volume housing the bathroom, a closet, the water heater, and supporting a kitchenette.  Atop this box is a loft sleeping area separating the one side of the workshop into two smaller spaces.  We mounted the barn door tracks from the ceiling, next to the columns, and fabricated a 6’ by 12’ gypsum wall to suspend from the tracks.  By moving the wall forward or backwards along the tracks it is possible to alter the spatial configuration of the studio to accommodate different uses.  The hanging wall therefore is simultaneously a stitching device and spatial divider.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Site Introduction:  Sewing and Architecture

 

 

Ever since Gottfried Semper pointed to weaving and the knot as two integral concepts for architectural practice

 

Pneumatic fastening techniques the repetition of a ‘stitch’ made possible by industrial techniques.

 

Urban collage techniques – what Rowe and Koetter termed ‘collage’ could just as easily be viewed as a kind of sewing in which the skilled architect blends his new design into existing fabric.

 

The joining of two different materials, or two different pieces of the same material, along a seam.  The seam may be expressed, or hidden, but it is always present.

 

The combination of old and new—old buildings with additions, old structures with new shells and spaces, recycled materials in a new design.

 

Way to join the past to the present without obliterating one in favor of the other.

 

Other construction techniques – the relationship of the façade to the building -- weaving