Familiar Architecture

 

Familiar Architecture

    ...or the affect heat leaves on a native Texan. 

    The work of Lake|Flato is familiar to me not only because I grew up in Texas experiencing a variety of their work or that their names were worn out in my undergraduate education at Texas A&M but because their critical environmental approach embodies the memories and sensations of growing up in a Texas climate. Critical regionalism is a broad topic on materiality, sense of place, culture, and an architectural response to global influences - so I want to quickly focus on this notion with respect to Lake|Flato and their extraordinary usage of shade as a regional material choice to Texas and the Southwest.

    I know that the Carraro Residence was a formal gesture borrowing from the barn-typology as an iconic representation of a lifestyle living and working on a ranch, but this project transcends an agricultural regionalism for the barn typology and represents the historical qualities of Texas with respect to the occupation of architectural forms. To glaze over the history, Texas has seen very influential periods of immigration and emigration that has radically changed even these agricultural forms. Lake|Flato treating a barn as a house was nothing revolutionary, but suggesting it can be open, a shade device, or even a shelter for a house was similar to how German immigrants transformed the barn typology into dance halls and community centers. It further employed this cultural context of manipulating a familiar form to support the utility within.

    The struggle to be outdoors in Texas is real. I know there are hotter environments but the beauty of the Texas Hill Country is incredible and it has always been a quest of native Texans to experience this locale with strategic shading and shelter. The Carraro Residence employs a critical regionalism in material, context, history, and investigates the endeavor for Texans to be outdoors and leveraging sweat and sun-burns to do so. The 'barn-like' skeleton is less about steel or an agricultural style but reminiscent of the shade we find on ranchland.

    The Hill Country Jacal reminds me of a time as a child biking around with friends on a hot summer afternoon on some random ranch land and getting so tired from the heat that we found a stack of old metal roofing panels along the road and propped a sheet up with our bikes so we can lay down below the makeshift lean-to. It also reminds me of how literally anything alive would gravitate towards opportunities like this in the heat of the summer - mice for the shade below a propped up rock or debris and then rattlesnakes creating a schedule for feasting on those mice and then sunbathing on the roof. This is the endeavor of a Texan wanting to be outside, tolerating the right amount of sun, then seeking simplest of refuge from it and being content - treating shade as functional.

    The Lasater Residence is familiar to me. It is hard to imagine the landscape above thriving in an arid climate without sophisticated irrigation and water conservation, but I recall the instances where overgrowth, tall grasses, weeds, and other plants would grow on the only side of our house that was shaded the most throughout the day and had the gutter that would leak the most down the wall and onto the soil when it rained. It was moister and cooler on that side of the house. A project like the Lasater residence forces me to speculate on the influence Texans have had on the natural environment with their built environment. Its as if the landscape of Texas has always yearned for people to organize something built so that nature can get some refuge and gain some resiliency. Our yard didn't look like this but it could have.

    It is easy to identify critical regionalism in houses and in open landscapes where the architecture is stand alone and in conversation with nature. How does a critical regionalism approach present itself within an urban context or concrete environment? The above project attempts to create that same endeavor to be outside even though it hurts. The canopy structure is the embodiment of a Texan yearning for a cloud or a tree coverage but cannot have nor find one. The response within an urban environment where there isn't a tree and clouds are elusive is to craft a steel cloud reminiscent of shading we've seen in the previous photos. We can have the same response in urban and rural environments with our architecture.

    

    I am most certainly biased, and perhaps it is easier for me to describe a sense of Texas and therefore articulate a critical regionalism approach for Texas, but I see the work of Lake|Flato as probably the most important example of a critical regionalism approach to architecture in the last few decades. Their work in Texas has been the healthy standard that has challenged globalism in Texas and has provided important reminders of culture, history, and environment in all of their works that goes beyond just a material craft complimenting a locale.