Design team achieves a Pacific Rim elegance - includes related articles - The Changing Western Home

Sunset, Nov, 1995 by Peter O. Whiteley

Close cooperation among design professionals resulted in the intimate yet airy interior of this 1,600-square-foot remodeled house in Carmel, California. Aside from her love of the Far East, homeowner Ann LaCroix says, "We had no preconceived images, and I simply let the designers' creative juices flow."

In a lofty new wing containing open-beam roof framing and a spinal skylight, architect David Martin installed shoji to divide the overall space into intimate-scale rooms while maintaining brightness. Two pairs of screens (by Santa Cruz Millworks) pull out on overhead tracks from the thick central wall section, allowing adjustments between privacy and openness.

Kitchen designer Sheron Bailey repeated the shoji look in the maple cabinets (by Cottonwood Mill, Draper, Utah): translucent material overlays the glass doors so that interior lights make them glow at night.

Lighting designer Linda Ferry subtly integrated lighting with built-in architectural features. Note strip lights under the granite counter, task lights above the mirrored backsplash, and ceiling-washing up lights in soffits.

Interior designer John Schneider united all the rooms with limestone tile floors. Other interior accents include metal cabinet pulls (from Details, Los Angeles) and woven leather and rattan chairs (The Ginsberg Collection, San Francisco).

Capturing a child's vision

Normally sculptor Bryan Tedrick of Glen Ellen, California, designs and builds metal and wood gates, arbors, and railings, but something else clicked when he saw his 5-year-old son's picture of a fire-breathing dragon. He used his welding skills to turn Jakob's two-dimensional drawing into three-dimensional garden sculpture. He had Similar success with a picture of a high-kicking ballerina drawn by his 8-year-old daughter, Nathalie, and he was onto something delightful.

Each 8-foot-tall sculpture took a week to complete and was made with salvaged metal and wood parts - steel plate, bronze, steel bar, flattened bedsprings, driftwood, used playground equipment. Some parts were painted, while others were left natural.

Tedrick will create similar-size pieces from children's drawings for about $3,000, smaller ones for proportionately less. For more information, write to Bryan Tedrick Designs, Box 793, Glen Ellen, CA 95442, or call (707) 938-9311.

Lessons in accessibility

The ordinary features of a home or office can be unintentional but very real obstacles to people with disabilities. For wheelchair users, a deep pile rug, a tall kitchen counter, or a stand-up shower stall complicates mobility and access. A round doorknob may be impossible for arthritic fingers to grasp. A can of soup and a can of corn feel the same to a visually impaired person.

The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Portland invites you to understand these everyday challenges and appreciate their solutions in a new permanent exhibit called Breaking Down Barriers. The exhibit presents home and office settings that incorporate products and designs for people with mobility, vision, and hearing disabilities. The interactive exhibit allows visitors to tour the rooms in wheelchairs.

OMSI, at 1945 S.E. Water Ave., is open from 9:30 to 5:30 Tuesdays through Sundays, until 8 Thursdays. General admission costs $7, $6 for ages 62 and up, $4.50 for ages 3 through 17. Call (503) 797-4000 for more information.

Framework softens a pop-out window

From inside a house, a metal-framed greenhouse window adds depth and display area behind a kitchen sink, but outside it can look tacked on and out of character with an older home. By masking one of these units on Marion Worthington's stucco house with a lattice-trimmed framework, landscape architect Bill Derringer of Atherton, California, gave the window a grander scale and richer detail.

The lower portion is a double-door cabinet capped by a broad 2-by-12 sill. It contains irrigation controls, a faucet, and a hose. The upper portion has a 36-inch-tall roof that flares beyond the front and sides of the greenhouse unit and partially shades the interior from direct sun. The framework was stained gray to match other wood trim on the house. The cost of the project was about $750.

Shaped by the desert

At their best, desert houses emphasize energy- and resource-efficient design that makes use of the desert's limited natural materials. More than 35 striking examples of this regional adaptation are brought together in Under the Sun: Desert Style and Architecture, an insightful, handsomely illustrated book scheduled for release in bookstores this month.

"Most people have lost contact with their environment, and I wanted to show positive ways to build on the planet," says author Suzi Moore.

Moore and photographer Terrence Moore present the best contemporary design in arid regions of Southern California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Hawaii. The opening chapters explore desert architecture's roots, which extend from hillside and half-burrowed towns in northern Africa to refined Moorish homes in southern Spain and Native American pueblos in Taos. These pages create a foundation for the contemporary work shown, by such designers as San Antonio-based architects David Lake and Ted Flato, Mexico's Ricardo Legorreta, and Ken Ronchetti of San Diego.