Poetic Pragmatism - Barnes House, Vancouver Island - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, Dec, 1999 by Catherine Slessor

Set in wild landscape on the edge of Vancouver Island, this house for an artistic couple has a tectonic clarity and material expressiveness informed by place and culture.

Patkau Architects' Barnes House is a modern reinterpretation of the pragmatically romantic building traditions of Canada's West Coast. Poised on the edge of a rocky outcrop overlooking the Georgia Strait that separates Vancouver Island from the mainland, the house appears as an isolated object set heroically against the wilderness. Yet the Patkaus' synthesis of poetry and precision also means that it responds with great intimacy and humanity to its site. Built for an artistic couple (a wood sculptor and landscape designer) whose children had left home, the Barnes House forms part of a series of domestic projects begun in the mid 1980s. In its exploration of the relationship between landscape and construction, it has also served as a theoretical framework for the Patkaus' more recent work, such as the Strawberry Vale School (AR August 1997).

The site lies on the eastern side of Vancouver Island. The tree-lined approach to the house winds up to the crest of a ridge parallel to the shoreline. Mossy rocks and gnarled Douglas firs form a craggy backdrop to the Patkaus' crisply articulated planar geometries. The house is partially embedded in a depression, exploiting the topography while also offering a series of framed views of the landscape. A stepped path rises towards the focal west elevation which tapers to a sharp prow marked by an overhanging roof of thin steel plate. Wall planes extend beyond the building line, sheltering a small terrace and channelling visitors to the main entrance on the lower level.

Screened from the entrance by a freestanding storage panel, an office-cum-studio provides space to pursue design work and sculpture. To the rear is a small guest suite. Running along the north edge of the house, an open flight of stairs leads up to the main piano nobile living and dining space. The master bedroom is set on the south side, with a kitchen tucked in directly above the guest suite. Space is fluid and informal, divided and defined by screens and storage units. A larger outdoor terrace for relaxing and entertaining, with views over the Georgia Strait, connects with the north elevation through a tall glazed wall that opens up the opaque flanks of the house.

Although the Barnes House shares the generous open-plan volumes of the Patkaus' earlier Appleton residence, it also displays the more explicitly constructional language of the Clay and Glass Gallery (AR August 1995) and Newton Library (AR May 1993). The main building elements -- stucco walls, steel canopy, timber roof and concrete floor planes -- are compositionally and materially distinct, giving a lucid, tectonic expressiveness. Arboreal columns and an undulating ceiling evoke the surrounding forest. Rippling over the corrugated joists of the roof structure, light is filtered through skylights, dappling the interior in a gentle luminance.

Like much of the Patkaus' work, the house is a synthesis of cues from place and culture. The narrow glazed face, beetle-browed roof canopy and high parapet walls allude to the great anthropomorphic totem poles of indigenous Pacific Coast tribes. The grey of the stucco render blends with the bark of the Douglas firs and the slim timber frames of the doors and windows are stained a rich rust to mimic the trunks of waxy leafed arbutus trees on the north side of the site. Conceived as an instrument for experiencing the landscape, the house works so well and so subtly that you cease to be aware of such underlying functions and come to admire it for its inherent elegance, simplicity and aptness. Through a sensitive interweaving of building, site and culture, the Patkaus have made pragmatic poetry in the forest.

Architect

Patkau Architects

Project team

Timothy Newton, John Patkau, Patricia Patkau, David Shone, Tom Robertson

Structural engineer

Fast & Epp Partners