Stargate Residence

4253, Decatur Place South, Seattle, WA, United States

Add To Collection

Stargate Residence

4253, Decatur Place South, Seattle, WA, United States

Firm

Type

Residential › Private House

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2008

SIZE

1000 sqft - 3000 sqft

BUDGET

$500K - 1M

The overall design consists of a cylindrical object inserted into the backdrop of a canonical house form. Although the cylinder is partially visible from various angles, it is never fully revealed, leaving the final resolution of its form to the observer. The unresolved form of the partially exposed cylindrical section in the context of the canonical house form is intended to produce an interpretation of the cylinder as yet another canonical form, and the viewer has the tendency to see it as a completed geometric form.

Familiar imagery is used to reinforce the contrast between the two forms. Clearly, the inserted cylinder is the more dynamic of the two, and takes its visual cues from both real and imaginary space craft and other technical, marine, vehicular and science fiction sources. The house form, conversely, pushes in the other direction with its imagery, taking cues from iconic residential, rural, and other clearly ground-rooted sources.

The overall shape of the house is treated as an open-ended tube, but the shingles serve to fill the volume. This gesture keeps the mind from wondering whether there are end walls at the center where the volume is interrupted by the cylinder, since the end walls of the larger house volume itself are merely infill. Reinforcing the directionality of the house tube, horizontal windows are used in the direction of the ridge, but windows and doors in the end walls are treated as punctures.

Even when the house is elevated from the ground, it is clearly brought back down to earth by the over scaled concrete column and network of steel structure that not only supports it but restrains it. There are places where the imagery attempts to cross over to some degree, by pulling from both sources. In the concrete, for example, which is an exclusive part of neither of the two forms, but upon which they both rest, is the patterning reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright's grounded architecture, an ancient (perhaps alien?) civilization, or an electronic circuit board?

Finally, a house is not merely a geometric exercise or one of juxtaposition of imagery. Leonardo's Vitruvian Man represents bringing it all together by uniting the circle and the square (I have converted the square to a house-shape in the somewhat tongue-in-check logo of the house). The presence of the man in the image is evocative of human habitation and the various functional requirements which must be met by the two forms.