58 DIGS.NET
|
12.7.2018
58 DIGS.NET
|
12.7.2018
F
or Fall House, a modern design featuring a dramatic
cantilever and commanding views on the south coast
of Big Sur, Fougeron Architecture used "the forces of
nature to inspire the forces of design," drawing on a Wallace
Stevens poem to shape the idea of structure and site.
"Placing form on wilderness is a radical act," says Anne
Fougeron. "It is not about creating harmony. Nature's
tensions are too dynamic to be balanced and too sprawling
to be tamed by human artifact. Our design strategy
embeds the building within the land, creating a structure
inseparable from its context." Hence, this three-bedroom,
3,800-square-foot vacation home, which is moored to
the landscape and surveys a 250-foot drop to the Pacific
Ocean both along the bluff and the western exposure, yet
demanded "a form more complex than a giant picture
window," says Fougeron. "e long, thin volume conforms
and deforms to the natural contours of the land and the
geometries of the bluff. e house is cantilevered 12 feet
back from the bluff, protecting the delicate ecosystem and
ensuring the structure's integri and safe." e interior,
meanwhile, is all shelter and refuge, "in contrast with the
roughness and immense scale of the ocean and cliff."
Expressing a graceful geometry, manipulation of light
and space, and interaction between outdoor and indoor
environments, the house is the realization of the larger
intention: to provoke a strong response through a building's
visual drama while communicating humani and balance
through its materials and transcendental aspects.
W R I T T E N B Y J E N N T H O R N T O N
Poetic Form
Fougeron Architecture creates a dialogue of site and structure in
quintessential California dominion
