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Allied Works Architecture gives Pacific Northwest vernacular an entirely modern twist in its Blue Lake House

by Sheri Olson, AIA (reprinted by permission, 07.01 Architectural Record)

Vertigo is not ordinarily associated with water, but Blue Lake, a spring-fed extinct volcano, dazzles from a site 70 feet above its surface. Allied Works Architecture, based in Portland, Ore., draws on such exhilarating unease by creating a weekend retreat perched on the lip of this caldera. The design inserts tension into ordinary regional elements, such as a great-pitched roof and heavy-timber structure, reinvigorating the vernacular of the Pacific Northwest.

High in Oregon's Central Cascades, the house shares an 80-acre site with a nonprofit arts-and-environment camp that the clients, Bonnie and Dan Wieden, founded for at-risk youth. Though Allied Works had produced a Minimalist design for the husband's company, the Portland headquarters of Wieden + Kennedy (the ad agency that put the swoosh in Nike), Brad Cloepfil, AIA, partner-in-charge of the house project, had something more traditional in mind for the Wiedens' vacation home. He was seeking, he says, “the material and spatial qualities that clients often associate with vernacular architecture.”

Before translating these qualities into the language of Modernism, he began by developing a sense of shelter, both physically and psychologically, with two-foot-thick stone walls and an overriding roof. He created a U-shaped structure, wrapped on its three outermost sides by this wall, forming a shield of stone in the woods that embraces southern views of the icy water 70 feet below and Mt. Washington beyond. As Cloepfil puts it, “You feel held in the landscape.”

The house's exterior shell has no right angles. One leg of the U is shifted a few degrees to block views of houses across the lake while the facing leg splays slightly in the opposite direction. The result is a precise balance between openness and enclosure. The front door is nestled within a break in the wall at an outside corner of the U -- a placement that undercuts the anchoring qualities of the stone, thus energizing the design with a tension between solidity and transparency.

In keeping with the existing topography, a series of platforms steps up and around the sloping courtyard within the U. These level changes resolve the slope's potential awkwardness. They also differentiate ground-floor spaces, placing the kitchen and dining at the lowest level, the living room above it, and the master bedroom on the highest and most private plane. A stairway leads up to a sleeping loft in the rafters and down to two guest bedrooms below. The site's steep incline allows the guest areas to open onto an outdoor terrace. Against the split levels, the top of the stone wall remains consistent around the perimeter of the house.

“The masonry forms an elemental bearing wall with no historical references,” says Cloepfil. The flat stone, known locally as sandalwood, is relatively soft, easy to work, and consistent in color when cut. Seven inches of it were laid on either sides of an insulated block wall filled with concrete, forming a 24-inch-wide wall. The wall is so substantial that it comprises 400 square feet of the 4,400 square foot footprint, in what Cloepfil calls a “large spatial gesture relative to the size of the landscape.” Plumbing and electrical conduits within the wall had to be accurately located early in the construction process. “It gave new meaning to the phrase etched in stone,” says general contractor Chuck Newport.

The stone wall and roof play against one another. “The roof hovers over the edge of the crater in counterpoint to the substantial stone walls,” says Dan Wieden. The roof's cedar-shake plane folds and fractures as it rises and breaks into openings, bringing light deep into unexpected places and introducing an element of instability to an otherwise monolithic vernacular form. Underneath, its wooden framework acts more like a truss than a traditional post-and-beam structure in which loads are easily traced from roof to ground. Here, the three-dimensional form shifts loads along a complex system of transfer beams and posts, creating an intricately woven web floating over the plan.

Juxtaposed with the massive stone walls and heavy timber roof are large glazed areas. The glass wall along the courtyard dematerializes as it weaves in and out of the post-and-beam structure, putting primary visual emphasis on the deep cantilevered eaves. “The structural framing was more like finish carpentry due to the tolerance required when it’s infilled with glass,” says Newport. Some intersections are so complex that the only way to figure out the glazing was on-site. In the dining area at the end of the eastern leg, two 10-foot-tall wood-and-glass doors roll back from corner merging indoors with the great outdoors. Another glass door opens the south wall of the living area to the lake. Carefully designed handles activate rollers that lift and slide the heavy doors, then set them down and seal them close. Wood flooring continues from inside to out (changing from beech to mahogany for durability), further dematerializing exterior/interior boundaries.

Now a client of Allied Works for two contrasting projects, Dan Wieden contemplates the comparison between architecture and advertising. “Advertising is fleeting, but with the house the issue was more philosophical,” he says. “We asked: What can we do that will endure 50 to 100 years from now?” The architect’s response is a house that gives new voice to the vernacular by infusing it with the spatial language of Modernism.