Redhouse.ca

Coast Modern photograph: Ezra Stoller

Arthur Erickson’s Graham House in West Vancouver. 

Designed 1962 with Geoffrey Massey.  Demolished in 2007.

“Architect Arthur Erickson composed a home in Vancouver, British Columbia, as a series of interlocking horizontal terraces. Natural materials and a reflecting pool relate the structure to the lake and rocky cliff on either side. Tall panes of glass and vertically ribbed cedar walls re surmounted by horizontal wooden slabs that prject beyond corners as geometrical accents.”

From Inside Today’s Home, 1975, by Ray and Sarah Faulkner, p. 453

[I’m pretty sure they don’t mean “lake,” as this is a manmade pond right next to the ocean.]

“The site for the house was a rock cliff dropping forty feet from the arrival level down a sheer cliff to a rock bench over the sea. The solution to this difficult site was the creation of a multi-storey house descending the slope in levels.

The formal idea of the piling up of hovering beams was the basis of the composition. These enclose the major living areas, which step down the embankment for four storeys from the carport to the bluff over the sea below. Each area opens onto a roof terrace over the living quarters below, so that there is maximum access to sunlight and view. Because of the ruggedness of the site, the outside living areas are confined almost entirely to the roof areas of the house itself.

A texture difference is achieved between the walls and box beams by using flat siding on the beams and a deep board and batten on the walls. The house is treated with a simple oil finish and the only other materials used in conjunction with the wood are used brick and a Welsh quarry tile.”

From Erickson’s website.

(Source: slapdashing, via leewiffen)