Goldstein Studio , L'atelier en boite, 1990
W. Jude LeBlanc, in association with Ellen Dunham-Jones
A garage below and a studio for an astronomer above, the design of the Goldstein Studio is derived from immediate considerations of site, program, and tectonic clarity.
Through the use of vernacular forms and materials the Goldstein Studio, as with many of the neighborhood houses and outbuildings, associates itself with the original use of the site as a farm. Conceived as an elaborated outbuilding with a shed roof and barn doors, the studio's design and placement organizes a sequence of indoor and outdoor spaces. The new studio terminates a relatively long and steep driveway while framing an outdoor street-like terrace off the rear of the main house. The curved bathroom projects into the less figural space of the rear yard. Inside the studio, the slope of the drive is spatially culminated and redirected in the reversed slope of the roof. Held between the book-lined walls parallel to the drive, the space of the studio extends through the glass window walls of the east and west facades to sylvan views of sky, near and distant trees.
Concrete block walls are set in sloped ground, while a wood stud inner liner in the studio periscopes upward and provides a clerestory window. Completely above grade, the entry and bathroom dependency is also of wood construction. All concrete block walls are finished in stucco while all wood construction is finished in standing seam metal.
The notion of dualistic opposition as found in the straight forward comparison of complementary structural types—masonry versus wood frame—is latent not only in the material qualities of the scheme, but also at the level of its conceptual underpinnings.
Qualities of relations—separation and interdependence, as found in the juxtaposition of structural types and finishes—are also present in an attempt to articulate possible types of cognitive mappings. Both the literal view of the world through the window, past veils of maple leaves and conceptual views of the world afforded through the texts held within the leaves of books are brought into proximity through enframing grids—the window frame and the bookcase respectively. The grid is utilized as so often the case to elucidate the relation of perception to conception as related to cognition.
Several of the given elements of this project worked fortuitously to construct open-ended associations. The booklined studio sits atop a garage. Early on we conceptualized a library as a transportation interchange. Ironically, one visits a library only to leave it. A library accentuates the opposition of speed and stasis. Quiet and stillness facilitate a speedy movement away by means of the texts. One enters the Goldstein Studio in order to leave and this passage is afforded through the extended view of the window and the extended view afforded by a text.
ARCHITECTURE
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Goldstein Studio
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