Divide into two groups and collect the arguments for and against the green building approach. Then discuss them in class.

Find the information about the application of this approach in our country.

Reading task E

 

Earth Cycle

 

1. Go over the vocabulary list. Consult a dictionary if you need:

 

Landscape hearth rugged

Awareness align ingrained

Response rectangle acquire

Shift hunker summarily

Punctuate swoop low-key

Commonality luminaire glitzy

Relevance grid verdant

Refuge framing member scar

Affinity fin rectilinear

Forage operable meander

Prospect rustic watchword

Sod interim subdued

Foil berm butt

Cantilever rugged buttress

Flank ebb overhang

 

Read the first part of the text and answer the questions after it.

 

Spanning 25 years in the work of Jim Olson of Olson Sundberg Architects, these houses illustrate the evolution of a sustainable design sensibility rooted in the 1960s.

 

The relationship of architecture to the land – and to the water and the sun and the wind – has been a constant concern in the work of Jim Olson of the Seattle firm, Olson Sundberg Architects. Olson grew up in the powerful landscape of the Pacific Northwest, where environmental awareness is less a response to crisis than a matter of respect for forces of nature larger than ourselves and our buildings. “Our culture is at a turning point as we begin to shift our roles from consumers of limited resources to stewards of the planet,” the architect says, in explaining the credo that guides his firm’s efforts at sustainable design.

Shown here are three houses that punctuate Olson’s career: one a quarter-century old, from his architectural beginnings, one recently completed, and a third that is about to be built. They are interesting both for their commonalities and their differences; seen together, they illustrate the evolution of sensible strategies of energy conservation and sensitive responses to the landscape.

One thing the houses have in common is relevance to the theory of refuge and prospect, developed by the British geographer Jay Appleton, which analyzes the innate affinity humans have for particular physical settings. As summarized by architectural historian Grant Hildebrand, the theory holds that from the earliest time humans have needed “a place of secure hiding, closed to weather and to attack from predators, a relatively dark place from which, looking out, we are not seen”. This is the refuge. At the same time, “we must have a place of hunting and foraging, a place of open views over long distances in bright light to illuminate and cast shadows”. This Appleton named the prospect.

The beginnings.

The first of the three Olson houses, designed in the late 1960s, is on a steep, densely wooded cliff (near a beach where Olson played as a youth) overlooking south Puget Sound and, in the distance, mighty Mount Rainier. The house is a weathered cedar object inserted into the landscape. Grass and wild flowers continue from the hill behind onto the roof. The sod is penetrated by a large sculptural concrete chimney intended as a vertical foil to the horizontality of the house.

Cantilevered over the hillside, the house is pointed directly at the mountain and is flanked by a pool. The master bedroom is against the bermed rear of the house, clearly a place of refuge. At the same level, a small parlor with a large hearth is a refuge with view. A few steps down is a second living room, its glass walls on all sides bringing in the dramatic prospect of water, woods, and mountain. In all, the house has an elemental quality, a power reflecting that of the setting. It has weathered well until it is virtually a part of the landscape.

The Next Generation

The second house, built in 1992 in the suburb of Kirkland east of Seattle, bursts cheerfully from the landscape instead of hunkering into it. Yet the principle of prospect and refuge is at work here too. The clients, a family with small children, wanted the house to seem like a pavilion in the meadow, and that is exactly its feel. It is a house that, in project architect Tom Kundig’s words, “celebrates light”: major rooms are aligned in a rectangle with along glazed south wall; the roof swoops upward, reaching its high point at the south façade. The rooms in this wing are suffused with light reflected from the white slope of the ceiling high overhead, which acts as a luminaire. The prospect of meadow and water is seen through the south wall’s grid of wood framing members, horizontal metal fins, and round concrete columns. (The grid looks mechanical enough to be operable but is not.)

The rear wing of the house is more refugelike in character, set into the sloping meadow and bermed, the planting continuing over the garage and the children’s bedrooms.

The differences between the first, rather rustic house, and the second, more “mechanic” building, reflect how time, tastes, and Olson’s ideas changed in the interim: demand for rugged simplicity had ebbed and, by the time the second house appeared, the residential work of the office had grown larger, more complex and, in some instances, more formal.

 

3. Answer the following questions to part I:

 

1. What is the constant concern of Jim Olson?

2. What is the credo of his work?

3. What do three of his houses illustrate?

4. What do these houses have in common?

5. Can you explain the theory of refuge and prospect?

6. Where is the first of Olson’s houses situated?

7. Can we say that the house is the integral part of the landscape? Can you prove it?

8. Does this house have a place of refuge?

9. What views can you enjoy from the house?

10. What can you say about the general character of the house?

11. Where is the second house situated?

12. Will this house attract your attention as soon as you arrive to the place?

13. What were the clients’ requirements to their future house?

14. Can you describe the character of this house?

15. What can be seen from the grid of the south wall?

16. Can you prove that the rear wing of the house is more refugelike in character?

17. What is the reason for the differences between the first and the second house?