FAIRWAY SITE (In progress)

This property is located within one of the oldest Golf and Country Clubs in the Pacific Northwest, a community of mature trees and pastoral vistas, which at times evokes the romantic English landscapes of Capability Brown and Humphrey Repton. Comparing notes following independent site visits, architect George Suyama, and landscape architect Bruce Hinckley had reached identical conclusions – lower the existing grade and bring the golf course right into a central garden pavilion.

This project was an antidote to typical design practices. The gardens were designed simultaneously with the building. Interior and exterior spaces were developed and carefully integrated prior to the development of any look, or style, or image. The temperate climate, coupled with a central fireplace, a radiant floor, and large overhanging roof, permitted the development of a central garden pavilion which can be open or closed depending upon the weather and the time of year.

Interior and exterior terrace materials are identical, and oversized sliding and pivoting glass panels permit the seamless connection of interior and exterior space. While the architect developed three wooden “cabinets” spinning off from the central pavilion for functions requiring greater privacy and smaller scale, the landscape architect extended stair, wall, and casement elements into the garden to create benches and architectonic topography, separated only, at times, by glass.

The central garden pavilion was then wrapped by a three-part water feature, which appears to go through and beneath the building. Large basalt boulders were placed in the water features, against the concrete garden walls, on the terraces, and cast-in-place in the floor of the garden pavilion. When the panels are open it is often difficult to tell what is inside and what is outside.

Concrete garden walls, broad-leafed evergreen and coniferous hedges, and cable pine bush screens, upon which vines will be trained, create a series of surprising outdoor rooms of different functions and scales. These features also direct views, guide circulation, and provide privacy. The green and white floral displays requested by the owners are contrasted with the simplicity of the fairways and the perimeter plantings. The house becomes the garden and the garden becomes the house.