 |
|
Suman Sorg's house for landscape architect James van Sweden finds inspiration in chicken coops, garden walls, and cinder block.
By Aric Chen
February 2002
 |
 |
|
 |
Architect Suman Sorg and landscape architect James van Sweden (above,
left) collaborated on a residence organized around a 140-foot
cinder-block "garden wall" (above, right). The design was
stylistically influenced by chicken coops and sheds in the surrounding
Chesapeake Bay area. Van Sweden landscaped the property so that the
linked structures appear to float over a meadow.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Suman Sorg had her own ideas about what constituted the vernacular architecture
around Chesapeake Bay when she set out to design a house on its waterfront.
"This is Perdue country--chicken country," she explains, pointing
out that the old chicken coop we're driving past is characteristic of the
area. No doubt the unassuming 53-year-old architect behind the wheel has
also noticed the region's distinctive centrally gabled clapboard houses.
She's certainly worked on her share of projects within the historicizing
framework of styles--Federal, Victorian, and Beaux Arts among them--that
dominate nearby Washington, D.C., where her namesake firm is based.
But when Sorg was looking for contextual architecture here, she found it
in poultry shacks, utilitarian sheds, and garden walls. "I get inspired
by more junky industrial buildings--like that one," she announces,
pointing to a derelict warehouse as the car swerves slightly toward it.
But however humble the sources that inspired Sorg may be, the result--a
country retreat for friend and well-known landscape architect James van
Sweden--is extraordinary. The 4,000-square-foot property is composed of
a primary residence, a smaller guest house, and a connecting courtyard--all
organized around a 140-foot-long cinder-block wall. The latter forms the
spine of the complex and, as a fitting gesture for a landscape architect,
evokes a garden wall. "The landscaping was of course going to be important,
and so I thought about how I could design a house for a garden," Sorg
explains. "The most architectural feature of a garden is the wall,
and so that was the first line I drew. Then we just hung the building
off of it."
With an elevation that varies between 24 feet, where it cuts through the
western end of the main building, and 12 feet, where it edges the courtyard,
the wall zigzags to define critical corners of the complex's primary
spaces. Painted light gray on the exterior and left exposed inside, it contrasts
with the plywood panels that sheath the remaining walls. Together they enclose
the main residence and guest house in two pavilions, in effect transforming
the garden wall into a group of garden sheds, while the occasional X-brace
and truss reinforce the utilitarian aesthetic. "There are times when
just one idea pulls a design together," van Sweden exclaims, "and
Suman found it with the wall."
However, van Sweden did not seem to fully grasp the consequences at first.
"When the first truckloads of cement block arrived, he was shocked
and panicked," Sorg says, recalling her client's wishful thinking that
the blocks were meant only for the foundation. "But I wanted to use
them to help give the home a more industrial and informal quality, because
Georgetown [where van Sweden lives in Washington] is so...housey."
Just outside the town center of Sherwood, Maryland--with its dozen or so
homes and a post office that shares a building with an antique shop--the
house sits on a three-acre site on Chesapeake Bay's Ferry Cove. The property
is part of an original 25-acre soybean farm that was subdivided by van Sweden,
Sorg, and longtime friend Marilyn Melkonian, who heads a community-development
consultancy. "I found the land but couldn't afford to buy all 25 acres
myself, so I convinced Suman and Marilyn to go in with me," van Sweden
says. "And besides, I didn't want to build a modern house and then
have someone else build some hideous mansion next door." Van Sweden--who
is credited with developing what's become known as the New American Garden,
a garden type that evokes the indigenous meadow and prairie--is landscaping
the entire property. In addition to van Sweden's house, Sorg is designing
secondary homes on the site for herself and Melkonian. "I could basically
do what I wanted to do, without any real constraints," she says of
the collaboration, noticeably relieved of the often stifling stylistic
regulations applied to her work in Washington (the State Department is one
of her biggest clients).
However, in an area where local business is dominated by Ye Olde Antique
Shoppes and Ice Cream Parlours, the neighbors are predictably less enthused.
"Most of the locals hate it," she says of van Sweden's home, the
first to be completed and, in fact, the first single-family dwelling
Sorg has designed. "We've heard some of them say some fairly disparaging
things. This one little lady in Sherwood asked Jim, 'Are you the man who
lives in that ugly house?' A lot of people ask if it's a warehouse."
Amid this unreceptive environment, the crenellations in a section of the
garden wall beg comparison to those of medieval castles and fortresses--but
Sorg explains that they simply provide views into and out of the patio.
|
|
|
BACK TO TOP
