Joy

1 | Do you think [Joy’s] use of materials and building form are convincing [in striving to create regionally sympathetic and well grounded architecture in the context and community of its place]?

Well, yes and no, and I’m looking specifically at the home in Woodstock, Vermont.  If I’m solely reading Joy’s design concepts and looking at the images in the articles, then yes, for the most part, it seems like a pretty successful, vernacular piece.  To begin with, I think Joy’s suggestion for the client to move the location of the home from atop the hill to a more reasonable location nearer the road was a phenomenal suggestion.  Not only does the location become more practical in terms of plowing out the driveway after the snowstorms each winter, but it better relates to the surroundings of the New England countryside, where most homes and farmsteads are located near the country roads.  The move also allows the client to better interact with the pond located on the site.  As for the home itself, Joy’s move to mimic classic New England stone-ended homes is brilliant.  I was shocked to read how recently the home had been built – it looks like it’s been there for 100 years!  And I think in terms of the success of a project, that’s an important trait – how well does it seem to fit within its context?  Especially in such a natural environment, if this project wasn’t handled properly, it could have been a disaster!  Joy’s attention to blending in with the New England context successfully averted this crisis, chiefly due to the buildings location, which I’ve already covered, his use of materials, and his attention to classic forms, with a modernist twist.  I mentioned the stone ends which work well, but the other critical material creating a fitting home on the exterior is the extensive use of wooden shakes.  What a classic New England material!  And as the building ages and the shakes patina, it just becomes more and more rustic, only fitting the context of its environment more and more as time passes.  This building will age gracefully and with an overwhelming sense of timelessness.  And finally, as for its form, his use of the gable roof is perhaps the most critical element of the entire design.  Could you imagine a shed roof here?  Or a butterfly roof, as he used in Southwestern projects of his?  It would be an abomination in this context!  Joy is nontraditional in his treatment of windows (creeping up the roof) and his lack of eaves, but when I look at the house (in the images, at least,) I really don’t mind.  It’s simple.  Elegant.  And when on the inside of the home, looking out those windows sliding up the roof, they are stunning.  I hope they frame particular views, but if they don’t, I suppose I wouldn’t mind – when you’re surrounded by rolling hills and a lush forest, you really can’t go wrong with too many views.

Now then.  I watched a short video where Joy and the client walk through the home and discuss its history, its successes, and its future in the expansion of the pond and installation of hydroelectric power generation.  That’s when I noticed the scale of the home.  It’s HUGE!  Look at the scale of both the home and the barn in relation to Joy at 1:45 into the video, as Joy approaches the entrance.  There’s no reason for a home to be that tall (or long, in my opinion.)  My guess is that Joy had a set proportion in mind for the size of the walls in relation to the gable, and when the width of the building expanded to meet the programming needs it was housing, the height just had to increase with it, to keep the proportions in check.  But when you see Joy walking up to the home, the friendly, warm stone end walls suddenly become cold and overwhelming.  I would hesitate to enter that home, with so much stone and a dark, over-scaled opening set into an over-scaled wall.  As for the barn, I know it houses a basketball court and has program on a second floor, so the scale of that isn’t as imposing to me, though I do think it could stand a bit of tightening up in its dimensions.  Additionally, the materials that seemed so genuine in the photos become off-putting in the video.  Suddenly, the grey patina of the shakes create a large, monolithic block of grey.  With this, the lack of eaves starts to rear its ugly head.  True, there are no icicles without them, but there’s also nothing breaking up this overwhelming block of grey without them, either.  Simple is fine, practicality is fine, but suddenly the question begs to be asked: how simple is too simple?  How practical is too practical?  Joy is walking a very fine line between being modern and simplistic, and creating a structure that is bland and unappealing.  Look at the video at 4:05.  And 4:50.  Yuck.  It needs a different material to be introduced to break up the unrelenting shakes.  Thankfully the windows are large enough to begin to address this, but…  Give me some stone on the long sides.  A chimney, at least.  Or some vertical wood to highlight some sort of feature.  Perhaps a different roofing material?  Or even, and I hate to say it, eaves?!?  The point is, and to get back to the question at hand, Joy does a lot of things right in connecting this structure to its landscape and surrounding context, especially in the materials and building forms departments, but there are some aspects of the building that he takes too far, and they detract from the success of the project.  I think its still successful as far as the building connecting to the site is concerned, but you can’t just go off of that.  There’s a third variable called people that plays a critical role in the success of a project.  The building can connect very well to the natural environment, but in the environment of people and everyday life, I  feel that the building struggles to relate due to its overwhelming scale and refusal to deviate from one material application, something that I feel Joy also struggles with in other projects such as the Convent Ave Studios where, again, walls of natural materials fit in very well with the surrounding environment, but become overwhelming when approached by individuals.

 

2 | Do you think the experiential characteristic of [Joy’s] projects is in anyway compromised by his fundamental basics?

I think I actually covered this to a certain degree midway through the first paragraph of my response to question one.  Again, in the case of the home in Vermont, Joy does a splendid job of connecting the home to the site via its location, which I know was determined in large part to his “basics” attention to site orientation, solar orientation, site protection, etc.  Combined with the material choices, I believe, as mentioned, that Joy creates a timeless piece, even though he does introduce these crazy windows and removes the eaves as a way to experiment and attempt to “correct” traditional design decisions that he deems impractical.  I feel the same way when I look at images of his other projects – he does experimental things, but I don’t think that ever needs to negate the fundamental basics.  It can, but it doesn’t have to, and I think Joy is well-aware of that.  To me, it’s kind of like a new car.  Fundamentally, it needs to be something with wheels on it that you can sit in to go places.  Additionally, it needs to be able to turn, move in reverse, and it needs to be safe.  Other than that, you can experiment all you want.  Just because you put air conditioning in it doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice any of those fundamentals.  A GPS doesn’t compromise those values either, nor does a back-up camera.  Similarly, in buildings, if your fundamental criteria is to orient the building to maximize solar gain, to have a small footprint, and to generate its own electricity, you can have those be basic ground rules, and then you can experiment with other aspects of the building (say, windows and materials) as you deem fit.  And they don’t have to affect the fundamental goals one bit.  Rick Joy knows this and he pays careful attention to it, ensuring that he doesn’t compromise one aspect of the building in order to fit in something else.  It’s all about priorities, and Joy handles them well, which is why I believe he’s such a good architect to study.

-J. Maternoski