Readers, at least those who paid attention to Heck of a House: A Manor In The Jacobsenian Manner, will not be surprised to learn that the Fletcher Residence, pictured above, was designed by Hugh Jacobsen.1 I confess to displaying this graphic primarily because it seems to me to be just the right image for a post written on a sunny July Sunday morning in mid-America.
More About Jacobsen’s Style
I’ve received a couple of emails asking for more information on Jacobsen’s ideas on building. In case there are others interested but too shy or lazy to write, I’m listing links to two brief articles that deal with his designs. In a later post, I’ll describe Jacobsen’s perspective on the geometry of the interiors of his residences.
Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Architect: A Retrospective is a single web page with an interesting exposition on the effect of Jacobsen’s designs on the visual impression of the scale of these “grand yet intimately scaled pavilions.”
A Conversation with Hugh Newell Jacobsen is also a single page, consisting of an interview with Jacobsen that includes his use of an Ammonite and Quaker building tradition and Jacobsen’s response to a question about what he learned from studying with Louis Kahn at Yale:
Part of Lou’s wonderful philosophy was that buildings should make the site look better, not the best thing that ever happened to that piece of ground. The order of the street is far more important than the exercise of the architect’s prerogative.
The latter piece also opens with one of my favorite Jacobsen quotes:
Footnotes
- Readers of Heck of a House: A Manor In The Jacobsenian Manner, in fact, have seen the Fletcher Residence before; it appears on the cover of one of the books pictured in the earlier post, “Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Works from 1993-2006.”↩
