This is the house I designed with the Thai kitchen that holds water
And the Thai bath that drains it,
With the high windows to catch the cross breezes
Like air-conditioning in the tropics,
With the French doors open to the sun and the wind
And the birds and crickets singing,
With concrete walls and floors for ease and simple grandeur,
Like Thais use in the countryside, but never in the city.
This house is my attempt at those old Thai houses that were cathedrals in a garden,
(Though few Thais can afford teak now.)
This house is my attempt to let the birds back into modern consciousness,
And the smell of the earth back into our bones.
The house sits watching the lake, with long porches along it,
Where at night I sleep to the plop of mullet jumping, the wind purring against my skin,
And the highways distant roar.
A house where one cannot forget the land.
I think how like is this canal to that family one in Thailand,
Though no reed flute rides floating down these waters,
No paddles play by moonlight, smoothing a rhythm to ones dreams,
No lithe god stands upright in his canoe, swaying it across the water, because he can.
from "Ashes" by Lagana Bluangtook
Life is too short. Few of us have time for cleaning under beds, maintaining painted moldings, sopping up water around sinks and showers, etc. or working to pay others to do it. Why not apply the resourceful human mind to our living spaces, scrutinize and compare every type of house: European, Asian, Native American, etc. and invent ones that suits our needs? Most of us are devoting our lives to paying for a house and our waking hours to cleaning and repairing it. Aren't time, space, & nature the ultimate luxuries?
Few of us have time to clean or maintain large many roomed, many bathed houses.. Even supervising maids or maintenence crews takes time. Few of us have the time to do the things we love: trees, gardens, camping, skiing, adult ballet (or trombone or karate) classes, raising orchids, etc! A house should be planned to give us freedom! For more detail CLICK HERE
The first floor is the concrete slab, polished & sealed. The plush wool rugs that I designed & had custom made in Thailand & the antique baby grand sit on the concrete floor for a relaxed but elegant combination. Concrete, if sealed is already dirt colored and easy to maintain.
I sold a big, 100 year old Victorian house to build this. To a large extent, for the kitchen. That old kitchen for all its new appliances and cabinets might have been Victorian for the distances I had to walk from stove to sink to refrigerator to work stations. And all its counter to wipe down and tile floor to scrub!!! I think this kitchen cuts cooking & clean up time over half. I can turn around at the sink and reach about everything used regularly in the kitchen. The main work surfaces, the wings of the sink/counter combo, drain all spills toward the sink. The slated shelves above & below the sink replace cabinets & drain basket. I wash dishes, rinse & put them away where they live on the slatted shelves where they drain onto the slanted stainless steel counters and into the sink. I don't dry them, move them in & out of a dishwasher or in & out of a cabinet. Don't have to wipe up standing water repeatedly. Won't have to refinish formica or wood cabinets in five or ten years. Magnetic strips hold spoons & utensils handy. The rack of cutlery hangs on a hook & can be lifted to the table.The concrete floor slants to a drain under the sink where more slotted racks and hooks hold pots and pans. This kitchen does have lots of storage. The ceilings & cabinets are !0' high. But I'm after little maintenence and simple elegance, so: one set of dishes & glasses, as pretty as possible, one set of pots elegant enough to serve in, because they are the only sets and because they are always on desplay. Found the turquoise glass at Wal-mart.
The house has neither air-conditioning nor ductwork for future airconditioning. In Florida! It is cool because of its orientation for the summer sun and prevalant breezes. Wide overhangs and porches along the southern exposure give shade . The attic has extra insulation. I think the ten foot high ceilings and vents above the French doors are esential to comfort without airconditioning. We can leave the house in summer with all windows closed, but the vents open, and return to an almost comfortable temperature. However, if we sit in the house in summer with all window open, but those vents closed, we'll be hot. click for more views
In the spirit of making all space work, the bed base is chests of drawers. And one doesn't have to sweep under it! click for more views
The two - one story screened porches are a vital part of the living space. They bring the house into the (as yet to grow) orchard. In this case we are lucky to have a small lake and an island. All sorts of birds fly by, hawks, storks, egrets, even a bald eagle flew by the window and alighted on the lawn. Racoons, otters play at the water. Sleeping on warm nights with the French doors open gives the wonderful free feeling of camping out in the great outdoors while being snug in ones own bed! The property is only an acre and inside city limits. The lake a drainage canal, but still a paradise!
UPSTAIRS
DOWNSTAIRS
The cabinet is designed
around a front loading washer and also hides the top of an 80 gal solar tank (the bottom of which is recessed under the porch). The dryer is solar (clothesline)
The yard has as many tropical fruit trees as can fit in: Lychee, mango, papaya, 4+ kinds of bananas, lots of citrus, berries, avacado. . . it's Florida!
When I visited an old Florida settler house and saw a "dry sink," I tried to imagine how a housewife actually used it and could only envision water splashed all around. The mopping up must have been continual! Watching folk from other cultures living with our baths and kitchens and seeing how quickly surfaces gathered mold when they weren't continually mopped up or scrubbed, started me thinking all the maintenance we do almost unconciously. Then I had children. Most American housewives know the litany: 'Wipe up the water on the floor, don't leave the shower curtain open, why do you splash water all over the sink?' The training it takes to live in and maintain our living spaces starts in early childhood! I think we spend a great deal of time and energy dealing with equipment, surfaces, and methods that we haven't changed in centuries.
Living in the Thai canal lands and seeing entirely different ways of handling water and other household processes, seeing different organizations of kitchen and bathroom spaces and methods, I began to wonder what other cultures offer sensible energy and material savings systems that the modern American house might incorporate. Living in the States, renting houses here, renovating kitchens, looking at new houses in developments, I got the feeling that American ingenuity focuses on areas other than the American living space.
While trying to maintain time for my own work, keep an American house, and keep my children in their various activities, I started thinking of ways to skip time consuming, repetitive tasks like sweeping around furniture legs & under beds, constantly wiping up water in kitchen & bath & yelling at the kids to do so . . . the eventual refinishing of kitchen cabinets because of water damage . . . scrubbing woodwork. . . repainting woodwork. . . yelling at kids to keep their dirty hands off woodwork. . . scrubbing tile grout lines, any tile, floor tile, bathroom tile. . . . washing shower curtains & tub glass enclosures. . .etc.! It seemed I was always scrubbing kitchens & bathrooms, and the daily washing and handling of dishes, either in the dishwasher or by hand seemed endless. Dishes always had to be handled & moved & rehandled and moved again.
During periods when my husband and I both worked and had to come home to cook for ourselves and toddlers, the time needed to cook & clean up after a meal was painful. We were stressed and angry, the kids tired and hungry and wanting our attention. This was quality time with the kids? There had to be a better way. I started to fault the modern American living space. Besides the living room and bedrooms being full of things the kids shouldn't touch, there was the dusting, especially knickknacks. I began to see our houses as full of - stuff! Stuff - visually it was chaotic, time wise it was exhausting, financially it was a constant drain. Take this for repair, warranty for that. Stuff.
As my art was simplifying to an esthetic core, so was my idea of a living space. Religions teach simple living. So how to design a living space where one can live simply????
I eventually designed and built my own house and was able to incorporate many of my ideas. Now having lived in it for 5 years I find that most ideas work as intended, but also find things that could have been improved.
Though I thought about houses & life styles for decades, I could have done better research. I did collect some elements and systems that were simple and effective. . .like ways of using water, ventilation etc. I had lived in Thailand in a old teak farm house on a canal (water & bathing at the canal), amid houses that were minimal with few possessions or furniture, but always with porches & gardens, & found there a sense of timeless luxury that I think modern man has lost.
I had played at drawing my own house plans for decades. When building looked like a reality, I started drawing in earnest and using the library, talking to contractors & residential designers & suppliers about ideas, materials, and structural methods. I started running numbers and eliminating costs and unfortunately also a few ideas like cisterns and solar heating of the concrete floors. I surely annoyed my architect and designer friends who were very generous with their time & tried to impart to me basic architectural design principles, like the relation of the windows to the mass, the need to consider the patterning of windows as a vital part of the basic design. . . the relationship of the masses, lines and other elements, etc. in relation to each other, the three dimensional reality of a paper drawing as well as countless details & ideas. Having been an artist for decades, I already had a need for balance, composition, line, texture etc., but there is a lot to learn in order to translate ideas into three-dimensional architectural forms!
