Outdoor Kitchen, Deck and Pond (Part 2): Lessons from Villa Savoy by Le Corbusier

Outdoor Living:  foreground--garden & gazebo; midground--dining; background:  kitchen & breakfast nook.  

Though just a modular home, our house is perfect for its location, which is no accident.  We wanted a home that provided both great views of the landscape and passive solar heat during our cold winters.  We also wanted easy access to outdoor living spaces.  To accomplish this, we faced the sliding glass doors and large kitchen windows south, then asked the manufacture to add a second set of sliding glass doors in the family room, which also faces south.  So, in effect, pretty much the entire back of our house opens to the field to the south.

This is great, especially during the winter and spring, when large herds of deer migrate across our panoramic view.  But having a five-acre field out back does limit small, cozy, shaded spaces.  So, what I did was set up sort of a parallel outdoor patio house of four rooms, as pictured above.  In the foreground is the garden/gazebo room.  Next to that is the dining area, then the kitchen, and finally in the distance, a breakfast nook.  This parallel outdoor living space provides transition and some shade.  It also gives me a space where I can work in my yard and still be close to the family.  There is a lot of talking through screen doors and a lot of opening and closing of screen doors as we move in and out of the house.

This year, my focus has been on adding a deck for the grill, which will also have a snack bar area when completed and a small, reflective pond.

However, I did make one mistake.  We were going to clear coat the natural wood of the deck, but I started to worry about the UV light as I was only using pine.

I therefore chose a darker stain--redwood color.  It clearly didn't look as nice.  But, I salvaged my mistake by putting a white boarder around it.  This tied in with the white lattice work and emphasized the floating cantilevered deck.

In front of the cantilever, I chose low ground covers and flowers, so that I would not lose the horizontal floating effect accented by the white underscored with a dark shadow.

And now it's time for the roof, which I'll cover in Part 3:

Here are some basic principles that I'd like to pass on:

1.  Perhaps Modernism's greatest contributions to architecture are the piloti and the cantilever.  Together they allow structures to float above the landscape and in the process let the terrain pass through uninterrupted. Villa Savoy by Le Corbusier is an excellent example of this.  If you keep your garden structures open at ground level, your space will have greater continuity.  This is true even if structures are lifted off the ground by only 6 to 12 inches.

2.  When possible, keep things simple.  Although I was able to rescue my gazebo somewhat,  it looked best with just the natural wood and white lattice.

3.  Transition indoor living to outdoor living through reflected spaces--bringing the outside in, and the inside out.