Organizational clarity extends to the rooms themselves. The plan is cellular and repetitive, mirrored about a chimney and a shared straight-run in situ concrete stair providing access to the upper level rooms. One enters each room from outside, unmediated by interior common space, passing across a clear threshold. The upper-level entry decks, each shared by two rooms, are sheltered under the joining roof, the soffit of which is painted haint blue, a common practice borrowed from the local Gullah tradition. The Gullah are African- Americans of the lowcountry, descendents of enslaved persons who worked the rice and indigo plantations of the area. They have carefully preserved elements of their African traditions and language. The haint blue soffit was originally made with indigo pigment and was believed to ward off ghosts from a home. One moves from space to space not through an interior network of corridors, but by moving through the landscape. In this way, the architecture aligns with Clark’s recognition that the harm human habitation causes the planet is a given. He argues for an architecture that can atone by intensifying our experience of the landscape, bringing us closer to nature and a greater sense of belonging.
Clark and Menefee Architects
James Moses
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on site review 43: architecture and t ime
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