AIA San Antonio: Going Minimalist offers voluntary simplicity
: July 25, 2010
A friend of mine is in the process of designing a house for a client who wants a simple, Minimalist dwelling, and here is some advice on deigning a Minimalist structure.
The artist Donald Judd and his important essay, “Specific Objects,” offer some philosophical perspective on the movement that inspired the current generation of architects to create more with less, when imagining space. The critical first ingredient of Minimal residential architecture has to do with understanding and respecting the place where one intends to build.
The phrase “less is more,” generally attributed to Mies van der Rohe, but reportedly coined by a landscape architect, is the unofficial motto of Minimalist design. Anyone preparing to build should examine the geography of a project site carefully before deciding on the right balance between benefiting a neighborhood and taking away from the environment. Avoid thinking of the site as a piece of land to be “developed.”
To the extent possible and practical, keep surfaces to a limited number of suitable textures, colors and compositions. Floors, likely to be the darkest color hue, should be sound, serviceable and appearing to flow from room to room, interrupted by as few doors as possible. Walls should be a balance between solid plane and openness, to allow nature to be visually drawn inside.
Dwellings in the lower half of the U.S. should be as much about shade as any other design criteria. Shade and shadow can be strategically placed to allow for architectural drama. You don't have to give up air conditioning to live Minimal, you just get to pay less in utility costs if a dwelling is more sensitively designed to respond to climatic realities.
Regarding construction details, select nondecorative appointments that actually perform necessary functions. Spaces should be viewed as whole aesthetic stories with fixtures, appliances, hardware and cabinets largely absent from plain sight, so that space can be reserved for occupants' revered pieces of art, furnishings and textiles — but only in limited quantities. Going Minimal could be the much-needed excuse to downsize and simplify one's life.
Great Minimal works of architecture can be found in the work of past visionaries R.M. Schindler (California modernist), and Luis Barragán (Mexican modernist known for the unabashed display of color), and living practitioners Hugh Newell Jacobson (interpreter of traditional Americana dwelling forms) and Rick Joy (earthen design guru whose work reflects the Arizona desert).