The beginnings.

The first of the three Olson houses, designed in the late 1960s, is on a steep, densely wooded cliff (near a beach where Olson played as a youth) overlooking south Puget Sound and, in the distance, mighty Mount Rainier. The house is a weathered cedar object inserted into the landscape. Grass and wild flowers continue from the hill behind onto the roof. The sod is penetrated by a large sculptural concrete chimney intended as a vertical foil to the horizontality of the house.

Cantilevered over the hillside, the house is pointed directly at the mountain and is flanked by a pool. The master bedroom is against the bermed rear of the house, clearly a place of refuge. At the same level, a small parlor with a large hearth is a refuge with view. A few steps down is a second living room, its glass walls on all sides bringing in the dramatic prospect of water, woods, and mountain. In all, the house has an elemental quality, a power reflecting that of the setting. It has weathered well until it is virtually a part of the landscape.

The Next Generation

The second house, built in 1992 in the suburb of Kirkland east of Seattle, bursts cheerfully from the landscape instead of hunkering into it. Yet the principle of prospect and refuge is at work here too. The clients, a family with small children, wanted the house to seem like a pavilion in the meadow, and that is exactly its feel. It is a house that, in project architect Tom Kundig’s words, “celebrates light”: major rooms are aligned in a rectangle with along glazed south wall; the roof swoops upward, reaching its high point at the south façade. The rooms in this wing are suffused with light reflected from the white slope of the ceiling high overhead, which acts as a luminaire. The prospect of meadow and water is seen through the south wall’s grid of wood framing members, horizontal metal fins, and round concrete columns. (The grid looks mechanical enough to be operable but is not.)

The rear wing of the house is more refugelike in character, set into the sloping meadow and bermed, the planting continuing over the garage and the children’s bedrooms.

The differences between the first, rather rustic house, and the second, more “mechanic” building, reflect how time, tastes, and Olson’s ideas changed in the interim: demand for rugged simplicity had ebbed and, by the time the second house appeared, the residential work of the office had grown larger, more complex and, in some instances, more formal.

3. Answer the following questions to part I:

1. What is the constant concern of Jim Olson?

2. What is the credo of his work?

3. What do three of his houses illustrate?

4. What do these houses have in common?

5. Can you explain the theory of refuge and prospect?

6. Where is the first of Olson’s houses situated?

7. Can we say that the house is the integral part of the landscape? Can you prove it?

8. Does this house have a place of refuge?

9. What views can you enjoy from the house?

10. What can you say about the general character of the house?

11. Where is the second house situated?

12. Will this house attract your attention as soon as you arrive to the place?

13. What were the clients’ requirements to their future house?

14. Can you describe the character of this house?

15. What can be seen from the grid of the south wall?

16. Can you prove that the rear wing of the house is more refugelike in character?

17. What is the reason for the differences between the first and the second house?

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