Back At the Ranch With Paula

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HOLY MOLY! Steve and Polly had a dream and they want me to play with them...

"An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome. "
— John Ruskin, 1819-1900

Motivation

a place: Cottonwood Falls, KS
a structure: 1880s stone church
a function: home away, in Flint Hills
an idea: imagine...together

Revare Elevation with design elements overlapping

Concept

"A Good Christian's" basilican plan needs an apse: the solarium.
Go West young man! Horace Greeley. Altars in America are at 180 degrees.
Rotate the axis: bedrooms in the corners and central plan library in pilgrimage.
Stair as sculpture: ascent-descent-bisect-zigzag

Apse solarium of the Cottonwood Falls project

Floorplan of the Cottonwood Falls project

Focus on the stairs in the Cottonwood Falls project

Spiritual

Mysticism and luminosity:
Areopagite-Abbot Suger-Pella and the stained glass meant to be there.

detail of the bathroom window in the Cottonwood Falls project

Stained glass front door on the Cottonwood Falls project

Functions

A girl's gotta work: the catwalk recording studio
A guy's gotta do laundry and write: the parapet Bosch stacker and office.
Food down under: the galley kitchen and island.

Looking up at the catwalk in the Cottonwood Falls project

The new kitchen in the Cottonwood Falls project

Stone

Get the kids out first: egress windows and a rope ladder.
Repair and recycle: Luke and the Permian Sea Bones
Sometimes a wall's gotta go: Towanda!

Exterior of the converted church project in Cottonwood Falls

Detail of the gothic window in the Cottonwood Falls project