Watzek House living room (photo by Brian Libby)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
The occasion was a first-ever public tour of the Aubrey Watzek house in Portland's West Hills as part of its ranking atop Portland Monthly magazine's greatest homes list. The moment was something greater: a coming out party, and a time to marvel at a spectacularly sublime work of architecture that too many locals haven't had the chance to know, let alone visit.
Built in 1937, the Watzek House was designed by a brilliant, 25-year-old high-school dropout: John Yeon. It would go on to be twice exhibited at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Initially, credit for the design was erroneously given to Pietro Belluschi and the firm he headed, the office of late Portland architect A.E. Doyle. The Belluschi/Doyle office had acted as architect of record because Yeon, always an iconoclast, never wanted an office of his own. Yeon was an outsider all his career and life, forgoing the traditional rise up the ranks that Belluschi later took in order to forge his own fusion of architeture, landscape and construction. Yeon never became as famous as Belluschi, but the Watzek is an enduring reminder that he was arguably Portland's most all-time talented designer.
The Watzek House not only had the honor of the MoMA exhibition, but in 1974 it became only the second house in America - after Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater - to be added to the National Register of Historic Places before the traditional fifty-year "historic" threshhold had been reached. It's that good.
Watzek House east facade (photo by Brian Libby)
Make no mistake, though: despite the drama inherent to its eastern facade, where a floor-to-ceiling glass wall gives way to thin exterior columns beneath a pitched roof perfectly in symmetry with Mt. Hood, this is not a lavish mansion by today's standards. Instead, it's a quintessentially modest Northwest home that draws from Japanese and Scandinavian architecture even as its wood and courtyard and form embody its American and regional agricultural roots - the plain old farm barn.
"Architects, if they didn't do an out-right violent, modern building, they would do some little thing that would show that they respected their-- they'd put a little dormer, maybe or something, just tip their hats slightly to the tradition into which they were intruding," Yeon said in a 1983 oral history interview with the Smithsonian. "And, it's absolute nonsense to me. If it was really an important environment, with continuity, I would do all-out, every effort, to be as inconspicuous as possible. And that doesn't mean it has to be dull."
The tour I attended last Saturday was led by Richard Brown, who lived in the Watzek House for 38 years before bequeathing it to the University of Oregon. He couldn't accept the risk that someone might buy and change the house after his death (Brown is 75). So as of 2009, the house is owned by the University of Oregon. Until now it has remained off limits to the public. But UO has announced it will soon begin giving monthly tours. This is a great gift for Portland, for it has much to teach and inspire.
Watzek House courtyard and bedroom (photos by Brian Libby)
The Watzek House is an early modernist residence that eschews the boxiness of modern architects emerging at the time such as Mies Van Der Rohe (whose landmark Barcelona Pavilion dates to 1929) and Walter Gropius. Its pitched roof is both a practical and stylistic refutation: flat roofs in Oregon generally leak rainwater. But the decision also gives the house a Scandinavian feel, which was one of Yeon's most pronounced influences - he visited Sweden, Czekoslovakia and Germany before embarking on the design, and pronounced Stockholm his favorite. The pronounced use of wood inside and out reflects that tradition, as well as the Northwest's. That said, the house is no closed off cabin either. Floor to ceiling glass, particularly in the living room and dining room, provides a dramatically cinematic view - looking out at Mt. Hood from one and getting an up-close view of the surrounding trees in the other.
As explained in a case study of the Watzek produced by the University of Oregon, "The exterior walls of the living part of the house are fir siding on a balloon frame stud wall. The garage is made of 4x6 nominal T&G lumber, stacked horizontally and held in place with steel pins. The exterior finish is translucent, and enhances the silver-gray color of the naturally aged wood. The interior finishes vary by room, but are different species of wood and plaster. The composition of the house is a series of rooms, arranged by function and degree of privacy, around a garden courtyard which is full of native plants."
The house is also remarkably innovative. It includes double-pane windows, which had scarcely even been invented in the mid-1930s. Yeon also made the innovative decision to place cupboard like vents in the wall, separate from the glass, that fold out discretely to bring in outside air; this would become a Yeon trademark that also found its way into Pietro Belluschi-designed homes. Gutters and downspouts are also hidden from view in order to preserve the integrity of the exterior forms.
Watzek House hallway and dining room (photos by Brian Libby)
When stepping into the dining room, my mind suddenly flashed to the end of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, when an elderly Dave Bowman (Kier Dullea) is shown in a kind of gilded cage provided by the unseen aliens: antique furniture atop a glowing white glass floor. Usually modern houses come with modern furniture: a Barcelona chair, an Eames lounge, perhaps an Arne Jacobsen egg chair. In the Watzek House, though, there are antiques. And the juxtaposition works surprisingly well. I think it's because Yeon's design sense, as well as the time in which the house was designed, seemed less of an outright reinvention than international-style modernism and more of a handed baton from the past into the future.
Like Frank Lloyd Wright, Yeon wanted to control not only the design but the interiors and furnishings - every detail a client would allow. He even chose the fabric for the curtains. The result is not some monomaniacal act, but a synthesis. Every last detail of this house is part of the unified whole. I noticed this most of all in the exquisite living room, where square wood panels in alternating grain patterns extend up the wallsto form the ceiling. That whole room feels not so much like interior architeture as an art installation.
Yeon being Yeon, the landscape outside the house is as important as the house. On the east facade with the Hood view, for example, the hill slopes downward so as to reveal the Watzek with added drama and more of a panoramic vista. In the courtyard, a pond and natural plantings add serenity. " I remember in grammar school," Yeon says in the oral history, "we had to stand up and give a little talk on what we were going to be when we grow up and I think I said I might be an artist or a florist." He also explored set design as a young student, as if architecture is truly an orchestration of nature, building and natural drama.
Watzek east facade (photo by Brian Libby)
"They're all kinds of things make a difference in the architecture from one place to another and one time to another, but there's always been regional differences," Yeon adds. "Architecture in Denver doesn't look like the architecture in Portland, or Kansas City and so on. That's not what interests me, that isn't what I mean by regional architecture. Those are inevitable changes from living conditions or economy or even climate. But I insist on thinking that it's a deliberate effort to interpret the specific landscape. In that, I may be way out on a limb by myself, but that's what is thrilling to me."
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