This is not a house with a garden around it. The house and garden were designed and developed together as an environment. This kind of planning makes a house more than a house, and a garden more than a garden. It can be practiced with any lot, with a house of any size or architectural type.
The garden starts at the lot lines and takes advantage of every inch of ground on a sloping site on the shore of American Lake, on the outskirts of Tacoma. The garden surrounds the house in a way that gives each room a view of its own, out to the tree-fringed horizon or into an intimate corner. These varied outlooks give the house a refreshing change of pace and increase the feeling of close relationship between house and garden.
The owners wanted a two-story house, which required grading the lot to help keep the silhouette of the house low and in keeping with the gentle slopes around it. The garden designed by Lawrence Halprin was worked out along with the house, before any grading was done. With two adults and three children in the family, the house had to be large, yet the owners wanted the intimate qualities of a small home. The division between levels of both building and garden met this demand. The upper level is the living area, and it is meant for adult use (or for quiet use by the youngsters). The lower level is given over entirely to recreational pursuits.
Exterior siding and inside wood walls are rough-sawn cedar. Ceilings and soffits (area under roof overhang) are plastic impregnated plywood. The plastic keeps the plywood grain from raising.
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