Inner Strength

摘要

In adding to a historic monument, architects seek to avoid the twin traps of mimicry and upstaging the original. Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee of Los Angeles firm Johnston Mar-klee & Associates have mastered that challenge in designing the Sale House, a cubist project faced in grey stucco to play off the 2-4-6-8 studio that Morphosis designed 25 years ago in the beachfront community of Venice, California. That one room over a garage brought the architects, Thorn Mayne and Michael Rotondi, international fame, and it still has the power to provoke. Working with a bare-bones budget, the pair enriched a simple cube with felt shingles, Mondrianesque accents of primary colour, and projecting yellow window frames that progress from 2 foot square on the inner face to an 8 foot square portico above the entry.