Life House by John Pawson
As Living Architecture unveils its latest holiday house, in rural Wales, Blueprint asks its architect John Pawson about the concept of a modern-day retreat after a relaxing stay at the Life House
Words by: Cate St Hill
Set in the gently sloping hills of the Welsh countryside near Llandrindod Wells, the Life House (or Ty Bywyd) is a simple, modest building with a focus on calm and reflection. The seventh property in Living Architecture’s portfolio of architect-designed holiday homes - and the polar opposite of its last completed dwelling, A House in Essex by Grayson Perry and FAT Architects - it’s an uncompromisingly contemporary construction, made of 80,000 handmade Danish bricks and bedded into the fall of the land. It is characteristic of John Pawson’s ‘rigorously simple architecture’, engaging the senses both in the surrounding landscape and in the haptic qualities of the interior.
In the lounge's pale space a wood burner is featured
From the outside, the single-storey Life House appears austere amid the blackened gorse, but inside its Douglas fir timber ceilings, light-coloured brick and pale, polished-concrete floors provide a warm, calming cocoon. Based on the concept of a retreat and inspired by monastic architecture, the building is designed around periods of contemplation, to help people escape the demands of modern life and soothe the mind.
The music bedroom, one of the 'themed' bedrooms
It is primarily arranged as a series of self-contained rooms set along two long corridors - one light, one dark - at right angles to each another. Bedrooms are each dedicated to supporting and enriching specific rituals and activities, from a library bedroom lined with philosophical books, to a music bedroom with a carefully curated selection of music and a huge audio system from which to blast it out, to a relaxing bathing bedroom with a bath perfectly placed to take advantage of the views (and backdrop of the bleating of sheep) outside.
Guests can commune with each other in the kitchen and dining space
At one end of the dark corridor is an even darker contemplation chamber, semi-submerged in the ground, with brick benches for meditative pauses, while a large, open-plan living, kitchen and dining space provides a more social space where guests can gather around a wood-burning stove. Yet throughout the journey through the house, your eye is drawn to the outside landscape, a constant, serene backdrop that will alone leave you revived and reinvigorated.
Light and dark
Blueprint: Can you talk me through the desire to create a retreat?
John Pawson: When Alain de Botton and I first began to discuss what a Pawson house for the Living Architecture project might be, the conversation immediately focused on the idea of an uncompromisingly modern design in a remote location where it would be possible to inhabit a different sort of architectural space. Alain was particularly interested in the concept of retreat, because of the Cistercian monastery I had previously designed in the Czech Republic and because of my ongoing involvement with other monastic communities in France and Hungary.
Certainly the past years of close collaboration with Cistercian and Benedictine monks has reinforced my belief in the benefits of withdrawing from one’s regular environment and routine from time to time - regardless of whether there is a spiritual dimension to this withdrawal.
Light and dark
BP: In your description of the house, you mention the book Walden by Henry David Thoreau. How did that inspire you?
JP: The notion of taking oneself away to a cabin in the woods is a very powerful one. Thoreau was fascinated by the idea of leading a considered life, which for him meant structuring his day around specific activities, from reading to immersing himself in nature.
In the spirit of creating a contemporary Walden, therefore, the communal and private quarters of the Life House are shaped by the idea of supporting and enriching things we do every day, but which are so familiar we no longer register them in any meaningful way, like listening to music or taking a bath. Conducted in environments that are special, from both technical and atmospheric perspectives, the intention is that these activities become opportunities for recovering lost significance and pleasure.
Light and dark
BP: Were you conscious of the other Living Architecture houses?
JP: I have stayed at several of the Living Architecture houses and of course one is aware that one is designing a component of a bigger vision. At the same time, once embarked on, the design process is so consuming, all sense of what others have done or might do falls away. It’s all about the site and the ideas and the intensity of one’s personal response.
Light and dark
BP: Are there any precedents for the Life House in your own work?
JP: Every project is intimately connected with every other. All my work is based on the same set of spatial and material themes and the same underlying thinking, even projects that on the face of it have nothing in common - from a fork to a ballet set.
All of John Pawson's work, including the Life House, is based on the same set of spatial and material themes, and underlying thinking, he says
BP: Talk me through the spatial qualities you sought to create in the house. What was the logic behind creating one corridor that was light and one that was dark?
JP: My primary goal is always space that feels good to be in: space where the body, the eye and the mind are each at ease. With the Life House, additional priorities included the need to allow groups of people living in proximity to spend time together and apart, as well as the desire to make a place where all the moves would feel natural - if you are inhabiting a place briefly, you don’t want to spend time learning the choreography.
The two colours help people orientate themselves, but they also foster different atmospheres. It seemed logical to construct the contemplation space using black brick, both because this extremity of the house is partially dug into the fall of the land and because I like the idea of retreating into the dark to think.
BP: Why did you choose brick?
JP: I like brick for its simplicity and for the way it becomes a perfect medium to explore pattern, rhythm, texture and repetition. The two colours came from the landscape - blackened gorse and the pale moor grass.
BP: What do you think a retreat is in 2016? Is there a tension between creating a place for contemplation while also pleasing paying visitors who might want creature comforts such as a TV?
JP: For me the Life House is about offering the scope to do things in a different way, with the possibility for different people to pursue different priorities while sharing the same space. It’s certainly not about self-denial or a retreat from modernity.
BP: A retreat can often mean having nothing to do in order to think, but here you have given people certain things to do or interact with in each room. How do you think they help people experience the architecture?
JP: We are used to being occupied. I don’t find it relaxing to do nothing. I find more meditative possibilities in immersing myself in activities like cycling and walking. When we are thinking about what we are doing in this very focused way, I think we also become more alive to the nature of the spaces we are inhabiting.
BP: The house seemed to be very much about being inside and looking through these carefully curated viewpoints and not necessarily experiencing the house from the outside. Was that the intention?
JP: When I was working on the design, these thoughts were equally weighted. Of course when you are at your desk, working on the drawings, you are mentally inside the house, but every time you return to the site, the power of the landscape is overwhelming.
