California `Shoin': The Ian and Sue Wilson House

By David M. Dunfield and Patricia J. Graham

Waterfall in the garden of the Wilson house (Photography by Michael Tropea, Chicago)

Leaving San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge, traffic begins to slacken its frantic big-city pace. It only takes a few minutes to pass by Sausalito and reach Mill Valley, a surprisingly bucolic if well-heeled community stretched out along hillsides among stands of redwood trees. After passing through a downtown shared by Lexus SUVs and mountain bikers, the streets become narrow and sometimes twist abruptly. Climbing higher above the valley, houses perch on stilts above the road, which narrows to a single lane with occasional wide spots to allow two-way travel. Street signs reassure us that we are still on a public street and apparently headed towards our destination. After a steep switchback, the road levels off, and it is immediately clear that we have arrived: a gate of clear, polished wood, a spray of bamboo, and wisteria on a stuccoed wall leave no doubt that we have reached the entrance to the home of Ian and Sue Wilson (Fig. 1). Less than half an hour from one of America's busiest cities, we are transported to a world of calm and refinement. The Wilsons, natives of South Africa, and former residents of China as representatives of Ian Wilson's employer before his retirement from corporate life, are collectors of Chinese scholar's rocks and accoutrements (several articles on this collection appear in Orientations, May 1999). Their house is modelled in part on design principles of seventeenth century Japanese warrior's residences, but shaped as well by the owners' own interests, time and place. Japan's traditional architecture has fascinated and influenced foreigners ever since the Meiji Restoration opened the country to visitors from the West in the nineteenth century. Early reports tended to emphasize its alienness, but Japanese architecture quickly became a source of inspiration for designers representing a range of backgrounds and viewpoints. On a popular level, Japan influenced the style of British and American domestic architecture, especially the bungalow style. The modern bungalow developed as a reaction to the fussiness of Victorian houses, and as a democratizing effort to design aesthetically satisfying homes for families of modest means. Although the bungalow's form, and its name, derives from India, many of the classic bungalow features - deep eaves, sheltering porches, stained wood interiors - reflect Japanese influences. It appears ironic from today's vantage point that an architecture developed to serve the most conservative and rigid class structure imaginable should have served as inspiration for designs intended to liberate citizens from outmoded restrictions, but the shockingly foreign style of Japan's architecture did have a liberating effect on post-Victorian architects. Bruno Taut (1880-1938) was among the first Westerners to look upon Japan's traditional architecture with trained modern eyes, and to see in it principles of design that were sympathetic to the approach that he and other modernists were in the process of formulating. Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), famously opposed to many of the ideas of European modernists like Taut, was equally captivated by the harmony he perceived between the Japanese approach to building design and his own. For their part, Japanese architects of the modern period managed to seamlessly integrate elements of their own tradition with imported contemporary technologies and styles, a feat that eluded most Western practitioners, who rejected traditional forms in trying to design a new architectural order. The popular form of the bungalow as well as the efforts of the modernists in both Japan and the West represent much more than architectural variations on Japonisme. Certainly, many attempts to integrate Japanese style and Western construction have failed because the creators concentrated on easy surface effects rather than seeking a deeper understanding of Japanese design principles and how they can relate to contemporary life. Japan's popularity at the world expositions around the turn of the twentieth century undoubtedly resulted in some unfortunate architectural and interior design, along with a Japanese industry of export crafts that at their worst fairly define the term `kitsch'. Cross-cultural pollination in both directions has produced some very strange blossoms, but also some elegant and hardy hybrids. The questions `What is modern about traditional Japanese architecture? and `What is Japanese about modern Japanese architecture?' remain vital and potent areas for designers. Two contemporary Japanese approaches, in which `modern' and `Japanese' are convincingly synthesized in very different degrees, can serve to illustrate the point. Takishita Yoshihiro is an architect as well as a collector and seller of antiques. He grew up in Gifu prefecture, home to a distinctive style of farmhouse known as gassho-zukuri. The steeply pitched roofs of these houses developed as a result of both climate - the slope helps to shed the region's high snowfall - and the utility of an attic space for cultivating silkworms in layered trays. It is a style with great visual appeal, but one that in its pure form is not well adapted to contemporary needs. Takishita saw these houses being demolished and replaced with conventional, convenient modern dwellings, and formed a strategy of adaptive reuse for them. He has crews dismantle the structures, move them from their agricultural settings to locations selected by his clients, and reconstruct them. While the structural framework of the original remains, the interiors of the houses are transformed. Silkworm lofts become vaulted bedrooms and living spaces, mud plaster is replaced with Portland cement, and dirt-floored kitchen/utility rooms are integrated into expansive living/dining areas. Ishii Osamu (b. 1922) is an elder statesman among contemporary Japanese architects whose designs successfully synthesize elements of traditional styles with imported approaches to materials and geometry, all at the service of the architect's personal convictions about the integration of buildings and nature. Best known for designing houses tucked into suburban hillsides, Ishii's typical strategy involves placing the more mundane elements of his houses - garages, storage, bedrooms and baths - on lower levels formed of cast concrete and brightened by lightwells, allowing the main living spaces to sit on landscaped roof terraces at the top of the house. These living spaces are most often elegant reinterpretations of traditional timber-framed dwellings (Fig. 2), and their placement on the top floor of two- to five-storey buildings gives them a quality of peaceful reclusion in what are actually densely built-up neighbourhoods on the edges of Japan's major cities. Traditional Japanese architecture and design continue to exert an influence on the West, as evidenced by the popularity of books on Japanese design, not to mention the ubiquitous tabletop `Zen' fountains seen in gift shops everywhere. Natural materials, simple forms, and the evident order of Japanese design suggest a tranquillity of spirit that is a tonic against the fast pace and disconnected quality of much of contemporary life. The Wilsons own an apartment in a San Francisco high-rise, from which the delights and annoyances of urban life are close at hand. Their Mill Valley house was conceived as a private refuge. It is a house of modest size in which the open plan, uncluttered interior and vistas of the surrounding landscape encourage an expansion of the spirit.

Although it is not uncommon to see Japanese elements in both architectural and garden design outside Japan, it is rare that those elements are as carefully integrated and thoughtfully executed as in the house high in the hills over Mill Valley. Its design and construction became an effort of epic proportions. It began with extensive research into the history of Japanese domestic architecture. Along the way, activities ranged from hand-selecting larch trees in a Montana forest, to a fengshui analysis by a Tantric priest, to transporting 800 tons of garden rock up the narrow mountain road that provides the only vehicular access to the site. The process by which this unique house was created began in the mid-1980s, when the Wilsons started to look for land on which to build a retreat outside San Francisco. That search lasted six years, until Ian recognized in this property the combination of an outcrop of native stone with a view of Mt Tamalpais that together could become the basis for a garden design. An early attempt to design the house using a local architect proved unsuccessful. The Wilsons started anew with a Japanese designer and master carpenter named Shimoi Yoshikuni, whose practice is based in Kent, Washington. A team led by Shimoi, and including San Francisco architectural designer Kei Yamagami, with the local architectural firm Berger Detmer providing construction documents, then invested another three-and-a half years, completing the house in 1996. The unity of house and landscape is among the most striking principles of the classic Japanese domestic architecture generally referred to as shoin style, and one that the Wilsons' house fully expresses. Best known through the examples of Nijo Castle in Kyoto and the Katsura Imperial Villa in nearby Arashiyama, several centuries of development culminated in the seventeenth century in a style of house for aristocrats and feudal lords. These houses consisted of a series of rooms composed in an asymmetrical arrangement and connected by a continuous engawa, a roofed veranda that acts as a transition between interior and exterior space, the whole unified by its integration into a landscape garden. Just inside the entrance gate a triad of stones, based on a traditional Japanese garden arrangement, forms an abstracted version of the borrowed scenery of Mt Tam (the local abbreviation for Tamalpais). Both garden and house have been arranged to frame a series of views of the mountain (Fig. 3). While capturing these desired views, the site design also restricts lines of sight that would reveal scattered houses less sensitively placed on their hillside perches. Landscape architect Bob Murase created these effects, shaping the landscape around the existing rock outcrop with imported stones set in the Japanese manner. A pond and waterfall complete the sequence of views the visitor passes between the gate and the entrance to the house, and these features also form the backdrop to the everyday activities of cooking and dining in the house's kitchen (Fig. 4). The garden is oriented so as to be viewed principally from the south: because plants grow towards the sun, their most beautiful `faces' are presented to the southern exposure. In addition to borrowing local scenery in the garden, native plants were deliberately incorporated into the design. Toyon, bay, manzanita, and live oak are among the native species in the garden. All tie the garden to the local landscape, and all are able to withstand the occasional drought conditions that the area experiences. While Murase directed the placement of plantings and specimen stones, artist and master stonemason George Gonzales was responsible for installing the retaining walls, steps and paths that link the areas together. Given the steep contours and confined spaces, collaboration among the workers was essential. The seamless and graceful walking routes through the garden are testimony to craft of the highest sort: intelligent, experienced and dedicated to detail. The clients made very personal contributions to the garden as well. Ian Wilson's interest in Chinese scholar's rocks and his choice of the property for its native stone outcrop suggest his close involvement in the garden's structure. A granite bridge just outside the main entrance to the house cracked during installation. Rather than replacing it, Ian devised repairs based on a traditional Japanese carpentry technique using mortised `butterflies' - made here of lead instead of wood. One's initial impression of the house is created largely by the roof form (Fig. 5). Matt-grey tiles in 26 different profiles were specified by the tilers and made on Awaji-shima, one of the few places in Japan where these traditional tiles are still being manufactured. They were installed by a crew from Kyoto whose recent work included repairs to property of the Imperial family. The exposed carpentry of deeply overhanging roofs over post-and-beam walls reinforces the impression that this is a traditional Japanese shoin structure. Indeed, the shape, proportions, structural framing and essential details of the house's form are all based on careful research by both Shimoi and the Wilsons. Shimoi's understanding of domestic Japanese architecture stems from his scholarly study of its history as well as from his personal background as a fourth-generation carpenter, apprenticed to his father from the age of eleven. Ultimately, their research settled on the period generally regarded as the culmination of shoin-style architecture, the seventeenth century. Some characteristics of the style have been noted above; others will be pointed out as our description of the house progresses.

Understanding the rigour involved in conceptualizing the Wilson house requires some background concerning the evolution of Japanese carpentry and domestic architectural principles. Some features are rooted in the shinden style of aristocratic palaces developed in the ninth century. For example, the notion of separate pavilions for entertaining guests and for sleeping is a characteristic of the style, which persisted in later transformations of residential architecture. Until the Momoyama Period (1573-1615), the design and construction of houses for the elite classes had been the domain of particular clans of carpenters, whose knowledge was esoteric - transmitted only to selected members of successive generations of the clan. However, in 1608, the Shomei (Elucidation of Craft), a written compilation of the oral tradition of Japanese carpenters, was produced by the Heinouchi family of carpenters. With this manual, the secret traditions of the carpenters began to be both widely disseminated and standardized. In 1655, the Buke hinagata (Pattern Book of Warrior Architecture) published design information in woodblock-printed form and became a standard reference for carpenters of the Edo period (1615-1867). These manuals formalized a system of proportions that was ultimately derived from the cutting of lumber into pieces appropriately sized for the needs of each member in the building's construction. This system is called kiwari (lit. `wood-splitting'). Kiwari comprised both a method for using raw materials predictably and efficiently as well as a system of structural and spatial proportion that defined the essential aesthetic relationships of the architecture which employed it. Regional variations in the proportioning system continued to be developed after the publication of the early manuals. The size of a tatami, the woven straw mat that served as floor covering and seating surface in Japanese houses, became the fundamental unit of measurement in house designs, and two different `standard' sizes evolved over time. The Wilson house proportions were derived from the older and larger Momoyama period module, in which a dimension of 6.5 shaku (roughly two metres) is the governing basis for the proportions. This decision is both intellectually satisfying, referring as it does to the earliest written standards for kiwari, and pragmatic, suiting the physical proportions of the building's owners and their desire for modern furnishings. Shimoi carefully applied the tradition of kiwari in determining the sizes and spacings of wooden structural members, from the largest posts and beams down to trim members less than two inches in width. Approaching the main entrance from the garden, the harmonious sense of rightness in the proportions of the house justify the rigorous process of research that helped create it (Fig. 6). However, clues such as a shift in the axis of the house, visible from the entrance path, announce that the building is not a strict copy of a shoin-style building. Although it is characteristic of shoin-style houses to be formed from the composition of several pavilions, and although the sukiya shoin style exemplified by the Katsura Imperial Villa utilizes asymetrical arrangements of such pavilions, all were generally oriented around a single rectangular grid. Given the strict proportioning system used by Japanese carpenters, this tradition is easily understood. Angular shifts in floor plan inevitably conflict with carefully calculated structural modules. The entrance itself, with a pair of beautifully carved wood doors designed by Sue Wilson and crafted by Shimoi, makes clear that the house is as accepting of modern life as it is of traditional form and craft (Fig. 7). The doors open into a vestibule which features an abstract relief sculpture by Iwashita Hiromichi (b. 1942), its black graphite surface echoed in the steel fireplace surround which becomes the next focal point as one moves into the house's winter living room (Fig. 8). The fireplace surround is a `found object', salvaged by Sue Wilson from a scrapyard. The contemporary fireplace is flanked by low, `snow-viewing' windows, a motif derived from Japanese tradition but reinterpreted to achieve a contemporary effect. The floor is covered by a material that at first glance appears to be tatami. It is in fact a custom-made wool carpet whose edges are bound using the cloth bindings of tatami mats. The result is a floor that maintains the traditional character of the modular pattern of woven mats while functioning in a house that features radiant heating in the floor and Western furniture. The simple, unadorned quality of the walls and ceiling belie the extraordinary effort that the carpentry represents. Montana larch trees were selected for their straight, unobtrusive grain and lack of knots, their cutting, drying, and milling all supervised by Shimoi. Each intersecting corner is a complicated joint requiring precise multiple cuts. The effect of the dedicated effort to produce an apparently simple result is the air of tranquillity that embraces the visitor. An antique ranma, or transom panel, separates the living space from an alcove which is the characteristic feature that gave the shoin architectural style its name (see Fig. 8). The term shoin originally referred to a window with a ledge set into a quiet corner alcove of a room and used as a place for reading and writing. Later, it came to represent a combination of architectural features, including shoji (translucent paper sliding screens) and tokonoma (niches for the display of paintings and other art objects). The outside wall of this shoin alcove consists of a full-height sliding glass door behind a shoji. To one side, the alcove features a tokonoma with a tatami as its floor; to the other, a pair of Momoyama painted panels mounted as fusuma, sliding paper doors that function as room dividers. These sliding doors conceal a closet filled with electronic sound and lighting controls. To avoid damaging the delicate old painting by excessive exposure to light, the fusuma is reversible: except for special occasions, the painted side is turned away from the light, facing the inside of the darkened closet. Taken together, the elements found within this alcove - shoin, shoji, tokonoma, tatami, fusuma - are the defining elements of what came to be known as the shoin style. Adjacent and open to the winter room is the summer living room (Fig. 9). Here the proportions and materials continue, but the focus is on the garden and distant views, rather than on the fireplace and interior details. Art Deco `pretzel chairs' from the 1930s were purchased from a sale of movie props, and they create an appropriate suggestion of engawa furniture. The tokonoma in this room, as in the others in the Wilson house, is set above the floor (Fig. 10). This calculated violation of Japanese tradition was made to adjust the angle of view for people seated on chairs rather than on the floor. This view also reveals two of the owners' passions: Sue is a practitioner of ikebana (flower arranging), while a Chinese scholar's rock is a sample from Ian's collection. Together, the two living spaces comprise the heart of the house and its most traditional space. This portion of the house was modelled on the hiroma (lit. `large space') of two guest houses at Onjo-ji (Miidera) in Otsu City near Kyoto. These two buildings, the Kojoin of 1601, and the Kangakuin, datable to 1600, are both designated National Treasures. Both were proportioned according to the kiwari system utilized by Shimoi, and indeed are very similar in their floor plans to examples published in the Shomei carpentry manual. The dimensions of all the other rooms in the house were derived from the proportions of this central living area. The final major space in the main pavilion of the Wilson house is the kitchen (Fig. 11). In an age of servants and large living compounds, the kitchen would have been relegated to a less prominent location. But here the ingenuity of the design team and their clients in adapting Japanese form to the practical conveniences of contemporary life is most striking. A floor of French limestone was cut into panels and edged in wood, abstracting the module usually represented by tatami mats. The main work space faces the finest views of the water garden that the house has to offer, making cooking and cleaning restful endeavours rather than chores. Cabinets have been designed with a simplicity that complements the elegant carpentry of the building's structure. Sue Wilson contributed the focal point to this room by designing a top for the island which doubles as a work and dining surface. The top was finished using a gloss red over black, with the red rubbed through in places to reveal the black layer beneath. The technique is derived from Japanese Negoro ware lacquer work, but in this case made with a more durable material: automotive lacquer - similarly named but chemically quite distinct. These three rooms house the more public side of the Wilsons' retreat. A separate pavilion contains the single bedroom, dressing, and bathing suite (Fig. 12). The sleeping pavilion is reached by an engawa at the end of the summer living room (see Fig. 5). This pavilion is the least strictly Japanese element of the house in terms of its overall form in that it breaks from the rectilinear module in response to the house site (see Fig. 3). The bathing area is closest to the living pavilion and shifted slightly off axis; the bedroom is skewed at a more pronounced angle to occupy the most private spot on the site while commanding some of its most expansive views (Fig. 13). In the sleeping pavilion's interior design the simple, open forms of the traditional Japanese house have again been adapted to contemporary use and complemented with careful, compatible detailing. Anigre wood veneers contrast subtly with the larch structure, book-matched limestone and the glass shower walls, harmoniously substituted for the traditional furo (bath). Sue Wilson's interest in Japanese crafts and her design talent are evident here in numerous details, from bronze shower pulls cast from a branch found on the property to the woodblock-printed hydrangea patterns created using traditional persimmon juice dyes on the fabric of the bedspread and window seat. The house in Mill Valley is a place of great beauty and serenity. But what significance does it have beyond the delight it creates for owners and visitors? The answer may be approached by first noting some of the things it is not. It is not the avant-garde product of a name-brand architect, nor the opulent status-marker of a celebrity lifestyle. Nor is it a museum-piece simulation of an anachronistic alien tradition. The Wilson house represents the idea of multiculturalism in its best aspects. Talented and skilled individuals, having access to the resources drawn from a broad span of time and space, and dedicated to a deep understanding of those resources, are capable of creating new forms and expressions of a uniquely rich and resonant type. The house validates both the continuing relevance of Japanese craft traditions and design principles, and the creative opportunities afforded by contemporary attitudes and technology. The Wilson house could only be a product of our time and place, but embodies the timeless and placeless qualities of human creativity.