From the early 1950s, Paul Rudolph made the iconic Umbrella House. The dominant feature of the house is the big umbrella-like canopy that shades the front and back. Though the original wood umbrella construction fell prey to hurricanes, the owners of the house have rebuilt it with aluminum. While visually striking, the umbrella has a practical side, reducing the home’s heating costs by 30 percent.
In researching photos on , I had been struck by just how many contemporary houses have been motivated by the Umbrella House.
Ciulla Design
Here is the south side of this Umbrella House in the evening. Clearly, something to color all that south-facing glass is needed.
Ciulla Design
Along with the design of the umbrella arrangement clearly does wonders for the house. Imagine removing the structure. The only thing left would be a box that would be almost impossible to cool in the heat of a Florida summer.
Merzbau Design Collective
Houses in warm climates need shading devices. And the bigger the greater, as revealed here at Casa Peraguas by the Merzau Design Collaborative of Austin, Texas. From the ABA rhythm to the two-story wall of glass to the massive overhead canopy and detached columns, it is difficult not to see the similarities between this design and that of this Umbrella House.
WA Design Architects
As in the Umbrella House, this Berkeley, California, home incorporates an independent roof construction that extends out beyond the home’s exterior walls. The thin columns that support the roof produce a frame containing the home, as in the Umbrella House. The big difference here is how the house isn’t just a cube of distance. Rather, it is as if the Umbrella House were pulled apart and jostled to adapt a diiferent website.
Elad Gonen
The overall bigger size of the white frame of the house establishes a cube within a cube. The outer cube is connected to the inner cube with roof slats to create a shading device not unlike that of the Umbrella House.
Studio Kiss – ASAP House
Inside this house, the umbrella doesn’t extend over the entire home. Rather, the shading device is located just where absolutely desired to color the large expanses of glass combined what seems like a south-facing elevation. The shading device isalso, such as that of this Umbrella House, increased over the roofline and made to be independent of the major construction.
Webber + Studio, Architects
Certainly forgoing the columns behind the umbrella is an alternative, though doing so eliminates the cage and the layered spaces that are created by those columns. What is left is a shading device that, by drifting over the roof of the house and jutting out to the surrounding area, highlights the horizontal and open rather than the enclosed and defined.
Whether the color is produced by linear slats or fabric, the concept is the same, the desire to wrap and color the house. While the linear slats of this Umbrella House produce a distinct and shifting pattern of shadows around the home’s surfaces, fabric gives a colorful and kinetic experience.
Next: Hello Again, Umbrella House
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