Residential Designer Peter MacDonald

Interview by Irene Rawlings

Mountain Living: What is your design philosophy?
Peter Stafford MacDonald: Talking about design and/ or architecture is always difficult. The Finnish Architect Alvar Aalto once famously returned the advance he had received from his publisher after working on a book for over a year.  He sent it with no transcript, just a note saying, "When I write three words about architecture I inevitably come to understand that two of them are wrong."  (My Paraphrase)   With that qualifier in mind, I will speak briefly about how I approach design and have developed my design philosophy.

Another story about Aalto related to me by my theory professor when I was in architectural school many years ago has influenced how I approach design.  He said that when Aalto would begin to design he first would study the problem intensely.  He would look at the parameters from all directions and explore every detail of the programmatic requirements. Perhaps this would take months and he would frequently set the project aside for a time. Then when the time was right, he would clear his table, put down a blank sheet of paper and with a broad tipped, soft leaded pencil he would make a jester on the sheet.  The story goes that from that gesture the whole design would emerge.
  
There is a similar story about Frank Lloyd Wrights and the design of the Kaufmann house, known to most of the world as "Falling Water."  The story recounted by one of the Taliesin apprentices who witnessed it describes how Wright began the design by going to the site and spending a great deal of time walking and studying the site.  He then directed his apprentices to make a detailed study of the complex topography of the site, noting the exact locations of all the natural stone outcroppings, the depth of the ponds and eddies formed by the swirling descending stream around which the home would eventually be conceived.  He then returned to his studio where, according to his apprentices he put the drawings in a drawer and did not touch them for nearly a year.  One day a phone call came from Mr. Kaufmann that he was in Milwaukee and was anxious to see the development of the design for his new home.  Wright graciously greeted him saying, "E.J. come along" and invited him to his studio that was 140 miles away.  In those 140 miles that Kaufman traveled to arrive at the studio, Wright, with his apprentices watching, produced from a blank sheet of paper the site topography drawings for the most famous home ever designed.  When Kaufmann arrived just two hours and twenty minutes later Wright greeted him, invited him into the studio to review the completed design and calmly stated,  "E.J. we've been waiting for you."  The drawings, plans, elevations, and building sections produced in that burst of creative flame were a fairly exacting representation of a design which has arguably become one of the most famous pieces of architecture ever produced.

These stories illustrate that something very complex is going on in the human being when we take on the task designing.  Forces both studious and rational and others seemingly mystical would seem to be at work.   When we design we are acting as a complex synthesizing agent of both the practical and the intuitive.  We are blending together many complex parameters into what will hopefully become a pleasing and functional whole.  Design has a quality of both the practical and the romantic.  We do not imagine design as purely calculation, math, or problem solving.  We recognize that with these aspects there is also the need to create beauty.  This being the case, it seems we need to engage our practical and artistic natures.  This for me has always been the allure of architecture, that it requires that we use both sides of our brains in a complex dance. 

So, finally, the answer to the question, "What is my theory of design?"; good design comes into existence not through executing a theory, but though placing oneself in the middle of the reason and intuition and exploring a design problem systematically while engaging one's intelligence completely. To design is to first learn every aspect of the problem; what will go into the making of this new object, place, and architecture. After this rigor, the next step is to learn to harness our unique and profound faculty for intuition and to reach deep into this intuition to in a moment create the broad gesture which will, if done well, provide the overarching structure into which the myriad of details and practicalities of the design will find their place... hopefully with a quality of the poetic.

ML: Please talk about designing green.
PSM: I think designing green is about finding context in architecture.  Architecture is always about a place and in the mountains this is more obvious than just about anywhere.  The mountains are nature pounding her chest and announcing... don't mess with me... look at my grandeur... look at my abundance.  To build something that relates to that context seems to demand that the work is, in both a practical and symbolic way, deeply imbedded and assembled from nature itself. 
   
Designing green has many aspects; recognizing the nature of the planetary system we are all a part of; working within her abundance and limits; acting as a collaborator with nature, not a conqueror.  In practical terms this means selecting sustainable materials, limiting waste, utilizing state of the art insulation, heating, ventilating systems to create a structure that does not waste natural resources and building it strong and tight like a well built ship so it lasts.  In doing so we hope that what we make will last many generations and that the seeds of the trees that provided the lumber that built it will be thick and tall forests long before it loses its ability of shelter and nurture its inhabitants. This type of sustainability is at numerous levels, technical, practical, and cultural.
   
There is a good quote about this by John Ruskin; "When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone. Let it be such work that our descendants will thank us for..."

ML: How do you start a project? How did you start with this project?
PSM: Like Aalto and Wright I start by studying.  Studying the site--its vistas, how the sun moves across it, where will the storm track come from?  I study the clients and in the case of a speculative home like this, I study the potential home owner by looking at the demographics of potential buyers, owners of homes I have done near by, and by asking myself, how would I want to live here.  In the case of this project we studied all the newest green means and methods of construction, looking to discover the state of the art and how it might be applied to this project. 
 
ML: What are the steps in the design process?
PSM: We start, as we have discussed, with a study phase, called in our industry the Programming Phase, where we ask questions and seek out our parameters in detail.  Next, is Schematic Design.  This is the broad stroke gesture phase where the core ideas of the design emerge.  In the next phase we ask questions and look to critique and refine the first gesture.  This phase is conducted collaboratively with the owner, developer, contractor, energy consultant, interior designer and architect and is called Design Development.  Following Design Development is reality check time where we explore costs to build the design. Every project has a budget and we use both our collaborative expertise here, as well as the building contractor and their subcontractors.  Feedback is funneled back into the design development of the project until we feel confident that we have solved the problems we have set out to solve. Hopefully through this process we have created a structure that will function well practically, cost what we want it to, and has become a true object of desire and grace on the landscape.  Then, we roll up our sleeves and get on the technical drawings that will instruct to the builder on how exactly to build this thing.  This is the Working Drawing or Construction Document Phase of the process.  When this is done it's off to the races with Final Permitting and Bidding and on to the Construction Phase.
 
ML: How involved is the homeowner?
PSM: The homeowner is "collaborator and chief", the one who commissions the creative process and is therefore the client with all its privileges and obligations.  The client's privilege is to be in the center of a dynamic creative process often lending voice to their vision of the home and how they or others might live in it.  Collaboration is a dynamic giving and taking process where at times one leads and at times one follows. Like dancing, it's important to know when to do which.
 
ML: Do you do sketches, drawings, and models?
PSM: Yes, all of these.  We use sketching in the early stages then move to more defined drawings and computer models flesh out the design.  We have a wonderful time returning to our childhood creativity making pretty pictures and models for our clients and ourselves.  It truly is a wonderful part of the work to be able to be an artist with these tools... helping the client and ourselves to visualize what it is that we are making.

ML: What were/are some of the challenges of this project?
PSM: The site itself is challenging.  A switchback road wraps it, which is a challenge to the privacy of the house.  This challenge turns out to be the reason we did many things with the design of the home.  First of all both the client and I immediately thought that the house should be shaped to create a large private courtyard at its center.  In this way are using the shape of the structure to provide privacy.  Next the idea emerged to split the garages using them as buffers to the side of the lot where the road is the closest.  We also used these split garages with their long, dormer-less roof forms to hold an array of solar collectors which will power the home in part.  Next we used the topography of the site to elevate the main floor high above the lower section of the loop road and used broad decks to act as visor screens to the street while also framing the incredible views to the Red and White Range to the north.  Lastly, the landscape design employs very natural landform shaping and native plant plantings to provide screening and privacy.

The second major challenge came from the fact that the courtyard shape of the home created an unfortunate outcome in that over fifty percent of the home's roof would have dropped its rain and snow into that courtyard.  In a house of this size there is a considerable amount of displacement of perspiration that hits the roof where once it met the ground and then would have percolated into the water table.  To deal with these two challenges we decided to shape the roof at the courtyard as two large scuppers, which will direct the snow and rain down to catchment basins north of the center courtyard.  These bastions will be designed, as small wetlands.  These wetlands will capture all of this displaced moister and clean and filter it as the water slowly descends into the water table.  In this way we are making the design a steward of the rain it displaced.  I think the solution here is very green in action and the form is also very expressive of the deeper ideas about our connection to the cycles of nature that we are exploring in the design of this home.


Peter Stafford MacDonald and Company
Minnesota office:
1641 Hennepin Avenue
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403
612-333-1822
www.macandco.net

Colorado office:
2800 Midland Avenue, #107E
Glenwood Springs, CO  81610
970-947-9616
www.macandco.net

Video by David Foxhoven