organic architecture
I first came to St. Lucia in 1970 to work for a Canadian architectural firm based on the island. As it has turned out, I never left. The beauty of St. Lucia’s landscapes, the warmth and character of its people and the unlimited potential to create something very special here captured my imagination. It’s a Caribbean paradise one must experience personally to fully appreciate and understand. When I first encountered the property that is now home to Anse Chastanet and Jade Mountain in 1974, there was almost nothing here – a handful of small bungalows nestled in the rainforest across maybe five acres of land. Amenities included four aluminum umbrellas and four plastic lounge chairs on the sand, and there was a lady who sat at the bottom of the stairs leading to the beach. She had a cooler filled with Cokes and a bottle of local rum, enabling you to enjoy the beautiful setting and have a drink. But the occupancy rate was very low and nothing about the place beyond the setting would make
The late, great architect John Lautner is believed to have been among the first to conceive of and build a vanishing-edge swimming pool as a means of more directly tying views across the water into distant vistas. It's a landmark of modern aquatic design that has been emulated thousands of times in the 45 years since he designed "Silvertop" in Los Angeles, and it's wonderful to know that his spirit of innovation survives to this day in the company he started. The home and watershapes seen here are the work of Lautner's protégé and longtime collaborator, Helena Arahuete of John Lautner Associates (Hollywood, Calif.), who composed it all as a spectacular exploration of organic design principles and the use of water to express and magnify details of a setting while leading the
The late, great architect John Lautner is believed to have been among the first to conceive of and build a vanishing-edge swimming pool as a means of more directly tying views across the water into distant vistas. It's a landmark of modern aquatic design that has been emulated thousands of times in the 45 years since he designed "Silvertop" in Los Angeles, and it's wonderful to know that his spirit of innovation survives to this day in the company he started. The home and watershapes seen here are the work of Lautner's protégé and longtime collaborator, Helena Arahuete of John Lautner Associates (Hollywood, Calif.), who composed it all as a spectacular exploration of organic design principles and the use of water to express and magnify details of a setting while leading the
Looking for inspiration can be like mining for gold. You sift and pan through mountains of muck before unearthing a nugget of real value. And when you do come upon a resource that teaches and inspires you to reach for greater heights of creativity in your designs, the payback is a hundred-fold. Knowing where to look helps, and that's what this new column is all about. The first book I'll discuss is an unexpected treasure of incalculable value. Before I read The Architecture of John Lautner (text by Alan Hess, photographs by Alan Weintraub, published by Rizzoli, New York), I couldn't
