What’s most vital about the AIA is simply its role as a cultural place where architects are able to gather and cultivate a deeper understanding of each other and the trade they represent. Covid made it hard for architects in this way. During the lockdown, we were still tasked with designing physical places, but the AIA meeting “places” became virtual. For me, that felt a little ironic and depleting.
I have the privilege to serve as the 2023 president of the AIA’s Redwood Empire chapter. This year we are hosting a tour of Obie Bowman’s personal residence. The home and studio are built as a bridge that span the small creek on his property and is not to be missed. Beyond an abiding respect for Obie’s work, a tour of his home feels like a great way to rekindle our connection to this specific place. Obie has made a career of celebrating its natural beauty.
Many years ago, before getting my license, I had the good fortune to work with Obie Bowman here in Sonoma County. Obie often works with rough sawn lumber, whole logs and other natural materials. The contractors he works with are often accomplished carpenters. These builders are necessarily plugged into the lumber industry. Lumber is - practically speaking - “what we have to work with” here in the Redwood Empire. To speak to Obie and his team about building is also to learn about where you live.
While working for Obie, I learned how well unfinished redwood worked out at the coast. It’s beautiful the way it naturally silvers up and endures for a surprisingly long time. Further inland, this approach can be less effective because the salt air at the ocean helps keep the wood from becoming moldy.
Obie provided a place where one learned about all the different lumberyard dressings you could put on wood. He studied how a careful consideration of these options could avoid unnecessary finish appliqué later on. But to speak of this in purely expedient terms would be a mistake. The careful consideration of these options generated a kind of “inevitable beauty” that is born out of any deliberate and thorough design process.
When I joined Obie’s office for my brief tenure, the architectural industry didn’t really value the principles we now popularly call “sustainable design”. Obie himself would likely not self identify as an environmentalist, and certainly would not want to become preoccupied with a LEED certification.
Author Michael Pollen, in recounting the history of agriculture in America, tells how the term “organic” became a useful marketing term for corporate America and - as a consequence - lost much of its meaning. By contrast, many of the early practitioners of organic farming were just small farmers trying to do the right thing in their community. I think of Obie, and other architects who developed their craft in the days following the inception of the Sea Ranch, as being part of a similar movement that belongs to the Redwood Empire.
To me, Obie’s work has always sought to use local natural materials in a way that both celebrates those materials and also provides a sensitive receptacle from which one can experience the ecstatic natural beauty associated with the more remote regions of our locale. It is a kind of “environment” architecture (without the “-al”) that insinuates us into the natural world more effectively than many more dutifully “green” projects. It does this by simply implicating the house design sensitively into its surroundings and demonstrating a meaningful relationship with perennially available local materials.
All this to say, it seems fitting that we kick off this year’s AIA home tours with a visit to Obie’s own “bridge” home and studio, where we can reconnect with design work strongly rooted in our place and rekindle the virtues of our physical community. Please visit the following link to join the tour. I look forward to seeing you there.
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