New Site

Hey everyone, I have a new blog/website.

http://benbye.wordpress.com/

Pt. Two: The garden

Here is the design for Billy Collins weekend retreat in the Cascades. The garden includes a dock, dining terrace, secret garden, small amphitheater, writer's hut, and villa.

Above is the design for the secret garden, a walled writing space surrounded by a Magnolia grove.

This is the dock with canoe shed and a small dining terrace

A Garden and Villa for Billy Collins... The Villa

For my first year architecture studio, we were asked to design a garden, small villa, and a writers hut for a poet, this is my final design for the Villa. The villa is 500 sqft. and is designed in response to a poem by Billy Collins about splitting wood. I was responding to his idea that two halves of wood are separate yet the same, they fall apart but share the same grain. To emulate that idea I designed a structure that has three spaces that each open to an similar yet separate outdoor space that shares a similar function. The bedroom opens to a sunrise sleeping deck, the living opens to the forrest, and the dining room opens to a dining deck the faces the lake and the setting sun.

These are photos of my finished writer's hut that I designed for poet Billy Collins. Now that the writers hut is completed, we are creating a small villa for the same plot of land, located on a mountain lake in the foothills of the cascades. The villa will face similar issues that the writers hut faced, including a steep slope and very small size. The villa is to be under 650 feet so it will have to be designed very compactly and with function at the top of priorities. Enjoy.