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 Michael Freeman, The living room of the De Napoli House (1987-1990) near Los Gatos, California, by American architect Stanley Saitowitz. Situated on the hills above Los Gatos and built on a woodes promontory pointing north towards San Jos, the single-storey De Napoli house is made of three parallel strands: a swimming pool and master wing; a living room and garden court; and a dining room/kitchen plus secondary bedrooms and services. These layers lside past each other as they align themselves along the ribbed contours of the site. Inspired by Machu Picchu and also by Mies van der Rohe and by Mexican architect Luis Barragan, the De Napoli residence is more of an earthwork than a house in the traditional sense. Everything here depends on the play of various terraces and rooms at slightly different levels, a syncopation entailingh subtle but telling changes in datum throughout. The result is a stepped podium in fair-faced stone that in its topographic character resembles the articulation of landscape that Mies first projected in his Brick Country House project of 1924. Out of such influences, Saitowitz has created a new work, the freshness and grandeur of which has rarely been equalled in recent years.
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 Frans Lanting / ASA / ASA, Ribbed membrane of a flying lizard, Draco volans, Borneo
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 Michael Freeman, The De Napoli House (1987-1990) near Los gatos, California, by American architect Stanley Saitowitz. Situated on the hills above Los Gatos and built on a woodes promontory pointing north towards San JosZ, the single-storey De Napoli house is made of three parallel strands: a swimming pool and master wing; a living room and garden court; and a dining room/kitchen plus secondary bedrooms and services. These layers lside past each other as they align themselves along the ribbed contours of the site. Inspired by Machu Picchu and also by Mies van der Rohe and by Mexican architect Luis Barragan, the De Napoli residence is more of an earthwork than a house in the traditional sense. Everything here depends on the play of various terraces and rooms at slightly different levels, a syncopation entailingh subtle but telling changes in datum throughout. The result is a stepped podium in fair-faced stone that in its topographic character resembles the articulation of landscape that Mies first projected in his Brick Country House project of 1924. Out of such influences, Saitowitz has created a new work, the freshness and grandeur of which has rarely been equalled in recent years.
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