Sala House: Hand-painted children’s bedroom alcoves – Photographs

Scientific Research

Color and Inner Light: The Eleven Color Properties

Areas of focus:

Structure of Space

Guiding idea:

Centers and Fields of Centers

Christopher Alexander postulated that centers and the field of centers they create are the building blocks from which wholeness is made. However, he further argued that geometry alone is not sufficient, and that color is the way wholeness comes to ...

Projects

Sala House 1981 to 1983

700 Hillside, 94706, Albany, CA, U.S.A.

Residential, Realized , Construction completed in Jun-1983

Client:

Mr. & Mrs. Andre and Anna Sala

C.E.S. staff:

Christopher Alexander, Gary Black, Bob Smith, David Turtle, Seth Wachtel, Andre Sala

Contractor:

Center for Environmetal Structure

Project cost:

$180.000

Design and construction process:

1) Personal vision: C.E.S. worked with the Sala family to gain an understanding of their needs and to derive from them a deep and personal vision of their house. 2) Layout on the site: several sessions on the site, laying out the exterior edges of the house volume along with outside courtyards, completed by C.E.S. staff working with the Salas. The interior rooms of the ground floor were also laid out on the site. 3) Preparation of drawings: At the end of the layout process it was possible for C.E.S. to prepare a set of drawings for the building permit from the City of Albany. 4) Construction commences and design continues; C.E.S. was the general contractor, and so the design process which had been begun in the first phase was carried through the construction phase, with many crucial on-site design decisions being made weekly, even daily, while the house was under construction. 5) Finishing touches: Hand-painted woodwork, color, details, furnishings, were done by C.E.S. staff and construction crews.

Project stages:

Pattern language for the project by clients and C.E.S. Layout on the site by clients and C.E.S. Design Development and Building Permit drawings done after layout Use of full scale mock-ups Direct Construction management along with on-site design decis

Three-story tower, 20 feet by 20 feet in plan on each floor, on a wooded, sloping site. The interior structure of the house is wood post and beam with pine panelling and hand-painted surfaces, and the exterior is a red ...

Models & Mock-ups

The Sala House: Hand-painted children's bedroom alcoves 01/01/1983

Construction Innovation, Mock-up

Created by:

Christopher Alexander, Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, CA

Medium:

Array

Size:

9 1/8"x11 3/4" to 16 1/2"x26"

Scale:

Various

A series of paper mockups for testing the color harmony and the patterns to be used for the painting of the alcoves. Eight different trial tests with slight variations on the two colors to be used; testing patterns, distribution of ...

Photographs

Sala House: Hand-painted children's bedroom alcoves - Photographs 01/07/1983

Construction Innovation, Interior View

Photographer:

Mark Darley/Esto, Albany, CA, U.S.A.

Source:

Print

Characteristics:

15 3/4"x19 3/4", Color

Professional photograph of the corner of the room with the two hand-painted bed alcoves. It was exhibited during the 10th Annual Louis Kahn Memorial Lecture in 1992, where Christopher Alexander was invited to give a lecture, as well as at the ...