Exemplar One

Stretto House

Stretto House is situated in Dallas, Texas and was designed by the architect Steven Holl. Construction started in 1989 and was completed in 1992. The house was originally designed for a couple to display their collection of art, not only this, but one of the clients had also grown up in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and therefore had an educated love of architecture. Steven Holl's website is http://www.stevenholl.com/

The house design is inspired by a piece of music by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, written in 1936. (Douglas Newby and Associates, n.d.) The basic ideas behind the form is that it reflects the music; the percussion adding hard beats while the strings lightly fly over the top. In fact, according to The Free Dictionary, the word Stretto is defined as "a close succession or overlapping of statements of the subject in a fugue, especially in the final section." Therefore the shape of this building relates to the overlapping of spaces or forms.

This particular piece of music has four parts, and therefore, this house has also been divided into four portions. Each "represents the structural copresence of alternating heavy and light elements: heavy orthogonal walls.....and light curved metallic roofs connecting them." (Capanna 2009, 265) This can be seen in the image depicted on the left.


It took Steven Holl six months to come up with a sketch that equated the complexity of Bartók's composition. Each meticulous detail was worked out to relate to various themes, whether it be the tonal differences between notes mathematically represented in structure, the shape of walls reflecting the sounds of various instruments (curved, straight etc) or the flow of space relative to the flow of the music. (Arnardóttir and Merina, n.d.)

The site this house sits upon has a stream running through it which collects in three distinct ponds, each with their own dam. As Steven Holl (n.d.) himself says, "the house projects the character of the site through a series of concrete 'spatial dams' with metal framed 'aqueous space' flowing through them." Another idea was that the water falling from one level onto another would create various tones which would constantly ring out across the site, adding their own form of music.

The floors within the house are all at various levels, further resonating the idea of music and overlapping pieces. This can been in seen the picture to the right. Another important aspect is that all the materials used are actually part of the Dallas vernacular, making it relevent to it's context. (Arnardóttir and Merina, n.d.)

Overall this is an impressive, albeit, complex piece of architecture, fully worthy of it's 1993 American Institute of Architects National Honour Award.

References

Arnardóttir, H. and Merina, J.S. n.d. Stories of Houses: The Stretto House in Dallas, by Steven Holl. http://storiesofhouses.blogspot.com/2006/04/stretto-house-in-dallas-by-steven-holl.html (accessed 10th March, 2010).

Capanna, A. 2009. Music and Architecture: A Cross between Inspiration and Method. Nexus Network Journal 11 (2). http://www.springerlink.com/content/852255179884l076/ (accessed 10th March 2010).

Douglas Newby and Associates. N.d. Architecturally Significant Homes. http://www.dougnewby.com/Architecture/Architecturally%20Significant/strettohouse.asp (accessed 12th March, 2010)

Holl, S. n.d. Stretto House.
http://www.stevenholl.com/project-detail.php?type=houses&id=26&page=1 (accessed 10th March, 2010).

The Free Dictionary. 2009. Stretto 
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/stretto (accessed 12th March 2010).