ABSTRACT
My drawng above makes the settng of Condomnum One appear too comfortable, too lush wth trees, too calm. The Sea Ranch s a stretch of land along the Pacfic coast about one hundred mles north of San Francsco. The landscape there s rugged, the rocky edge of the land beaten by crashng waves and scoured by cool northwesterly wnds. The trees on the rght of the drawng are part of a ‘hedgerow’ of cypress trees, one of many along that part of the coast planted to break the strength of the wnds. Condomnum
be bult n ths landscape. Its archtects were Charles Moore, Donlyn Lyndon, Wllam Turnbull and Rchard Whtaker (MLTW). They worked n collaboraton wth Lawrence Halprn, a landscape desgner commssoned as master planner by the developers Oceanc Propertes. The overall am of the development was to provde vacaton and weekend propertes. The ntal ntenton was to do ths n the form of a seres of condomnums, lke Condomnum One, along the coast, nterspersed wth clusters of ndvdual dwellngs n
T W E N T Y B U I L D I N G S e v e r y a r c h i t e c t s h o u l d u n d e r s t a n d
bult a seres of demonstraton houses, called the Hedgerow Houses because they sought shelter from the wnd by nestlng aganst the hedgerows, shortly after Condomnum One. Subsequently the deals of the development, whch were enshrned n gudelnes and polced by a desgn commttee, began to break down and now the area does not enjoy the ntegrty of development that was promsed by the early schemes. At tmes Condomnum One was blamed for openng the door to such development. But ts value was recognsed n 2005 when t was put on the USA’s Natonal Regster of Hstorc Places. Its quntessental mage s as a small baston of humanty standng n the face of rugged nature. Its composton s remnscent of a clutch of farm buldngs, or even a tny tradtonal fishng vllage, set rght on the edge of the contnent wth vews across the open sea to the westernmost horzon. Its poetry s potent, evokng notons of poneers eventually reachng the Pacfic coast, tmeless relatonshps wth the land and sea, Henry Davd Thoreau and hs deas of ndependence and ndvdualty, John Stenbeck and hs heroc stores of early twenteth century workng (or unemployed) lfe n farmng communtes of the far west. It also evokes deas of smple but hedonstc lfestyles, the resources to own and enjoy a weekend home, the desre for escape from 1950s stuffiness and an aesthetc freedom assocated wth the decades after the Second World War and wth the begnnngs of the hppy generaton. In ther 1974 book The Place of Houses, the archtects confessed that ‘the condomnum buldng was the ntal attempt to make a communty’ (p. 34).
