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Letting the light in
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For local architects, certain materials are de rigueur. Timber, rock, and, of late, rusty metals. Oddly, one of the region’s cheapest and most plentiful materials had fallen into disuse. But it’s made a comeback.
Light, an electromagnetic radiation that renders objects visible to the human eye, had become minimized in regional architecture. Frequently blocked by mountains of darkly stained logs, some 250 days per year of Wyoming sunlight remained under-utilized. Happily, the free heat and hard-to-price emotional inspiration of sunlight is back in style.
Logs made sense once upon a time. In the middle of a wilderness, the best building material is the nearest building material. Thus began the romantic tradition of “the national park style”: large log buildings with relatively small openings. Ungainly at large scale and porous (one architect calls log homes “insect storage”), logs remain prominent, as adornment if nothing else.
Local architects avoid the term “modern architecture.” Individualism prevails. “I design around a client’s needs, his lifestyle, his objectives,” says Roger Strout. “It’s not dependent on ‘a style.’” Strout’s colleagues share that sensibility. Here are sunlit buildings, with annotations, by four local architectural firms. All of them were honored in 2011 by the American Institute of Architects.
The entire article can be read in the Winter 2012 issue of Jackson Hole Magazine.
