This is Emma's story of a home with dual personalities, much like the Chevrolet El Camino that inspired its name. Traditional suburban manners at the front, concealing a dramatically curved rear façade that embraced both intimacy and entertainment.
Greenwich, Connecticut
Architect: Burr Salvatore Architects Photographer: Tim Lee Completed while Emma was Project Manager at Burr Salvatore Architects
The story of El Camino began in the centre of a circle. Founded on a friendship between the client and interior designer, the El Camino House was to play a clever double game. The front adhered to proper suburban manners with its textbook gables and dormers, while the entire rear façade curved in a perfect arc. Greenwich, in the U.S. state of Connecticut, is a place where the summers are hot and humid, and the winters are cold and snowy. Just like the Chevrolet El Camino car, a combination of station wagon and utility vehicle, the El Camino house had to have two personalities. One of comfort and warmth protected from the outside world, and one of openness and spring, with spaces made for entertaining.
Some years earlier, we packed our belongings onto the Amtrak train in San Francisco and ten days later, we picked them up from Penn Station in our new home, New York City.
In a sublet in Alphabet City, an East Village neighbourhood that derives its name from the four Manhattan avenues with single-letter names, I began looking for work. I was temporarily housed in a former squat called ‘Serenity House’ on E 9 St, a building that had been abandoned, bought by the city, and then left to decay until it was occupied by squatters in the 1980s. In the early 2000s, with 11 squats remaining, the city agreed to allow the squatters to purchase the buildings for $1. Tenant cooperatives were formed to own and run the buildings. Now, here I was on the 4floor of a co-op owned by a journalist who had covered the squatter standoffs in the Village Voice and New York Times.
I found a job in Tribeca and every day I would walk 30 minutes each way, crossing the downtown avenues. Past St Mark’s church, heading diagonally up Stuyvesant Street, via the truncated building at the corner of 1St. Through Astor Place and left on Broadway before making a quick right on Waverly Place. Every day I crossed Washington Square Park diagonally, from corner to corner. A short walk up Bleecker to Carmine, before taking a left on Varick where the WeWork share office was located.
In summer the heat was suffocating as I descended into the subway to catch the three trains that would take me to Connecticut. One time I accidentally stepped onto a subway car with broken air-conditioning. Not confident enough to cross into the next car, I got off at the next station, exited the depths of hell and found refuge in an air-conditioned CVS. After a few minutes of lowering my internal body temperature, I went back down, this time, being careful to select an air-conditioned car.
In winter, snow covered the construction site and the house began to take shape. From the back of the house, an enclosed verandah space encircled the lawn, with the ceiling height set by a single roof pitch. This pitch then continued through to the second-floor bedrooms, creating attic-style rooms. From the backyard, the house appeared as a one-story home with dormer windows. From the front, the house emerged as a rendered two-story structure, anchored at the corners with brick buttresses. Throughout the house, the client’s personality was woven into the design decisions. The front door was small and solid, with a tiny peephole, reminiscent of a speakeasy entrance. The scullery door was designed to be double-acting, a swinging saloon door, inspired by commercial kitchens. El Camino strove to not take itself too seriously.
While working on El Camino, I was introduced to the work of architect C.F.A Voysey, an English architect, furniture and textile designer whose cottage-core and storybook designs spoke to my sense of curiosity. In my early years as an architecture student, I was introduced to Edna Walling, an Australian landscape architect working in the 1920s. Edna’s hand-drawn plans were etched into my memory along with the typography she used in her plans. The way the bottom part of the typography stretches, like the 'R' on the Rollinson Building on Brunswick Street, here in Fortitude Valley. Voysey’s work had this same quality.
I left New York City before the home was finished. Back home, I picked up a Vogue Australia magazine in the hairdresser featuring an article about Elizabeth Debicki of ‘The Crown’. Elizabeth was photographed outside my favourite Voysey home, The Homestead at Frinton on Sea, Essex. The El Camino story had come full circle.
Does your dream involve a little rebellion against the expected? Reach out if the ideas in this project resonate with the story you're beginning to write.
