A (Losing) Bauhaus Bathroom
section perspective of the proposed bathroom pavilion
Earlier this year Historic New England sponsored a design competition for a new restroom facility for the Gropius House in Lincoln, Massachusetts outside of Boston. Our particular proposal did not win, but as is often the case with these types of hypothetical exercises, the effort was worthwhile regardless of the outcome.
The GROPIUS HOUSE exists as an intentional assembly of contrasting architectural elements. From the public street to the north, it appears as a simple rectangular volume. But this geometry is revealed to be more complex and eroded when viewed from the private gardens to the south. When it was built, the design expressed emerging European ideas of modernism while simultaneously incorporating traditional New England building materials and traditions. The house was created as an optimistic vision of the future by a family of immigrant refugees fleeing the stark reality of a continent straining under the weight of totalitarianism.
The proposed SERVICE PAVILION accommodates the additional functional requirements of the house in its current role as a museum (accessible restrooms, general storage, tour assembly, etc.). It does this while establishing new architectural dualities that echo those established in the original design. Whereas the house and neighboring garage each read as distinct objects, the Pavilion can be understood as a porous assembly of smaller components. While the original structures are framed by the surrounding landscape, the new one recedes into it. If the historic buildings are painted a glistening white, the proposed intervention is rendered in a dark grey.
The ultimate goal is for the GROPIUS HOUSE to remain the architectural center of attention, retaining its role as the lead vocalist while the SERVICE PAVILION provides a backing counter-melody. The new and the old, the foreground and the background, the grey and the white, together create an aesthetic and functional collage that is greater than the sum of its constituent parts.
Few details of the winning submission have been released so far, but its design appears to call for it to be located similarly to what we had proposed.
location of the proposed bathroom pavilion (black) relative to the existing historic structures (white)
