Labyrinth

Here, house and garden are developed as an integrated series of architectonic walls and planes, architectural materials expand into the garden and landscape surfaces extend into the house. After traveling through a labyrinth of intimate and private outdoor spaces, one opens the front door of the house, to reveal the unobstructed panorama of Elliott Bay and the City of Seattle. Using the ancient Japanese principle of borrowed scenery, shakkei, middle-ground views of adjacent houses, streets, and rooftops are eliminated. In this way, more distant landscape elements from the park and neighborhood trees are “borrowed” to become part of this house and garden. The journey from street to house presents a series of unanticipated experiences involving the sound of water, changes in grade and direction, spatial compression and expansion, and contrasting textures and materials. The result, in a dense urban neighborhood, is remarkable privacy.

Architect: George Suyama, Suyama Peterson Deguchi