{ou ter sa nc tum}
What does work, however, is the whole
crazy evolution of this double-decker retreat. Comforting, vernacular, quirky and education- al, it is a prince of shed-dom.
[ ‘IT COMES ALIVE’ ]
Owners Jennifer Watson and Barry Bless
Location Glenn Mountain, 120 miles west of Richmond
Style Modernist
Floor area 64 square feet
Highlights Green roof, translucence
Barry Bless and Jennifer Watson designed their shed in amherst, Va., to resemble a noguchi lamp. By day it stores tools; at night, it’s a stage for shadow theater.
I
have a friend who has fashioned his nar- row back yard in Georgetown into a Zen garden of moss and ginger and ferns. At the bottom is a tiny wooden shed, and in its window a lamp by Isamu Noguchi
glows faintly at night. Illuminated, the square paper shade draws the eye through the space and adds a romantic narrative to the garden. But what if you were to turn your whole
shed into a Noguchi lamp or a facsimile of it? That was the mission of Jennifer Watson and Barry Bless, a Richmond couple who have a weekend home on six acres on Glenn Moun- tain, 120 miles west of the city, where the Blue Ridge crosses Amherst County. Watson, a Web developer, is a former architectural photogra- pher who has always been drawn to utilitarian structures and industrial design. For separate exhibitions, she photographed
Quonset huts and garden sheds, the latter in the trolley car suburb of Richmond named Woodland Heights. “I just love small buildings that aren’t— What’s the word? — they’re not pretentious.”
This fondness for stylish but honest architec-
ture is best seen in the couple’s house, designed as the edgy, mass-produced LV Home by archi- tect Rocio Romero. Less than 1,200 square feet, the two-bedroom house appears much larger. Its entrance facade is of corrugated metal, but once you enter, you find yourself looking out the far wall of glass into the woods. A grove of pines contains a terrace. In the
evening, Watson and Bless sit here for a bit of adult time over a beer or glass of wine while looking back at the house to see Isadora and Odessa, their 9-year-old twin daughters, in- side. It’s like peering into an aquarium. Then the dusk fades to darkness. At night
in these hills, nature’s nocturnal embrace is of an unbounded blackness, not the comforting blinkers of sleep’s threshold, but an opaque blan- ket that renders the eyes useless and the mind too active. Watson can hear the cast of animals changing, to a night-shift crew of insects and mammals. Often, the foxes sing like banshees. One of the darkest corners of the property
is at the far edge of the house, away from its wash of light. Here, the couple needed a shed to store tools and to visually anchor a small herb and flower garden. Watson wanted a shed that would have the idiosyncratic charm of Woodland Heights and yet would echo the contemporary feel of the house. They knew it would be an eight-foot cube and that it would somehow glow. “We wanted it to have light, to be translucent,
so it would mimic the house in a way,” she said. They were inspired by luminescent concrete
they saw at an exhibition at the National Build- ing Museum but knew they couldn’t afford it. Instead, they found corrugated polycarbonate panels used for greenhouses. Getting the interior illumination right re-
quired trial and error. A low-voltage landscape spotlight created the desired level and suffusion of light. Bless, a musician and stay-at-home dad, framed the structure with posts at the corners, to hide them, and then added thin ver- tical and horizontal stringers that would give the finished shed the look of a paper lamp. By day, it seems unusual but not special.
It’s certainly functional, and houses tools and some garden fertilizer. Bless used pond liner to create a roof garden of sedums. Even with the green roof, by day, “it’s al-
most unnoticeable,” Watson said. At night, “it comes alive.”
22 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | september 19, 2010
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