Imagination Illuminated

In the setting and sequencing of spaces, individuality is revealed

ARCHITECT ROGER Williams travels regularly to Asia, where he advises on sustainability strategies and designs. He was president of the American Institute of Architects-Seattle in 1987-88, and chairman of the Japan-America Society. Until 2004, he was a principal in Mithun, an architecture firm with about 200 employees in Seattle. Today, he wears many hats: architect, community-planning adviser, public speaker, wood-products consultant, lighting expert and photographer. He and his wife, Connie, have lived in Seattle since 1972. We talked with him about his career and the three-bedroom, three-bath house he built for his family in Seattle's Montlake neighborhood.

Q: This house looks modern and fresh. When was it built?

A: We built it for under $150,000 in 1983. That was our fixed budget. We started at 2,200 square feet and now have something like 2,500, by enclosing deck areas to make it more usable. We sometimes contemplate more remodeling, but wind up going to Italy instead.

Q: What are its key elements?

A: I call this a kit of parts. I tried to include the special qualities and sequence of spaces to meet our lifestyle, or the possibility for a changing lifestyle. This house worked very well when we had a teenager, with all of her friends, and it works for our entertaining and daily living. The spaces are not predictable, but they are comfortable. It is intuitive. I think that's what houses should be. They can also be avant-garde and jarring, but that's for a certain client, and that's not us. People are very comfortable in this house, and that's partly the result of having particularized the scale of the spaces. The whole house is on a 3-foot 6-inch, 3-foot 6-inch grid — three-dimensionally, which saves on building costs — and people intuitively know how to move through it.

Q: In what ways were you ahead of your time here?

A: Siding, for one. Corrugated steel over plywood. I didn't want to use cedar for environmental reasons. We looked around at what was available at that time that was weatherproof, and steel was so cheap. I've always focused on energy consciousness and site — not just a location's terrain and landscaping, but a building's orientation as it pertains to energy consumption and what that does for the occupants' spirits.

Q: What else?

A: I used a garage door off the dining area for part of our solar-heat-gathering mechanism. I came up with this use independently of the Miller-Hull (Miller/Hull Partnership) use of garage doors. I hadn't seen theirs, though we wound up doing it about the same year. Their door was vertical and slid; mine rolls up. The little sunroom next to it is a bonus room. In the winter, the leaves are off the maple, the sun is low and sunlight comes in to heat the concrete floor, so it's a quasi-passive-solar arrangement. We can open up inner doors, to the thermal barrier, to warm the dining area.

By Easter, we open the big bifold doors and put in two tables to seat 20 people; we do that several times a year. In summer, we can open both sets of doors and our dining room becomes a terrace, shaded by the maple.

Q: This house seems expansive, given the number of divisions. How did you accomplish that?

A: Small rooms throughout the house are linear, yet allow a view through portals from one end of the house to the other; one space interacts with the other. The living room looks down through dining room, to kitchen, to family room. I call these dividers my version of shoji screens. My wife and I lived in Japan for a year, early on, when I was an architect in the service. And the S-shaped divider leading up to the living room is to break that predictability of the screens. It directs you from one grid to the next.

Q: What would a prospective client learn about your architectural philosophy and style from looking at this house?

A: If it were a different site, it would be a different house, obviously. This is exactly the same wood frame you would see in Issaquah, or Boston, or Santa Fe, the same kit of parts. The question, then, is how you introduce your own style, your own identity within the box. That's what architects are for, to spark that imagination. I don't live to insert my style, or vocabulary, into projects. For me, it's an exploration of other people's imagination and then a channeling of that. I can offer my experience with space and light, and color and sight, to get the most out of a space. You hear architects say our job is to educate the client, but that seems very elitist. Maybe one could say we inform and illuminate, and then guide. I don't know everything, but I know more about certain things than you do as a client, and that's why you came to me. So let's talk about these things. You can talk me out of it, or I may talk you into it, and hopefully we'll find why things fit together into a whole.

Q: What drew you to architecture?

A: My grandfather was kind of a renaissance person, so I was always tinkering and building things with him. And, I liked to draw. I remember in the third grade, during recess, building models of California missions out of found objects. When I had a train set, I spent more time building the environment than I did with the trains. I have always liked designing things. I'll never retire.

Dean Stahl is a Seattle freelance writer. Benjamin Benschneider is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff photographer.