The Architecture of Possibility with West of West
Exploring the path to creating our expanded property with Jai Kumaran
This week we’re sharing another chapter in the ever-unfolding story behind our newly-expanded home for Antica Terra in Amity, OR.
Many of our best ideas are sparked by a merging of seemingly disparate references—when connections open up to reveal their interconnectedness, ushering in something bigger and greater than we could have imagined.
In this instance, when we began to sketch out the many possibilities across this vast, beautiful landscape, we knew one very important thing: we knew how we wanted to feel. We knew the kind of rare experiences we wanted to create, to share, to host in this place. We wanted reminders that magic can happen anywhere, that it is possible to step into a door and enter into a different world altogether. We wanted to go beyond time and place and yet…be exactly where we are, cocooned into the surroundings. To see, to feel, to taste, to smell, to celebrate. To arrive.
Fortunately, at just the right moment, we encountered West of West—our architectural & design collaborator in distilling this hare-brained, art school version of a master plan into a tactile, tangible reality where we can now sit together and share a nice long lunch (…and you are invited, of course. You may reserve a booking at any point this season by clicking here.)
To offer more context to the journey, we asked WoW’s architect and co-founder Jai Kumaran to indulge us in explaining the theory, ideas, and emotions that are communicated through space across our Barrel Hall and Table in the Trees, a 200-foot table weaving through the native oak savannah.
“To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond...” — bell hooks
The Barrel Hall
A study in 3 acts.
Act 1: Portals
Inspired by moving out of one universe and into another, we envisioned a space that offered itself up to discovery and surprise. It starts outside, with an embrace of the oblique…walking up to an exterior and not being sure of what awaits on the other side. Like a geode, moments where the nondescript can give way to wonder.
“I was very interested in how to control light—and the lack of light—in order to create a clear moment and marker of transition. From the outside world into somewhere entirely different, where the mood is reset and a new kind of presence is possible.”
“There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.” - Leonard Cohen
Act 2: Contrasts
Smooth / rough
Hot / cold
Light / dark
Lost / found
Outside / in
Act 3: Expansion Through Contraction
“The act of architecture is about making space, not a building or an object. Yes, it requires a form; a form is important. But for me, it is more important to discover how each place reverberates.”
- Bijoy Jain
Across the Barrel Hall, we explored the way a single material—native wood—could take on multiple forms, patterns, expressions, and characters…from built-in shelving to tables inspired by 19th-century workbenches.
In each tasting room, the entrance threshold is detailed with the Japanese woodworking technique, naguri—a symbol of arrival. (And something that you feel compelled to engage with, to touch, to wonder about).
The Table in the Trees
“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
- William Butler Yeats
Table in the Trees is a site-specific sculpture woven into the landscape of our native oak savannah.
Shaded under the tree canopy and dappled with the patterns of light, it’s an interconnected extension of the landscape it is part of.
“Time affects it, as do plants and the weather; it is in ongoing relationship with the earth and the surrounding landscape…”
Made from concrete, the Table was cast in place directly on the land; seeded by hand with stones from the site; and finished with a surface that subverts the typical idea of concrete, exposing the gemlike stones buried within it.
“The wild landscape moves through it and surrounds it. Each visit is different in subtle ways—a reflection of the slow, constant changes within the surrounding forest.”
“When you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must also repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the thing which you make takes its place in the web of nature, as you make it.”
- A Pattern Language, 1977
With gratitude to the collective team:
Architect: Jai Kumaran and West of West (project team: Jess Smith, Tom Adamson)
Structural Engineer: Workpoint
Fabricator: Collective Concrete (*Table in the Trees)
Contractor: R&H Construction (* Barrel Hall)
Landscape Design: OR.CA
Learn More:
Points of Illumination with Bennet Schlesinger
Notes from the Land
Antica Terra in T Magazine
Visit:
Join us this season in the Barrel Hall or Table in the Trees