AIARE Obie Bowman Home/Studio Tour

AIARE Obie Bowman Home/Studio Tour

Perhaps the thing I find most vital about the AIA is simply its role as a cultural place where architects are able to gather and cultivate a deeper understanding of each other and the trade they represent. Covid made it hard for architects in this way. During the lockdown, we were still tasked with designing physical places, but the AIA meeting “places”  became virtual. I know for myself, it felt a little ironic and depleting. 

I have the privilege to serve as the 2023 president of the Redwood Empire chapter of the AIA. This year we are scheduling a tour of Obie Bowman’s personal residence. The home and studio is built as a bridge that spans the small creek on his property and is not to be missed. Beyond an abiding respect for Obie’s work, a tour of his home feels like a great way to rekindle our connection to this specific place. Obie has made a career of celebrating its natural beauty.

Many years ago, before getting my license, I had the good fortune to work with Obie Bowman here in Sonoma County. Obie often works with rough sawn lumber, whole logs and other natural materials. The contractors he works with are often accomplished carpenters. These builders are necessarily plugged into the lumber industry. Lumber is - practically speaking - “what we have to work with” here in the Redwood Empire. To speak to Obie and his team about building, is also to learn about where you live. While I worked for Obie, I learned how well unfinished redwood worked out at the coast. It was beautiful the way it would naturally silver up and endure for a surprisingly long time. Further inland, this approach would not work, because it was the salt air that kept the wood from becoming moldy. Obie provided a place where one learned about all the different lumberyard finishes and dressings you could put on different species of wood. He studied how a careful consideration of these options could avoid unnecessary finish appliqué later on. But to speak of this in purely expedient terms would be a mistake. The careful consideration of these options generated a kind of “inevitable beauty” born out of any deliberate and thorough design process.

When I joined Obie’s office for my brief tenure, the architectural industry didn’t really value the principles we now call “sustainable design” in any kind of mainstream way. Obie himself would likely not self identify as an environmentalist, and certainly would not want to become preoccupied with a LEED certification. To me, Obie’s work has always sought to use local natural materials in a way that both celebrates those materials and also provides a sensitive receptacle from which one can experience the ecstatic natural beauty associated with the more remote regions of our locale. It is a kind environment architecture (without the “-al”) that insinuates us into the natural world more effectively than many more dutifully green projects. It does in the surprisingly direct way of implicating the house design sensitively  into its surroundings and demonstrating a meaningful relationship with local materials.

All this to say, that it seems highly appropriate that we kick off this year’s AIA home tours with a visit to Obie’s own “bridge” home and studio where we can reconnect with design work strongly rooted in our place and rekindle the virtues of our physical community. Please visit the following link to join the tour. I look forward to seeing you there.