D. L. James House

Carmel, California. USA
Charles Greene, architect

Location

Located three miles south of Carmel, California on a beach cliff is the D. L. James House. Designed by Charles Greene, of Greene & Greene brothers notoriety, this house was designed and built to be the retirement residence of Mr. James and his wife.

It is interesting to note that the house is built directly onto the rock cliff. For this reason we assume the rock in the cliff, and thus in the house, to be igneous. That is, a very strong type of rock.

History

To keep the form of the structure more organic, Charles did two things in particular. One, he had all the footings of the walls start from solid bedrock. So, where a concrete beam or small arch could have spanned between the two sides of a fissure in th e rocks under a footing, Charles instead had the mason start the footing forty-five feet down the cliff on a solid purchase of bedrock. Two, Charles instructed the mason to start and stop the coursework of all the walls in a random fashion. This way, th ere is no definitive horizontal latering. In contrast with uniformly built masonry walls, the walls of the D.L. James house seem to grow up out of the ground as if they had been there for a very long time.

Physical Description

The building is a beautiful stone house with approximately 2,000-3,000 square feet of floor space. It is sited facing west overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The basic plan of the house is a double "U" form. Much of the shape of the house, in plan, is a re sult of the tight quarters of the site. The stone which makes up the walls of both the house and the surrounding terraces, as well as the floors of the terraces, quarried from a site three quarters of a mile from the site, is a perfect match to the site. In many places it is difficult to see where the natural rock of the beach cliff stops and the finely laid stonework of the mason begins. Capped with a red baked tile roof, it is clear that this stone house was derived from both the California missions and the stone ruins of England. The choice of interior finish was plaster, but the plaster was not troweled for a smooth finish. Rather it was applied roughly to compliment the rugged beauty of the exterior and the site. The redwood framing for the roo f was left exposed in the living room to develop further the character of the house as a remembrance of buildings from ages past.

We assumed the spacing of the beams in the living room to be about six feet on center. The roof framing throughout the rest of the house is typical residential wood framing, sixteen or twenty-four inches on center. The walls of the house are solid stone , varying in thickness of two to three feet.

Building Process

Structural Descripton/Aspects

Vertical Load
The climate in Carmel is mild. It only snows once in twenty years, according to a classmate of ours who is from there. As the roof has an estimated slope of 4:12 rise over run, the load created by heavy rain is minimal. Therefore, the vertical loads th e building must resist come almost exclusively from the weight of the structure itself. Starting on the exterior we find red, baked clay tiles set in mortar. Underneath this layer, we assume that there is a layer of tar paper. Next, the sheathing mater ial, we assume it to be 1 x 8 inch ship lap boards, where the framing is not visible, and 1 x 4 inch tongue and groove where the roof framing is visible, such as in the living room. Thus, the wood frame roof system is the main load at the top of the peri meter wall. At the bottom of the wall its own weight, when added to that of the roof, accounts for the vertical load.

The roof framing system differs internally between the exposed, load bearing beams of the living room and the typical residential framing found in the rest of the house where the ceilings are plastered. Starting with the living room, the exposed beams re st only on the walls. There is no ridge beam to support the beams on their upper ends. This transfers some lateral load to the walls as well as vertical loads. We assume this by looking at the floor plan of the living room. It shows no indication of a ridge beam, but does show the presence of other beams. This is further confirmed by examination of the longitudinal axis of the room where we find a large window at one end and a relatively small portion of wall at the other. One would expect more thic kness in the wall at these points, if it were bearing the load of the roof. Looking at the wall where we know, without a doubt, that the beams are bearing, we see a definite thickening of the wall directly under the ends of the beams. The more typical f raming of the rest of the house sits on the walls with very little lateral load created by its presence. A load on the roof over this part of the house would transfer down along the rafters to the wall. There, its lateral loads would be resolved by the collar ties, or ceiling joists, which connect to the roof rafters at their bottom ends creating a triangular shape to a roof framing bay. Returning to the load, we see it now pass into the walls where it is taken down to the footings. The footings then pass the load into the ground where it is dissipated.

Lateral Load
The lateral loads that the building whithstands are winds from the ocean, the lateral component of the loading from the beams in the living room, and occasionally, earthquakes. We believe that the design force of the wind for the California coast is 80 m ph. The highest lateral load that any portion of the stone wall would receive is the force of the wind straight on, or perpendicular to the direction of the wind. The two foot thick wall at eight feet high is still thick enough, we believe, to easily wi thstand this force, simply because of its mass. The other constant lateral load comes from the living room rafters. In both cases, the resultant force vectors would follow lines similar to those that one finds when examining Gothic cathedrals. That is, the lateral force the wall receives, is not great enough to overcome the vertical force of its own dead weight, along with that of the roof. Thus, the resultant force vector gets directed downward at a sharp enough angle to pass out the middle third of the wall at its base. This is assuming that calculating the loads will prove this out. We guess it will be a good candidate for mathematical examination on the next portion of the case study.

Conclusions

Bibliography

Last Name, First Name. Book title. Publisher, City. year. ISBN Number.
Last Name, First Name. Book title. Publisher, City. year. ISBN Number.
Last Name, First Name. Book title. Publisher, City. year. ISBN Number.
Last Name, First Name. Book title. Publisher, City. year. ISBN Number.

Associated Buildings

Gordon Hicks and Yi-Hsiu Yeh
ARCH 461/561 Spring 1995

Do you have questions about adding a case? or a building to suggest??????? send a message to me....... chrisl@aaa.uoregon.edu