LETTER 05. FIELD NOTES: SUMMER

There is a week May, every year, when the house quietly begins to expand.

Nothing has been built. No walls have moved. What’s happening is the French doors at the back of the house have been opened, and they will mostly stay open until September. The backyard is no longer just the view I mostly admire. It becomes another room. The pool and pool deck becomes another room. The garden is another room. The house, for four months, is twice the house it is in February.

This is one of the most important seasonal shifts in any home we design, and one that requires thoughtful design intent. Indoor-outdoor is not a feature. It is a way of living that the architecture has to be ready to absorb when the calendar turns. 

Here is what the ritual actually looks like, at my house:

The first weekend — Everything outside gets power-washed. The patio stone, the pool deck, the outdoor dining table, the bistro table + bistro chairs, the lounger frames. The smell of wet stone drying in the sun is the first real smell of the season. The furniture covers come off, and this little routine will repeat itself throughout the season.

The textiles — We pick an accent color for every summer. One color, carried across the pool towels, the striped floaties, the pillow cushions on the chaises, tablecloths and vases. This year is periwinkle blue. Last year was mustard yellow. The discipline of one palette across the outside is the same discipline I use across the inside — a single thread of color pulls a season together the way a single thread of stone pulls a kitchen together. The difference is that summer textiles get to be louder. Stripes are embraced in June that wouldn’t give quite the right feeling in January.

The florals — The vases come down, the kitchen transits that indoor-outdoor vibe. Peonies (my fave) all June. Playful color complimenting our chosen textile color theme for the season. The house begins to smell like the garden it is sitting in.

The cooking — No better summer smell than something smoking — slow, low, and on the grill, for most of the afternoon. The kitchen extends onto the patio. We eat “linner” outside more than inside. Iced coffee at the small French bistro table with the morning still cool. And sometimes, dinners that drift past 8pm with a night swim and colorful lights to follow.

The sound — The house gets louder in the best way. I love the energy of kiddos running between the kitchen and the pool. Huge splashes and the fountain flowing. Music low from the outdoor speaker. Sometimes we bring out the outdoor movie screen and popcorn machine into the eve. The acoustic profile of a summer house is its own design element, and I have come to believe it matters as much as the materials.

The smell — Sunscreen and tanning oil on warm skin. Salt water from the pool, faint, on a towel that is met by the sun. Fragrant garlic smoking from whatever is on the grill. Cut grass. The particular smell of a stone patio that has been hot all day and is finally cooling.

This is the part of design that doesn’t quite photograph and does not Instagram. You cannot stage the sound of a child running through a house with wet feet. You cannot photograph the smell of sunscreen on a folded towel. These are the parts of a home that only the people who live there will ever fully experience, and they are also — I have come to believe — the parts that matter greatly from the zoomed-out perspective of a lifetime.

A good house in June is one that has been designed, from the beginning, to know what to do when the doors open.

—xobe.