Painting on Fridays: exploring landscape on canvas nurtures an architect's passion for the artfully sited house - Jeremiah Eck

Jeremiah Eck started his residential practice in Boston with $30 in his pocket and little more than a pencil to draw with. Twenty-eight years later, the firm is thriving and Eck, FAIA, has taken up a paintbrush, retreating to his backyard studio each Friday to work on his landscape canvases. It's site work of a different nature, liberated from the concerns of clients, contractors, deadlines, and the limitations of budgets, materials, and building codes. Eck has been approached by patrons wishing to commission paintings, but he resists. "I don't want to make it a job," he says.

Possibly, it's the perfect balance: pure art done for love and straightforward architecture done for a living. Of course, life is never that tidy and clear-cut. Eck has recently given in to a good friend's request for a commissioned painting, and he brings a great deal of art to his design of houses. His Web site, www.jearch.com, underlines his views up front on the home page: "We believe that architecture is an art and a service and, most importantly, that good clients make good architecture."

Good architecture and, specifically, good houses are very important to Eck, who's seen too few of the good, too many of the bad, and a recent proliferation of the abysmal during his career. "One-half of all single-family houses in American were built since I went into practice in the '70s," he says. "I remain interested in the million houses built each year without an architect. How do you touch the million people who are buying those houses? The sheer volume of the problem is staggering."

Eck understands that just one approach to solving the problem won't do much good. In practicing the best housing design he can, he's determined not to contribute to the disgrace. But he's also committed to playing a part in the solution. To that end, he's chosen a bilateral strategy--working with other architects to improve the quality of work they do and teaching the lay public about what constitutes good house design. Each year, he organizes a summer conference for residential architects at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. And he's just written a book, published by The Taunton Press, exploring and explaining the characteristics of The Distinctive Home. The book debuted the AIA/Taunton Press imprint, which seeks, through a series of books aimed at the general public, to build an understanding of and appreciation for the value of good design. In doing so, the AIA hopes this appreciation will trickle down to architects, strengthening the market for their professional services. Eck says the book has already brought jobs to his firm.

beyond monograph

The District Home. A Vision of Timeless Design organizes and synthesizes Eck's three decades of thinking and practicing custom home design. It pieces together the thousands of lessons he's taught his clients about houses, and the hundreds he's shared with would-be architects as an adjunct professor at Harvard. "After more than 20 years of practicing and teaching, it's not like I don't know this stuff," he says. "But it was the first time I put it down into words."

Like a custom home, the book took two and a half years from concept to construction to pull together. And during that process, it became clear to Eck that he wished to publish more than just a monograph on the firm. "What was the point of doing a book if I was just going to talk about my work? I wanted people to focus not on the personality of the architect but on the ideas themselves," he explains. There are plenty of houses by Jeremiah Eck Architects throughout its pages, but they're identified only in credits at the back. The same is true of other architects' work featured in the book. And, in the greatest gesture of ego control, the cover is a house by another firm, Elliott Elliott Norelius Architecture of Blue Hill, Maine.

The projects Eck chose for the book are not ultramodern or hypertraditional in style. Instead, they occupy the vast middle ground between the two. Their common bond is that their architecture derives from the constraints and opportunities of their sites. Eck is adamant that residential architects must abandon the great debate between "modern" and "traditional," which he thinks is alienating the general public. Style begins with the land, not some abstract philosophy or architectural doctrine, he insists. The best houses result from a keen observation of and integration with the site's topography, the track of the sun, the climate, the views.

That's one reason he believes simply improving the quality of stock house plans isn't the panacea for our suburban design crisis. The trouble lies both in bad design and in bad siting--they are enmeshed. You can't untangle one without pulling at the other. He found that out the hard way. He's sold house plans before--through Better Homes and Gardens' plan books and through Sarah Susanka's Not So Big House Web site--and the result was less than satisfying.

He sympathizes with many consumers' need to reduce the overall cost of the house, and using a stock plan is one way to limit expenses, but he doesn't think it can be done properly without adapting the plan specifically to the site. So now when he gets a call asking his buy his, plans, he says sure--as long as you pay for its adaptation and six site visits through construction. So far, he's had no takers. "The world might be better if we all sold some plans," he says. He just hasn't figured out how to make it work yet.