POOLSIDE
CABANA

Designed as a group of garden pavilions with operable shade canopy for a garden in suburban Connecticut, the buildings take their position from paving patterns that surround an existing pool: stone bands interrupted by wide grass joints, their rhythm and geometry projecting into the topography of the surrounding landscape. We conceived of these structures as simple sculptural volumes that would change in form and program with the season: during warm-weather months, the small buildings open to create enormous roofed sofas beneath a pleated and folded cloth canopy strung on a high-tension aircraft cable trellis, as well as a changing room and shower. In the winter, screens made from a lattice of white cedar laminated with an internal layer of translucent polycarbonate enclose the containers for the storage of garden furniture. Lit from within, the boxes transform into lanterns in the winter landscape, austere free-standing lamps that echo their function in warmer weather and the promise of summer months to come.

In response to the constraints of a congested site and a tight schedule, we dramatically compressed the on-site work on the buildings and canopy by pre-fabricating the building components in our workshop in New Haven. Installed quickly and with minimal impact as finished modular components in the final stage of landscape construction, the reversal of the conventional construction sequence allowed the garden to be completed and functional for use during the summer.