Clever design makes an enlightened studio mlange

SO THIS IS a garage, as you can see, says Seattle architect Mark Thomson.

Thomsons not one for self-promotion. The large, white structure at the end of the driveway most certainly contains his car. It is also a studio (upstairs) with space for archival storage (downstairs). But all of that pales in comparison to how it does each of those things. With grace. With dignity. With the finest sense of design.

Im just kind of ripping off Philip Johnson. Theres this little studio Johnson did, Thomson says referring back to his own stark-white stacked boxes topped by a cone of skylight.

Its a wood structure. It shouldnt be a wood structure.

I have a good relationship with my contractor friends.

Everybody who worked on it put in extra effort. Youre only as good as the people who build it.

Thats really how the interview goes. From here. To there. And back. Thomson lives in his head, and the thoughts are flowing.

I think of them as two different things, he says of his chocolate-brown-cedar-sided chalet of a place across the yard (I ripped that off, too, I was in Europe and . . .). But theyre not really that different. The volume of spaces. If they come out of me theyre gonna kinda have my bias.

Again, not much for self-promotion.

Allow me. Yes, there is a relation to Johnsons Library/Study on the 47-acre New Canaan, Conn., property that is home to the Glass House. But Thompsons is a new interpretation for an entirely different landscape (even though he will argue its all derivative. Theres nothing original.). And that landscape is? Phinneys a little presumptuous, he says. Put Ballard. Im right in a kind of a sweet spot. Put Interbay. Oh, Phinneys fine. There. At the end of a nothing-unusual residential block, up against a steep hillside embedded with side streets.

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Clever design makes an enlightened studio mlange