Shadowing Practice: Inside a Woodland Home Built Over Water to Become One With Nature | Architectural Digest - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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My favorite architectural scene in all movies is when Dorothy opens the door
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My favorite architectural scene in all movies is when Dorothy opens the door
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and outside the door it's color from black and white and
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that quite possibly is the first time most people had ever seen color film in their life.
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The right sort of build up to something really beautiful,
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I call it choreography.
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The best way to experience architecture is by moving through it and scanning and looking around.
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And so if you realize that,
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then you can make the architecture amplify the place.
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I'm Jim Cutler, Principal Designer at Cutler Anderson Architects,
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and I designed this place about 10 years ago.
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I got a call, like we always do,
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from potential clients, and they had already chosen a piece of land.
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It was a hilltop and it was a really beautiful spot
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but I needed to remind them that it's very easy to bring cars into places
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but it's really hard to get them out.
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We were coming down from that hilltop
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and I noticed a visual clearing in the woods and I said what's that over there?
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They said oh it's an old logging pond you know it's all filled in
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and I walked around there's this wonderful tree stump outside here
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and i said you know
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if i was going to design something for you i'd design something here
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and i would integrate the building and the pond as one thing
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and they asked me why and i explained to them at
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that point in my career i had become very versed to
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killing anything any living thing i mean the world is just
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so beautiful and everything has the same right to be here whether it's inanimate or a plant or a creature.
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For many years I felt that fostering life,
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creating habitat is a high calling in life.
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You know water fosters life and I could somehow integrate a pond in a building.
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If we build it they will come, put it that way.
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And one time I was out here with Michael,
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one half of the owners,
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and he's very in touch with the living world.
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So we were sitting out here in the evening and said,
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you know, in about 10 minutes the flickers are going to come by
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and they're going to start eating the insects off the pond.
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10 minutes the flickers come by and then the swallows are going to come by.
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The swallows come in.
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It's getting a little dark.
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I think the bats are going to come in.
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Bats come in.
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This place had connected him to the rhythms of life that water fosters.
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The power of architecture is emotional.
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When you choose a place that you're going to dwell in,
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then there's an obligation to know that place well because there's life.
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We're coming up the walk to the house
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and we deliberately parked guests far away and we designed it in a way to make it actually quite narrow.
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And you can see that you sense the clearing just by the amount of sky you can see beyond these trees.
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But to reinforce what happens when you walk in the front door that you open up to the pond,
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we even tighten the path up further.
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And then as you come on the house,
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you know there's something special on the other side of that door,
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and we wanted to give some implication you were going to get there,
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but the door then acts as the foil.
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I'm squeezing you because the tighter it is, the bigger big feels.
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The lighter it is, the darker dark is.
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By contrast, they amplify one another.
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But I don't want to be like,
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boo, to surprise you when you walk in the door.
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So I wanted to bring a little bit of the pond on that side.
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And I wanted you to see over the roof
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so you could sense the clearing on this side and create a level of anticipation of arriving somewhere.
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These are steel beams holding this up.
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The reason they're steel beams is we thought we'd have a lot of view.
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If I had to do this in wood,
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it would have been much thicker and deeper.
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And we would have blocked view.
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So then you have to start using materials within their nature.
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Once you get going on a design,
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and if you're lucky, and if you're listening,
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it tells you what it wants.
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It's this sort of cacophony of different voices for me.
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The steel wants to show what it can do.
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The wood wants to show what it can do.
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You know, the forest wants to show its history and its nature.
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The water wants to show how it fosters life.
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How do you take all that cacophony of voices and you turn it into a harmony?
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That's my job.
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The owners wanted the stronger connection of the pond as possible.
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So when we designed this,
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I had a lot of fun.
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Kind of see this right here?
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It's about a 400-pound piece of lead.
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And there's one on either side that counterweight this door.
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Let's see if it'll open.
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Well, that's an 800-pound door,
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and that wasn't so hard to lift because now you can see the leads all the way down here.
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And that is a heavy piece of lead.
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And so we have three of them,
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one at the kitchen, one at the living room,
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and one in the bedroom.
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So that when you're in the building,
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you don't necessarily need to be in the building you can be in the pond.
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Oh, another frog.
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Nope, two frogs.
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Look at them.
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You gotta have a place to dive off.
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You don't want to splash water back on the oak floor.
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And, you know, it just seemed like such a poetic spot to sit in the eeple.
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You can take it all in.
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All the sounds, all the animals, everything.
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And to some degree you can take in the silence.
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It's a nice kitchen.
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We wanted to have a window there,
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and it was also the best possible place for the range.
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It was a fun thing to design, and it works.
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Shocking well.
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Well, the fireplace is the lateral stability.
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We're in a sizable earthquake zone,
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And if you do a roof like this,
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where you can see all the way from one end to the other,
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that's a lot of load up high,
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so that if an earthquake wants to move the building sideways,
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well, it's going to do it.
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And the only way to restrain that lateral movement is with some degree of mass or a structural stability in this axis.
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So the fireplace is a structural element
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and it's for me a statement about the lateral forces that are endemic to this region.
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I'd say 95% of the building was from this region,
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you know, and it's reflective of this region.
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Gluam beams were invented here,
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vertical grain for plywood was invented here,
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and comes here because this is the only place Douglas fir grows and it's light.
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So it's well suited for structure.
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Cedar, which the outside of the building is made of red cedar,
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which is from here, it's highly aerated.
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It's a very light, physically light wood,
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and it's extremely rot resistant.
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So we're using it within its nature.
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We're using the Douglas fir within its nature.
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So you'll notice there are little bits of concrete out on the corners here.
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They all line up.
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So when you look at the side plane of this,
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it looks like an ancient giant swimming pool that has been partly,
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let's say, subsumed by detritus and sediments.
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But still there's a vestige of that swimming pool.
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I look back on it now,
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it's a little bit of a frou-frou metaphor.
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But I wanted to create a sense of time.
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and by leaving objects in the landscape it pushes the time reference for the project.
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Bedroom is pretty much all the same in the sense one
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thing I would say is it is class between living a little bit better because we wanted the roof,
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which is the sheltering element,
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to be one continuous plane.
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It would be a parrot to make this feel more like a pavilion.
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You know, when you think of pavilion,
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you think of an outdoor area under a roof.
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My God, that cat has a regal pose.
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See?
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I like the label, he's a good one.
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And you have to walk outside to get the guest house.
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And I'll tell you, I built a little cabin for my daughter and myself.
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She actually helped build it when she was 11.
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It's a wonderful thing, and it's only about 35 feet from the front door of our house.
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And there is not one night that goes by
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when I'm running back and forth and look out at the water
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or listen to the wind in the trees or look at the moon or what planets are coming by.
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And I had no hesitation in making
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that separation where you've got to walk outside to get to another room of the house.
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When you go from this one to that one, you experience the outside.
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You hear the water.
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You see the water.
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And if it's windy, you hear the trees.
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If it's snowing or raining,
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you hear the water coming down in the pond.
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Why not experience the place fully?
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I mean, it's really a joy.
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I talked about architecture being shelter.
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We could take that and say it's clothing, right?
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Keeps you warm and dry.
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So if you're clothing the institution of family,
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you better know it's anatomy.
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I mean, you're wearing a sweatshirt right now,
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and might be from the Gap for all I know,
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but one size kind of fits all it's got sleeves
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and a hole for your head and you know piece to cover your trunk
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but in a way that's that's no different than this house
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or the institution of family that you're going to clothe
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because families have very specific qualities there are public zones like the room we're in
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and there are private zones like the bedrooms
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and there are decision points like entries where you get to
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make a decision whether you want to participate on something in the public
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or you want to go to your private zone
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and they don't want to mix they want to have as much separation as possible
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and in small houses that's tricky
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but that's the anatomy you're trying to clothe the only difference between me
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and the gap is you can think of me more as a civil row you know, tailor.
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I tailor things.
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When you bring someone to an emotional understanding of things,
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of something that's beautiful, they learn to love it.
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And teaching people to love the living world is actually,
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I think, the highest quality that any human being could have.
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because we're killing this place.
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I want to describe a method of working that is different than the mainstream.
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And I'm hoping that I get a few lucky souls that get it and move in that direction.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will immerse yourself in an architectural narrative that highlights the beauty of nature intertwined with human creativity. By listening to the designer Jim Cutler describe his philosophy and process of integrating a home with its natural surroundings, you'll practice comprehension and pronunciation skills. This exercise will also enhance your ability to articulate ideas related to design, nature, and emotional connections, which are beneficial for IELTS speaking practice. Use this lesson as an opportunity to reflect on how we relate to our environments and express that in English.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Choreography - Referring to the careful arrangement of architecture to enhance beauty.
- Visual clearing - An open space in a forest that allows visibility.
- Integrate - To combine parts into a whole, especially in relation to architecture and the environment.
- Fostering life - Supporting the growth and maintenance of natural habitats.
- Rhythms of life - The natural patterns or cycles observed in the environment.
- Obligation - A duty or responsibility, particularly to understand one's environment.
- Path - A way or route designed to lead to a destination, metaphorically suggesting a journey through understanding.
Practice Tips
To effectively improve your English speaking skills using the shadowing technique, focus on mimicking the speaker's tone and pace. In this video, Jim Cutler speaks with a reflective and measured cadence. Follow these tips for optimal practice:
- Listen and Pause: First, watch the video without repetition to get the overall message. Then, repeat short segments to capture his unique tone.
- Focus on Emotion: Pay attention to how he expresses his passion for nature and architecture. Try to reflect that emotion in your own speaking.
- Vary Your Environment: Practice shadowing in different settings to simulate how architecture interacts with various surroundings, just as Jim emphasizes the connection between a home and its location.
- Record Yourself: Use a recording device to monitor your progress, comparing your intonation and pacing with the original speaker.
- Use a shadowing site: Find platforms that support shadow speech exercises, where you can practice along with various spoken materials.
Integrating these techniques into your practice will not only enhance your fluency but also deepen your understanding of the intricate relationships between language, architecture, and nature.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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