In the three decades following World War II, a group of architects
centered in the Puget Sound region were designing buildings of
extraordinary quality, whose most evident commonality was the use
of wood in profusion, as exposed, meticulously detailed structure
and as interior and exterior surface. Gene Zema, a 1950 graduate of
the University of Washington and a student of the legendary Lionel
Pries, was one of this group. In a career that spanned twenty
years, Zema designed forty-six houses, seven clinics, two
architectural offices, a nursery, and a golf clubhouse, and he
participated in the design of two University buildings. He built
several buildings with his own hands, developing a consummate sense
of appropriate design in wood. The luxuriantly crafted details and
uniquely dramatic spatial compositions of his work place it at the
forefront of that remarkable movement.
Zema was also a distinguished collector and retailer of Native
American and Japanese antiquities. In 1983, relying on the sale of
antiquities for income and limiting his architectural practice, he
and his wife, Janet, bought a 70-acre meadow on Whidbey Island. On
their property Zema built a workshop, a windmill and pump house, a
chicken house, a home, a peacock house, and a kiln, all of which
are as remarkable as his earlier masterpieces.
Gene Zema is an iconic figure among those who know his work, but
the region to which his work is intimately bound is far from the
centers of architectural journalism and his story is little known.
It is the story of a unique figure in an extraordinary American
architectural movement and an exceptional figure in the history of
the Pacific Northwest.
Grant Hildebrand is professor emeritus of architecture and art
history at the University of Washington, and author of eight books
on architecture, including "Suyama: A Complex Serenity, The Wright
Space: Pattern and Meaning in Frank Lloyd Wright's Houses," and
"Frank Lloyd Wright's Palmer House." He is a recipient of the
Washington Governor's Writers Award for work of literary merit and
lasting value.
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