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Homes

Architect of light and reflection

Use of light defines and consumes the work and life of Yann Weymouth from the minute to the unexpected.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published February 25, 2005

TAMPA - Architect Yann Weymouth looks deep into the yard of his 1920s farmhouse, a simple structure on what was once a dairy farm in the heart of South Tampa.

Torches flicker, light beckons from a tin-roofed studio, the universe reflects in the black swimming pool.

Even at night, light remains Weymouth's mantra, a concept that defines his work, moves through his soul like a prayer.

Weymouth's work is all about "capturing, reflecting and dispersing light," his wife, Susana, explains.

"By painting the bottom of the pool black, he created a lagoon, something so beautiful it reflects trees, sunsets and stars."

Weymouth, 63, is design director of Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum, which has offices in Tampa. Formerly married to Lally Graham, daughter of Washington Post scions Phillip and Katherine Graham, he worked for the venerable architect I.M. Pei in the mid 1960s.

While with Pei, Weymouth, educated at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was the co-chief design architect for the National Gallery of Art East Wing. Pei asked him to go to Paris to supervise the design of the Grand Louvre project, distinguished for its glass pyramid skylight.

At his own home on Hawthorne Avenue in the Bayshore Beautiful neighborhood, light continues to guide his architect sensibility.

The back porch turned pantry, for example, reflects light through its use of unconventional flooring, corrugated steel diamond board normally used for semitrailer truck running boards.

The color of the living room walls, the palest hint of blue - copied from the color that adorns the walls of the Christian Dior Boutique in Paris - resulted from Weymouth's first impression upon walking into the house. His declaration was both poetic and deeply intuitive: "Something about the light speaks of pearls," he said.

The Weymouths, who bought the house three years ago after moving to Tampa from Miami, thought the two-story house with its mix of Key West and New England styles, was a grand dame that had fallen upon hard times and deserved to live again.

The goal was to preserve the exterior integrity of the house while transforming the interior into a light-filled loft space, ideal for displaying the couple's extensive collection of artwork and original modern furnishings by Le Corbusier, Ray and Charles Eames, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Eileen Gray.

Yann's drafting table, now in the dining room, once belonged to the famous jeweler, Jean Schlumberger - a family friend - whose historic designs are exclusive to Tiffany's. Artwork includes playing cards signed by French painter Jean Dubuffet (for whom Yann did some work) and a rendering by Mario Botto, a gift from Dali Museum director Charles Henri "Hank" Hine.

Alongside the famous names, hang ethereal paintings by the Weymouths' 15-year-old son, Wells, a student at Hillsborough High School's International Baccalaureate program.

Weymouth built a tin-roofed, sandy-floored art studio for his son behind the house, the first thing he proudly shows visitors.

"We don't feel we have a collection, just friends we live with," Susana says. "We try to value everything but not take ourselves too seriously."

These days you might call Weymouth the dean of Florida museum architecture. In addition to designing the Frost Museum of Art at Florida International University in Miami, he is designing expansions for three Florida West Coast museums, including St. Petersburg's Salvador Dali Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota.

Interesting that such a heavy hitter in the architectural world should chose to renovate an early 20th century Florida hybrid home rather than build his own.

The answer may lie in Weymouth's signature style: that he doesn't indulge in the kind of flash that makes his work easily identifiable. His work is best noted for its clean, classic simplicity with a dash of the sensual.

He chose to remodel an old house, partly because that's what he and Susana could afford, he says. Much of the labor they've done themselves, including sanding the original oak and heart-pine floors.

Yann restored the home's extensive molding and other woodwork - as well as half the home's exterior siding - with some help from local craftsman.

He is keen on the unexpected use of materials, like a steel beam that holds fireplace tools; black stones on the guest bathroom floor from Brittany, France, where Yann's family summered; and the kitchen island that is really a steel laboratory table.

A sheet of woven metal fabric divides the kitchen from the living room. A silk organza curtain fabric that falls in folds from the windows and divides the cozy master bedroom alcove from the dining room is from Le Marche St. Pierre in Paris.

In the master bath, galvanized buckets used for storage play against tumbled marble tiles. The look, particularly in an old Florida farmhouse, is nothing short of amazing.

"Yann really pioneered the high-tech loft design in the 1970s in New York," Susana explains.

All around, objects beckon touch and wonder: The huge green glass globe on the kitchen island is actually an old buoy purchased in London; the black manual typewriter on the second floor belonged to Susana's father, a lawyer in Cuba who once spent an evening eating and drinking with Ernest Hemingway; obelisks and architectural measuring tools were purchased from an antique dealer in Paris.

The Weymouths managed to bring an international sensibility to their decorating, a result of their extensive travels and life abroad. They moved from London to Miami in 1996, when Yann was wooed from Skidmore, Owings and Merrill for a job with Architectonica, a well-known South Florida architectural firm.

The couple, married 16 years, met on a blind date in New York set up by Pei's son, an evening they still refer to as "lightning." Weymouth has two adult daughters from his previous marriage.

Susana, born in Cuba, Georgetown University educated and multilingual, once worked as an international financier.

A great cook known for her frequent dinner parties, Susana left her old job behind for what she refers to as a life of looking after "two brilliant men" - her husband and son. The family moved to Tampa three years ago from Miami, after Yann joined the international firm, Hellmuth, Obata, Kassabaum, overseeing projects throughout Florida.

The house by all accounts should have been demolished: It came with two rat's nests and the remains of countless parties by college students who for years inhabited the subdivided interior spaces.

Transformed, if not resurrected into a haven for art and good furnishings, the house "may be the only 1920s farmhouse with a loft interior in Tampa," Susana says jokingly.

It's a Weymouth home, to be sure, a light-washed stroke of genius hidden on a tree-canopied street.

"We aren't trying to devise a style - we don't like to copy," Susana says. "We're just expressing who we are."

[Last modified February 24, 2005, 09:34:05]