THE LOGAN PAVILION

The Logan Pavilion

Eric Logan talks architecture and how he came to build his Wyoming home at just 28 years old.

Fresh out of school, architect Eric Logan of CLB Architects undertook a challenge that most designers wait decades for: constructing a home for themselves. For many, this affords an opportunity to explore and show off their design skill with unparalleled clarity, unencumbered from the agony of a client brief: a masterwork of the purest form. For Logan, the circumstances were different.

“My dumb little house,” as he lovingly calls it, was born from limitation. Decades since construction, the lasting interest still baffles him. “It’s odd to me. I mean, I should be flattered, but it’s satisfying that this very simple thing that my wife and I built, that I designed when I was 28, is still resonating with people.”

CLB Architects is one of a handful of leading architectural offices whose work infuses rugged yet distinctive luxury with a truly clear sense of place. Flanked by the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone at their base in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, it’s a location that leaves it impossible not to feel a deep respect for the environment. Yet, a stone’s throw from the town lies some of the United State’s most exclusive skiing, mega-ranches owned by multibillionaires, and an influx of post-covid arrivals who flocked to the area for its natural beauty. In that context the home, in its humble stature, feels modest, perhaps relatable in a way a mansion can rarely be.

Here, even finding a plot is an achievement. Only 3% of the land in the county is available for private building. “That really feeds our community character here. There’s a deep appreciation in this place for access to views, wildlife - a respect for wildlife and migration corridors, the seasonal things that happen in the environment.”

“It does feed how we think about disturbing a beautiful piece of land, first of all. And then if we’re asked to disturb a beautiful piece of land, how do we do it respectfully and how do we bring the absolute best out of that experience for whatever we’re doing, whatever kind of building we’re doing? As a young architect, doing your own house is a big deal. I mean, especially if you’re somebody who’s engaged and trying to think critically about the work and how you respond to a place, and so I don’t think my response was terribly sophisticated. But as it turns out, it made a lasting impression on a number of people, and it still fits the environment and has worked very well for my family over the 25 years or so that we’ve lived there.”

Would Eric do the same thing today? He’s not so certain, explaining that while the fundamental idea still appeals, there’s a higher concept at work now. “I don’t know if I’m getting more experienced or more sophisticated - probably not sophisticated - but I’m more interested in less literal interpretations of these vernacular forms. We’re trying to make buildings that are more about sculpting spaces and making sculpture in the landscape.”

The home is remarkably simple in form, referencing vernaculars of barns and rural buildings you see everywhere in the American West, but with a level of refinement that can only come from the mind of an architect with a higher ideal. “I think its success really relies on its simplicity, that it turns out a simple rectangle was not only really easy to, well I say easy, easier to build, the approach to reference very simple agrarian structures. It’s essentially just this roof held aloft on tall columns. There are familiar objects in our landscape, hay barns, et cetera, that we’re trying to channel in terms of the form response.”

In recent years Eric has been undertaking a series of extensions, adaptations, and renovations to his home, adding a weathered steel roof alongside burned black cladding. Additionally, a guest wing was created alongside a garage, which houses a small collection of Porsche models that he has collected in recent years after a childhood obsession; “I’d pick up Road & Track and Car and Driver, and just pour through all of it, especially if there was a Porsche on the cover or a story somewhere…I’m trying to think of a clever Porsche analogy and I’ll probably screw it up,” he jokes.

“I love by G-body car, and so many of them are hot-rodded. As a baseline, that car, that robust analog, kick-ass piece of engineering has been used as a platform for all kinds of personal interpretation. Maybe all the subsequent things we’ve layered onto the home or removed from it…we’ve made a hot rod out of this thing that was ‘the barn’ at some point.”

“I don’t know if I’m getting more experienced or more sophisticated - probably not sophisticated - but I’m more interested in less literal interpretations of these vernacular forms."

“I think we’ll continue to tinker with it until I’m below the dirt, it’s fun just to have a project.”

It’s easy to imagine that if Logan had waited until today to build his home, even on the same plot, it would be remarkably different, and yet, it’s a masterwork nonetheless - though that’s not to say it will ever be complete to him. It marks a change to the works he creates at his office, which eventually, after months of tinkering, have to be signed off and delivered to clients. Instead, with the Logan Pavilion, there remains space - not just in the expansive grounds, but in the ever-shifting philosophy of a true creative’s brain - to tweak, adapt, and extend. Capping off our conversation, I ask Logan if he’ll ever think of the home as complete.

“I think we’ll continue to tinker with it until I’m below the dirt,” he says. “It’s fun just to have a project.”

Excerpt from Type 7 Volume 4 - Volume 5 arriving July 3, preorder now available.