Photograph by Susan Jackson
Architects tend to have fairly expansive ideas about the concept of space, especially architects as renowned as Gyo Obata, the original O in the global architecture firm HOK. Obata has been the design force behind a number of iconic structures in St. Louis, including the James S. McDonnell Planetarium. So it’s off-balancing when he seems to want to talk more about what’s going on outside his Ladue home than inside.
“We see deer, coyotes,” Obata says, gesturing toward a long wall of windows—and then there’s the occasional rider on an old equestrian trail. “The view changes every season.” A trio of field glasses sits on a nearby console; cardinals flit around a quartet of feeders off the flagstone patio.
It’s clear that the near-seamless integration of the outdoors is what makes the fluid, open main living space of Obata’s contemporary home his favorite. It combines kitchen, dining room, living room, and studio. Nowhere near retired, Obata still spreads sketches out on the rustic wood dining table, fields emails and calls, and enjoys retreating to his Eero Saarinen Womb chair near the fireplace with a book.
He shares the house, which he designed, with his wife, artist Mary Judge, and their two aging Bouviers des Flandres. Its low, modern design would stand in pointed contrast to the hulking Colonials and stone-clad chateaux nearby, were it not nestled behind an old restored barn, tucked in a wooded hollow. “Most houses are so closed in—tiny windows,” Obata says with a shudder. “They don’t get any kind of relation to nature.”
