Designing a Clubhouse

of golf clubhouses. My guest is Alex war who's a designer and digital artist with a degree in architecture from the University of Texas, and he is the lead designer of the clubhouse at the Tree Farm, which is a new golf course project in Aiken, South Carolina, headed up by the PGA tour pro Zach Blair. If you've been following The Friday Egg for a while, you've probably heard

about the Tree Farm. Tom Doak routed the course, Kai Goldby designed and built the holes, and based on the photos that Andy Johnson just took there, it's all starting to look pretty cool. So I'm excited to pick Alex's brain about the Tree Farm project, but also more generally about the way that clubhouses are designed. I think there's probably something that we as fans of golf architecture can learn from building architecture. There's a lot of differences between

the two, obviously, but also some significant similarities. And Alex, as someone who designed structures for a living and likes to geek out about golf courses, is the ideal person to put those two subjects together. So with that, here is Alex war. So Alex War, why don't we start with some storytelling. How did you get involved with the tree Farm project?

and TBC and all of that. Started to follow along and learn about golf course architecture for the first time, and I thought, how cool that this guy is really trying to build something. He and I are similar ages, And you know, as I got deeper into understanding golf course architecture. I realized there was a lot of overlap between what we do in the world of building architecture

and golf course architecture. So essentially I twitter DM Zach one time when he was asking if anybody wanted to get involved, and we hit it off and I just said, hey, I would love to be involved helping you think about you know, the buildings at the same level that you thinking about the golf course, so that it's this totally

holistic experience. And so that was maybe twenty eighteen, twenty seventeen, late twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, and then here we are, you know, breaking ground on the tree farm in the next couple of months. So a wild ride.

you specialize in? And my goal in school and in professional life was never to specialize, Like the beauty of architecture is like it's a way of thinking and problem solving. And so then I always thought, you know, when I learned about sex project, I thought I would love to do a clubhouse, Like it's a marriage of essentially my

two passions. And so I think my main confidence came from knowing and having a strong golf IQ and golf background and being able to say, I don't think that that is normal within the world of architecture and essentially tell him that I could I could bring an understanding to both because I think I was looking at the typology of a clubhouse as a whole and thinking that they are these sort of surface level connections that are made. But it becomes pretty evident that a lot of the

times the buildings are not designed by golfers. They're designed by people who understand golfers as like a concept or they understand it on paper, but not necessarily like the rich of history and tradition and flow of everything, right, Like you can learn that stuff, but there's like an experience, especially to the buildings that are coming out now with new developments, where it's almost like a rethink of the typology.

We're not building necessarily like a traditional country club clubhouse at the Tree Farm, it's something that's new, right, Like it's this sort of national membership golf trip, golf focused almost resort where you're on site, but it's not it's

just golf focused, right. And so and my pitch to him was not that I would be the best or I would bring the best building, but that I would bring a building that was about supporting the golf, because the typology of a clubhouse has an interesting relationship to golf in that golf can exist completely without it. It's a purely supporting role, but it can elevate the experience, or it can be a non factor, or it can

sort of detract from the experience. And so the idea is to produce something that's supporting in a way that it elevates the experience.

You know, he didn't give me a program or anything and say it needs to be this big or that, but I just started to develop something of what a modern clubhouse could look like, and modern in the sense of just like contemporary thinking, not necessarily like modernism. Right. It wasn't all white and clean lines or something, but just in the way that I was thinking about it, and that really manifests itself in like a place based,

sort of site specific solution. That's what I what I that's the work that I try to do, is like it's not about a certain style, it's not about a certain desire to impose something. It's about looking at the place and responding and making something site specific. So the building was sort of like this long, thin building that bent in a few ways to talk to a few views, and it was just a very simple, like gable shape that resonated with some of the like barns in the area,

you know, but it isn't a barn. It's not about that. It was sort of a familiar form. And then it used you know, local stone or something like that. It was like ideas like that that were architectural, but they weren't and they were specific in that they are about being resonant with place. But it wasn't like, you know, we didn't have a full CD set or something. It was. It was just some plans and some diagrams and a few perspectives, and I drove to San Antonio and met

him at the Valero at that time. I don't know what they call it now, but the PGA Tour event and.

And to his credit, Zach like he's super sharp, and he like totally got the parallels between designing a good golful and designing a good building and how they should both sort of respond to place and land and how the thinking is very similar. And you know, I don't know if he was thinking about that before meeting me, but after meeting me, he was like, for sure, that's what we should do. Like you're kind of you know, let's go on this ride together, and you know, all

credit to him. It was a few years later, of course, when we're like actually starting a project, but just a ton of credit to him, because, you know, I think it would have made a lot of people more comfortable, and it made potentially more sense to hire somebody else with older and more experience. But I think he and I had this sort of special relationship where we're we're both saying, look, we're young, and we love this, and we'll pour our life into it. You know, I could.

I could tell him that I will bring the same level of dedication and passion that you have to the course to the buildings, you know, and I think he may have even exceeded his dedication to the course on the buildings. He and I. He and I talk a lot, so we've had a really great time working together.

the buildings turned into low country South Carolina buildings. So looking at the rich history of the typology where clubhouses started as homes essentially farmhouses, and then the first clubhouse at Shinnecock was designed by a residential architect, right, So

it is about being an extension of the home. So there's something there in terms of scale and form, and then looking at climate and saying what are the design strategies for this climate, what are the materials used in the region, right, and so how do we put those things together? And so the buildings are really simple, sort of humble gable shapes with wood siding and deep overhangs

and brick walkways. And someone may say, you know, oh that looks like a sawmill, or it looks like a barn or something, And it's not about saying it is a barn, that is a pro shop or something. It's about using those you know, architectural characteristics of the region to make something that is resonant with that, but it's not and it's not a copy, it's not an imitation

of something. So and then in general the clubhouse is quite unique because responding to the topography of the site and the routing, the building got broken into three pieces because you know, we wanted the bar grill to be really close to the first team in the eighteenth with that sort of ritual and the idea of viewing and things like that. And then but we didn't want it to be too imposing, and so there was a central spine ridge line running through the property and the routing

was done right. So you work the way that a lot of these places are working now. It's not a residential development or something, so you make the best golf course first and then you work the buildings around that. Right. So I had a lot to respond to in terms of that, and so we knew we would arrive up on this ridge and there was a view over into this sort of bowl of golf looking at eighteen and one. And then his routing with Tom one was a part three.

So there's a really unique opportunity there for the viewing and things like that. So just responding to the topography of up on the ridge and getting down to near the first te you know, there was this little natural finger of topography. So the building turned into this sort of peace sign shape, which in architecture you don't want to make triangles very you know, we don't do well

with triangles. And so in the center of that, instead of dealing with these sort of you know, simple but complicated geometries, we just decided what if we created sort of like a courtyard or cloister and broke the build the building a part where now it's three separate structures, and so one is sort of the arrival in men's locker room, one is the bar grill and the women's locker room, and one is the golf operations, the pro shop and things, and they sort of gather around this courtyard,

but they're all related to each other in just very simple buildings. So maybe that was a lot of words in the end, but hopefully.

at the heart of the building. And we could have made like a big atrium or like lobby, right, and who cares what shape that is, But that wasn't really like that's not in the program of this place. You know. There isn't like this idea about this grand entry or this grand you know, dining room or anything. It's like much more humble and simple than that. And we didn't want to put all the services at the center of

the building. And so what we decided, right, we actually put now the landscape at the center of the building by making it into an next to your feature, right, so you bring the landscape into the building, and the building is really sort of about viewing the landscape, right, whether that be the natural landscape or the golf right and sort of dissolving that experience between indoor and outdoor.

relationship is what made the light bulb go off in my head to you know, reach out to Zach and say, there's a supernatural fit here and it is very much responding to the place, but also the golf course. Right, So the arrival view at the tree farm instead of this grand lobby, if I could just try to describe it and where it's You're up on the ridge a little higher than one green actually, and eighteen is down below. You can't see it the building. You're on the north side.

It's actually quite stark to your arrival the building itself, but there's a dog trot breezeway that frames like perfectly the first view or the first green of view of the first green. So when you arrive, the sort of architecture itself is saying like, look at that, you know, and I'm here to support that and frame that, and really it's about that the golf you know. So it was crucial to the thinking, just the overlap between that and it was. It was awesome to work with Kai

and Tom. And I remember meeting Kai out there when they were finalizing the routing and he kind of asked, oh, do you do a lot of work on sites you know as nice as this, And I was like, no way, man, live in Houston, Like nothing is sacred here and here we are in like an idyllic pine forest, sandy landscape.

You know, this is the dream. And then he sort of said something interesting where he was like, I don't know if I've ever met one of the building architects on a project I've worked on, And I was like, how is there not this like rich intertwining collaboration, you know, And maybe Tom had met them or something. But and if you look at most clubhouses, I think by most you know, that's a broad generalization, but there isn't much collaboration, right,

but there is a rich history of it. Like Wingfoot, there was a strong collaboration between Tillinghouse and the architect and so it's sort of carrying on that tradition, right.

Blend with the environment is to make the artificial shapes look like natural shapes or have some kind of interface between you know, the esthetics the way that things are shaped and the way that things in the environment are naturally shaped. So that's one way, and I guess another way would be materials in the building, like the kinds of wood and stuff like that. So maybe speak to

some of those links. How did you try to make everything that you were building in the buildings match with the environment?

houses to sawmills, things like that. You know, it's called the tree farm. It's pretty direct connection there. The siding is actually going to be a cedar just because performance wise, it holds up better than pine as next year's siding, But there is a resonance there, right, obviously wood and wood. We're not importing like some Italian travertine stones and things like that, right, We're like using materials that resonate with

the place. And the siding will be stained to be the sort of dark patina that you know, cliche, but resonates with sort of pine tree bark or something. And the buildings, you know, that's a specific choice though, to sort of like try to make them fade into the background, right, instead of of painting them white. You know, we have

Augusta National down the road. We could have said, oh, let's build Augusta Nationals cladhouse, but it wasn't about that, right, It was about sort of making them fade into the background. The site was mined a bit and used as a dump site at one point for clay and brick mining. So there's a rich history of brick in the Carolinas, of course, especially as walkways, and so we are leaning into that. There are no real hallways in the project. We tried to minimize hallway square footage, and so all

the circulation is outside under these deep overhangs. Which is a hot, humid regional thing. So that's material form. I'm trying to think of what else. Oh, in the cabins themselves. There will be four on side cabins in Phase one. And actually it's quite funny. I found an ach and there's a huge horse culture, right, so horse races and

horse breeding, and with horses come stables. And not to say that the cabins are stables, but there's a very similar scale building in terms of with and shape their little l's or Jay's now the cabins and their exterior walkways and you go directly into a room, and that's very much like essentially a stable, right, It's like these really simple buildings that have exterior circulation and the horses

go straight into their room. So I'm not making comparison between members and guests that horses, but you know, it is, it is. It is a scale of building and a sort of plan shape and even a functional functionality way that resonates with that. And it won't come to mind necessarily because you know it's not you know, not to throw shade, but like say Forest Creek, they're famous for their locker room, and it is like screaming at you,

I am a stable. Like each of the little areas has the whole horse like things and all that, and like these fake barn doors. You know, we're not doing any of that. We're not yelling at you. I am a stable. But it's like hopefully you sort of understand, and it just feels of the place because those buildings exist in the region.

what the disciplines are and who the people are. I'm not really sure of the causes in fact, So what do you think creates that divide between the larger architecture world, whether it's landscape architecture or building architecture or whatever and golf course architecture.

get studios that let you do that. You would design parks and public spaces and you know, other things, and then you could maybe design golf courses after you graduated. But I don't know of any schools that are sort of doing that in practice. And that's how our schooling works, right Like I had five years, ten semesters, ten design studios, and you essentially design a building every semester, and landscape is the same. And I never saw a single golf

course project, you know. But I can tell you what I did see ut which was master planning and urban design projects that we're rethinking what Lions municipal could be if not a golf course, this is super valuable land, how can we develop it? In hindsight, I sort of wish I had taken the studio and said, you guys should hire Bill and Ben to just restore it, and I don't want to do anything to it, you know, But that's not the view. I would say in most schools.

And I think that speaks to something which is like the really surface level understanding of golf. And maybe it's golf in America specifically, where it's something that is upper class, it's private, it's inefficient use of land in a time of people moving to cities in density. Right, like the surface level understanding, and the current American model that's dominating the golf landscape is either real estate development or private

club or both. And so I think that that has led to sort of a disdain within architecture itself for the typology of a golf course. And then you know there's sustainability questions at a surface level understanding of it too. It's like super inefficient use of water. Right, what's the golf course that most people know that don't follow golf much? Augusta National, I would say, right, which is that's how

we got some bad golf. Development is looking at that and saying this is what every place needs to be, and that's just not the case. Right, Like the Masters in Augusta obviously unbelievable, but like again specific for one time place and sort of event, right, it's not that that needs to be imitated everywhere, but people who don't know golf deeply would probably think that and say that's an unrealistic expectation, what a waste of resources land, et cetera.

you often see clubhouses that just don't seem to be related to the golf course at all and therefore feel kind of alien from it.

the eighteenth, but it's probably pretty far away. It's not as close as the old clubhouses that really nailed this kind of thing, like Wingfoot or Pinehurst, Right, those were built in a different era, And so with modern construction has come complications with modern real estate development, with modern development in general, right, where you don't necessarily want to mix the two because it costs more and it's more complicated. Right.

There's sort of this surface level relationship I think that you see in most which is just of view, right, And that's that's great to provide, but it doesn't begin it in there, right. The scale of it actually matters how far away you are, what can you actually see is it a vista? Can you see putts go in?

Just that kind of thing, And then I'd say, yeah, the other really difficult thing is like parking and just all the infrastructure that even I starting this journey with Zach was like totally unaware of how difficult it would be to get a clubhouse like within forty feet of

the eighteenth Green. You know, it's like it's not easy, And in hindsight, I'm thinking, Okay, now, I definitely get why not a lot of people try this, But I think, you know, hopefully it pays off in the actual experience of the place in the long run.

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as a gift. It's pretty simple. Just go to USGA dot org, slash join and click the button that says gift. All right, back to the episode. All right, Alex, So before we talked, I asked you to come up with a few different buildings that we could talk about as examples of interesting architecture. And maybe we could start with buildings that are not golf clubhouses, just buildings that are in cities that people might be able to go to and visit and look at and get something out of.

So what's the first building that you came up with that kind of fits this description.

He's an Italian architect who runs Rinzo Piano Building Workshop, and he's he's in the category of what we would call in the industry starchitects. You know, so all the way at.

amazing modulation of light. So all the gallery ceilings are class but there's this intricate sort of louver system that lets natural light in the building is in a neighborhood and it's like perfectly to scale but perfectly sort of grand at the same time, like it's not a home, but it's part of it, you know, part of the neighborhood. So that's just a must visit if you're in Houston ford Worth. Though I'd be remiss if I didn't mention

the Kimball Museum, which is designed by lu Khan. He's one of the greatest American architects to ever live, and again modulating light actually through these cycloidal vaults that are these cast concrete vaulted spaces and just like maybe the best building in Texas. It's so wonderful. Okay, So now I have Chicago, which is a massive black mark on my resume because I have never been the first one that comes to mind is Roby House, which is a

franklind Right masterpiece residence. It's just like sort of height of Frank's work in terms of residential architecture, and it's a simple sort of brick home, long, low slung, just like beautiful example of his like organic, prairie style and organic. He was thinking about resonant with landscape in general, not organic when we think of it as like blobby shapes or things like that. Oh, here's a good one. Sorry,

this is for the shotgun start guys. The Apple Store on Michigan Avenue is designed by Norman Foster, who is also a starchitect who designed the Global Home. So for the pitching tour, yeah.

It's like a peer I forget which peer number and designed by Heatherwick Studio, who is an interesting guy who is more of like a designer and has a studio not limited to architecture, so art, public installations, objects, architecture, things like that, and this is like a really you know, everyone can just google Little Island and you'll be like, WHOA,

that's pretty wild. It's sort of this like peer that rises out of the water and each of the like peer pylons sort of turns into almost like a like a flowering shape that holds a landscape in it, and they're all linked together and it's quite quite amazing. And then one really fun one that everybody can visit Prospect Parks Skating Rink designed by Todd Williams and Billy Chen really great husband wife duo doing really great work and

it's like a very fun building. It's a roller skating rink in the summer and a nice skating rink in the winter. Nice la The Emes Foundation, which is actually the home of Charleston ray Eames, great designers known for their furniture a lot like the Eames chair, which is a classic lounge furniture, so you can think mid century modern, modular kind of home. And I believe it's open to the public. San Francisco the De Young Museum designed by

Herzogen Demron. Really great Swiss architecture firm. Some of the best in the world against architects. Everyone will a lot of people know them for the Birds Nest in Beijing, which was the main stadium at the Olympics in two thousand and eight or something I think, but really just amazing firm, Herzogon Demron. And then my last stop is Austin, Texas, and I'm going like pretty local here, so a very small architecture firm that I know, And there's a Peace

Park tree house. It's in Peace Park which is on Lamar west side of campus, and they designed this little almost like playground structure that's just a little treehouse for kids for adults, and it's by mel Lawrence Architects. It's just like a really wonderful, playful piece of architecture in a park that anybody can use. And it's you know, thinking at a very high level, and it's it's just beautiful nice.

I be noticing and appreciating? When I'm trying to understand golf course architecture, I never know where to start, but I have a few basic things, you know, standing on the greens and looking back at the hole and trying to figure out the strategy from there and seeing if it fits. Looking at the tie ins between the artificial shapes of the golf course and the natural shapes of

the surroundings and seeing how those are working. Those kinds of specific things I often tell people, you know, that's where to start when you want to appreciate a golf course in the way it's designed. So what are some similar things people should do if they're going to a great building? What should they be noticing?

quite a statement. So I would think about that and kind of ask yourself what the building is trying to convey to you. Is it about being grand or is it about you know, like essentially a golf club. In the same way, like what is this course? What is the philosophy? Does it feel fabricated? Does it feel natural?

Things like that, And then there's a lot of overlap within golf course architecture, just thinking about scale, thinking about how it's made, thinking about threshold ideas, about threshold ideas of flow, like a good routing, what is the flow of the space? A good one to always think about is like natural light. A lot of like great buildings deal with natural light in a really great way, and

a lot of bad buildings don't. And then you know, I would say, does the building feel in terms of like style, if you want to think about it like that is it telling you that it is something it? Is it a certain style and why or is it not a certain style? And therefore, what is it trying to be. That's like the way that I would think about it. And then you said something that made me think of something else. But now I'm blinking, so I don't know. Maybe I have a follow up.

does the door move? And if you notice, like a lot of really good architects and a lot of really good buildings, it's not your sort of standard introduction to a building. So say Stephen Hall, who is a starchitect and has unlimited budgets. Essentially every entry door handle, essentially is always a one off sort of designed object that is a riff on sort of the formal qualities or

the diagram of the building. Right. And so it's like that level of care and design can carry its way all the way down to a door handle, right, And whether that's a simple door handle and it's about materiality and patina, or if it's an overly designed, expensive door handle. That's sort of a cliche in architecture school is to think about the door handles.

and you've talked about this, I think previously. It's like the benches, the signs, the flags, all those are like designed objects that contribute to a feeling of place, right, And so whether that's something that's just picked up off the rack or it's like shaped and designed, all of that is contributing to the overall experience absolutely.

a little more thoughtfully. But something that drives me crazy sometimes on golf courses, aside from the cart paths, which I don't know why people aren't thinking through where they're putting cart paths or how they look. It's just such a dominant feature of many golf courses. But a little thing is like the ball washers. You know it always everybody has the same ball washers and they're just like studded throughout the golf course. And I'm like, do we

need all of these? Is this necessary? Can there be a different way that people kind of have this function, you know, clean their golf balls. That's just a little thing that sometimes strikes me as like maybe that could be thought through a little bit more well.

back to clubhouses. But that's been like the really like the hardest thing about the Tree Farm is trying to design like quite a robust commercial building at the end of the day into a residential scale project that's like quite intimate and small, but at the same time, it's a commercial building that needs commercial grade materials, commercial grade systems. It has a full nice restaurant, it's a retail shop,

you know, it has all these things. And so the clubhouse is something that is kind of like a tricky one where you're trying to do a commercial building in a residential sort of scale and context. And that's not true for all clubhouses. Some are not trying to be residential and they shouldn't be. But systems is a good one to look at.

course architecture. What kind of knowing a thing or two about the way that buildings are designed can make you notice when you're on a golf course. So what are just like a couple of things that you think that an appreciation of building architecture can add to an appreciation of golf course architecture.

But also take that home with you, you know, and it's not realistic, and even I don't live in a home that I designed, and it's like, you know, we

can't all have like perfect architecture all the time. But you can take this knowledge and sort of look at the built environment that you live and work in and visit and sort of start to I would just challenge people to like apply their golf course architecture hobby chops to buildings and see where they get and see like there's a rich, rich culture right now right of appreciating

golf course architecture. And you know, we maybe live in the echo chamber of that being on a podcast about golf course architecture essentially, but and there is a culture of that on buildings as well, and so but there isn't a lot of overlap, and I don't see why not, and not to say that everyone has to be interested

in everything, right, there's a subculture for everything. But my hope would be that some people just start to see the built environment like they see golf courses and start to care for more and understand that it's also crafted. I don't think that's an answer to your actual question, but.

There's no reason not to take that to the next airport that you land in. There are a lot of airports that are beautifully built that just to have these sort of outrageously fun shapes and kind of ideas in them, but people rarely are looking at them. They're at an airport, they're getting to their flight, and so you know, just as golf course, architecture can add a different dimension to

your golf life. I think that being attuned to all forms of architecture as you're just walking through the world can give you something to think about when you're bored, which is always good.

really simple book, really short. I give it to a lot of people who are thinking about architecture for the first time, super approachable, super readable, So that's like number one on my list. And he has a second book called Atmospheres, which is essentially just discussing how the built environment creates atmospheres, which golf courses do the same. They're part of the built environment. So those are my main two book recommendations from the same author.