More from Sean on the details of the Temple. "I think we decided on seat(s) fairly early on in the design process, I certainly drew a scaled drawing to work out if/how to fit a full seat rather than just a shallow perch.
I had to work out how much the wall would have curved in at seat level as the seat would need to project beyond this (my table of offsets helped here) to make (potential) feet placement more comfortable. And then how thick the wall would be at its narrowest point in to see how much space we would have to build… (not enough for a double wall but with plenty of 2ish inch flagstone slabs about, we could sit one vertically and then build the outer wall up against it, which makes for a more comfortable back anyway. Finding single slabs was to prove difficult, but even this worked out for the best… more on that later.
How did we hold the slabs in place?? I can’t remember and have no photos of this stage for some reason.
As I said, Im not sure when we settled on 2 seats… early on maybe… I think we always intended to use the double-wide wall between the back arch and the left arch. Two seat niches made sense. At some point we decided to have the seats same width as doors, as the gap between the doors was almost 5 seats wide it could be divided up quite well from an aesthetic viewpoint and we had the forms for arch from the doors to boot. The height of the arch was simple expedient of working out a sensible height not to hit your head when sitting down or getting up.
Seat base… well John came up with a plan. After some discussion of using more of the Sidney Peak mica schist bigger slabs, which in the end didn’t feel right, he found the lovely polished slab from a boulder of Art Horvath had sawn. It had an almost perfect inner curve and width, as if it was meant t be. Then the second Art Horvath slice from the same block, which was been used as a table, but Peter our client readily agreed to it being half buried into the seating niche. We are so lucky that he goes for these mad ideas.
I always think back to the pyromid we built in 2011 and 2012, where we more or less buried amazing Romero lengths (sticks) to form the curb for the floor, with only a tip exposed , a detail most will miss. These little touches add so much, but will be missed by so many. Anyway Sidney Peak would have definitely been too imperfect for the seats in the Temple, and the end choice was nearly perfect.
