53 “I always tried to orient the living spaces so they always had the southern light, so the house has a delight, it’s alive. If you have to have a choice, it is the kitchen, dining, living areas you’re going to give prime positioning.” Zigzagging from the Triad to the Triangle, to the Azalea Coast, to Raleigh and then back to the coast, Johnston’s career was anchored in the late 1960s by an early start with Ballard, McKim and Sawyer in Wilmington. He made partner in 1968, around the same time he designed a summer home for Horace King on Harbor Island’s Myrtle Court built by Fred Murray Sr. Johnston had introduced fellow North Carolina State University School of Design classmate, Ligon Flynn, to his future wife Susan, and the couple were frequent visitors to Wrightsville Beach. Flynn eventually convinced Johnston to team up with him in Raleigh until they were enticed to the coast, becoming principal designers during the second phase of Figure Eight Island’s development. He became project manager and the president of the home-owners association. At the time there may have been 30 or so homes located on the south end of Figure Eight, Johnston recalls. On two of the island’s fingers — Backfin and Sandy points — he increased the size of the building sites in the resi-dential zones. Johnston also put roads at the north end, while Flynn initiated the design for what would become the com-munity’s yacht club house. Johnston calculates he designed about 60 Figure Eight Island homes, collaborating on four or five of those with Flynn and, after 1976, approximately 28 with his son and Johnston Architecture partner, Ian Johnston. “Somebody has to take the lead,” Johnston says, “but you collaborate as you go and you ask each other’s opinion and bounce things off each other. For instance, when we were in practice, Ligon was working on a house for the Bryans in Fayetteville while I was working on houses on Figure Eight. That’s not to say that once we got to a scheme we didn’t say, ‘Hey, what do you think?’” Those schemes were loose drawings used to articulate an idea. In school, a scheme was known as a parti, but Johnston says laughing, “Ligon called them fuzzies.” Fuzzy, parti or scheme, Johnston’s Figure Eight Island design principles are rooted in site specifics and scenic views. “I was always driven by the view,” Johnston says. “The most important things the client has are the building site and their program. Those two things drive the project. We work on sites that are view oriented. We’re at the coast; we’re at the beach. It’s much different than a house in town. A house in town is usually internally oriented: The centers of focus are the things in the house, the furniture, the artwork.” With a body of work that ranges from beach homes to mountain retreats, understanding and absorbing the site and views are what the house should be about, he says. “We don’t place windows for how clever they look on the outside but rather in the room to take in most of the view. That’s the paramount thing, in all the houses, is the view,” Johnston says. “The other thing is light. Bedrooms don’t have to have great views. Bedrooms are used at night when it’s dark,” he says. “I always tried to orient the living spaces so they always had the southern light, so the house has a delight, it’s alive. If you have to have a choice, it is the kitchen, dining, living areas you’re going to give prime positioning.” Materials that might be available at a point in time that enhance the design may have some impact on the appear-ance of the home outside and in some cases reflect the unpretentious sensibilities of the clients Johnston was drawn to design for. Clockwise from top: Architect Henry Johnston seated in his Eagle Point living room; Johnston’s hand-sketched scheme for the Flynt House on Figure Eight Island; a live oak tree canopy shades the west facing deck of Johnston’s home overlooking Little Creek, a tributary of the Intracoastal Waterway. www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
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