ARCHITECTURE SPÉCIALE
Breeze Blocks Architectural screen blocks, aka breeze blocks, had their last hurrah in the 1970s — at least until the current comeback. Sun-deflecting screens have been used in Indian, Arabic and Japanese architecture for centuries, and these pierced concrete stacking blocks were particularly popular in America’s Sun Belt cities in the middle of the 20th century. Krisel, who also designed this 1959 Palm Springs home, called breeze blocks “functional ornamentation” and used them extensively. During the home’s 2017 renovation, Joel Dessaules sheltered the building even more with Hawaiian lava stone veneer to absorb and radiate heat and a cantilevered steel shade structure that gives the illusion of a butterfly roof.
Gehry House In 1977, Gehry bought an early 1900s pink Dutch Colonial in Santa Monica, California, for himself and his family. It wasn’t quite big enough, but rather than adding another story or a rear addition, he expanded it in places by building a new house around the old one, using unconventional materials such as raw plywood, chain-link fencing and corrugated metal for the siding; retaining the asphalt driveway as the kitchen floor; and exposing electrical wiring and lightbulbs. The home’s raw, industrial and unfinished look was intentional — “a structure in process is always more poetic than the finished work,” Gehry said. His neighbors, however, tended to disagree. Today, Gehry House is considered one of the earliest examples of deconstructivism, a dismantling of architecture into fragments that have no apparent harmony or visual logic. The American Institute of Architects recognized the home’s contribution to design history with its 25-year award in 2012, noting that “the exposed structure, chaotic fusion of disparate materials and aggressive juxtaposition of old and new communicate a sense of real-time formal evolution and conflict.”
Glass Houses Saarinen’s Miller House and Bo Bardi’s Casa de Vidro were links in a chain of mostly glass midcentury structures that included the Eameses’ 1949 house in Los Angeles, Philip Johnson’s 1949 Glass House in Connecticut, Mies’ 1951 Farnsworth House in Illinois, Paul Rudolph’s 1953 Umbrella House in Florida and Pierre Koenig’s 1959 Stahl House (aka Case Study House No. 22), pictured, in L.A. The cantilevered glass-and-steel home’s simple lines, flowing layout, natural light and strong connection to the landscape epitomize the modern architecture of the 1950s. But given that the original windows were plate glass, it’s clear that safety and energy efficiency weren’t among the Stahl House’s better attributes. With the era’s oil glut, fuel didn’t cost much, so insulation often wasn’t a big concern, especially in mild climates.
Chemosphere. Lautner’s residential architecture simultaneously reached for the stars while remaining grounded in the natural landscape. He designed the UFO-esque Chemosphere, pictured, in 1960 for aerospace engineer Leonard Malin, his wife and their four children as a way to cost-effectively address the 45-degree slope of their Hollywood Hills lot. The 2,208-square-foot, single-story octagon has panoramic windows on all sides and hovers like an umbrella above the vegetation on a 30-by-5-foot concrete column and eight diagonal steel braces. Access is via a funicular from below or a path from above.
Fallingwater Frank Lloyd Wright’s pursuit of his ideal organic architecture — in which art and nature, structure and site, are in complete harmony — left him largely removed from design trends in the States and abroad. By the mid-1930s, he was nearing 70 and focused on writing and teaching at his architecture school.
After more than six decades and with over 100 built works, renowned architect Arata Isozaki has won architecture’s most prestigious honor, the 2019 Pritzker Architecture Prize. The prize was announced Tuesday, March 5. The 87-year-old Japanese architect is known as an architect’s architect who deftly creates awe-inspiring buildings around the world using local building techniques while carefully interpreting sites, applying meaningful context and intensely focusing on details.
Delaunay Circles Ukrainian painter Sonia Delaunay gravitated toward rings in rainbow colors rather than the rectangles of De Stijl. While living in Paris in 1911, she made a patchwork quilt for her infant son, a work that marked her big move toward abstract art and textile design. She and her husband, French artist Robert Delaunay, rode out World War I in Spain and Portugal, where she began designing costumes for the Ballets Russes and interiors. She went on to create avant-garde fashions for the likes of American actress Gloria Swanson in the 1920s and fabrics for European department stores such as Metz & Co. and Liberty in the 1930s. In 1964, the Louvre museum in Paris honored her with its first retrospective of a living female artist.
De Stijl Rectangles After World War I, a group of Dutch artists and architects headed by Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian began a movement called De Stijl (The Style). They believed that new forms were essential to postwar rebuilding and a utopian harmony. They pushed Cubism to a new extreme: complete abstraction consisting of vertical and horizontal lines and primary colors. This illustration shows van Doesburg’s 1919 interior for the house of Bart de Ligt in Katwijk, Netherlands. De Stijl architect Gerrit Rietveld designed the furniture.
World War I brought an early end to American System-Built Homes, but prefabricated houses live on. Lindal Cedar Homes manufactures this ModFab accessory dwelling unit designed by students at the School of Architecture at Taliesin, founded by Wright in 1932. At 470 square feet, it’s the smallest of the 13 homes in Lindal’s Architects Collaborative line.
Frank Lloyd Wright Architecture and Interiors Robie House. Frank Lloyd Wright sought to design simpler, holistic houses that married site and structure, interior and exterior. His expression of what came to be called Prairie School style was in full flower by the time he completed the Robie House in Chicago in 1910.
: Gropius House Lincoln, Massachusetts German architect Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus school of design, built a home for his family in 1938, his first U.S. architectural commission. Gropius had come to Massachusetts to teach at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and the house combined elements of traditional New England architecture with cutting-edge modern materials.
Fallingwater
“The idea was born from my real obsession with the world of trees,” architect Stefano Boeri says of his leafy buildings. “Years ago, I happened to be working in Dubai, a city in which dozens and dozens of high-rises were springing up, all strictly clad in glass. I asked myself then if it might be possible to work with something else that wouldn’t involve such a great expenditure of energy. Thus was born the idea of a living facade: one that ‘breathed’ … and featured trees. Bit by bit, this idea became the Bosco Verticale.”
“The idea was born from my real obsession with the world of trees,” architect Stefano Boeri says of his leafy buildings. “Years ago, I happened to be working in Dubai, a city in which dozens and dozens of high-rises were springing up, all strictly clad in glass. I asked myself then if it might be possible to work with something else that wouldn’t involve such a great expenditure of energy. Thus was born the idea of a living facade: one that ‘breathed’ … and featured trees. Bit by bit, this idea became the Bosco Verticale.”
Stop No. 1: Taliesin West Scottsdale, Arizona When Frank Lloyd Wright started building Taliesin West in the foothills of the Sonoran Desert in 1937, the idea was to create a winter retreat that was “of the desert, not on it,”
Mosaic tile covers the top mounds of Amdavad Ni Gufa.
It is most common for projects of this nature to have floors set into the trees — as with this house by Keuka Studios in upstate New York. The house is anchored at one end, and a covered open-air pavilion is set on delicate steel poles above the slope at the other. It appears to disappear into the trees as it does so.
Villa E1027 par Helen Grey
Villa E1027 overlooks the Bay of Monaco. Gray chose the location for its beautiful views across the Mediterranean. ( Par Helen Grey)
Helen Gray — who died in 1976 at age 98 — and the impact of her design legacy have been dramatized for the big screen in a film that aims to set the record straight.
Completed in 1952, the home served as a trial run for the spiral and ramp design that Frank Lloyd Wright was proposing for New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, a project he was working on at the same time. The Phoenix home’s ramp leads visitors from the entry courtyard up to the front door and continues to a roof deck.
An experimental spiral-shaped house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1950 for his son and daughter-in-law, David and Gladys Wright, had all but disappeared from public view until 2009, when their heirs put the home on the market. The property, located in the tony Arcadia neighborhood of Phoenix, fell into the hands of developers, who planned to tear it down and build two spec homes in its place.
An experimental spiral-shaped house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1950 for his son and daughter-in-law, David and Gladys Wright, had all but disappeared from public view until 2009, when their heirs put the home on the market. The property, located in the tony Arcadia neighborhood of Phoenix, fell into the hands of developers, who planned to tear it down and build two spec homes in its place.
Verner Panton thought and created imagery with the vision of a child, using bold colors and shapes. This was evident in all of his lighting designs, including the Fun Lamps with their shiny, dangling mother-of-pearl and silver disks; the Moon Pendant, with its 10 adjustable rings, which represent the different phases of the moon; the Spiral, featuring Cellidor plastic spirals; and the futuristic VP and Panto Globes.
Gehry’s Inspiration Born on February 28, 1929, in Toronto, Frank Gehry began building miniature cities as a child with scraps from his grandfather’s hardware store. In 1954 he spent a year in the U.S. Army, designing functional furniture for soldiers and officers. In 1969 Gehry produced his first avant-garde furniture line; the pieces were made of corrugated cardboard. A forerunner in the deconstructivist movement, he created designs that put breathtaking beauty before functionality. Throughout his career Gehry has created furniture and lighting collections that experiment with organic and geometric shapes, using modern materials and fabrications such as bentwood and molded plastics. His unexpected designs seemingly take inspiration from unusual sources, such as clouds, fish and crumpled paper.
Must-Know Modern Homes: Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater
Must-Know Modern Homes: Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater
The iconic view of the house can be had with just a short walk through the woods to an outcropping. In what can rarely be said about buildings, this house makes Mother Nature all the better for being there. It truly is the high point in Frank Lloyd Wright's quest for an "organic architecture."
The house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the early 1930s for Edgar Kaufmann, a Pittsburgh department store owner, and in 1991 it was named the “best all-time work of American architecture.” In 1963 the Kaufmann’s son, Edgar Jr., entrusted the house, land and original furnishings to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which today continues as conservator of this remarkable building. In celebration of the 75th anniversary of Fallingwater, the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, caretakers of Fallingwater, held “an enchanted evening” at the house on Friday, Sept. 17, 2011. (Learn more about the event here.) An evening reception at Fallingwater — with the house aglow like a lantern in the woods while the sounds of the waterfall, soft music and good conversation fill the air — would be like no other.
Frank Lloyd Wright, perhaps tired at age 70 of enduring the harsh winters at Taliesin, his home and studio in Wisconsin, purchased 160 acres in Scottsdale in 1938 to create a winter home and studio. Inspired by the Southwestern landscape, he sought a “nobly simple” architecture for Taliesin West.
This is a traditional Japanese space. Shoji screens bring in light even when closed, and fresh air from the outdoors when opened. Tatami mats line the floor. Large front and back rooms are connected by a screen; this allows residents to cordon off spaces to create individual rooms or combine them into one large entertaining space. A Buddhist altar sits behind the large white doors in the back room. The altar is a typical feature of traditional homes; what’s modern is the use of white on the door, as opposed to wood paneling. Although much work went into the preservation of the home’s heritage, we can still glimpse Aoki’s nod to the future of Japanese design.
Outside in the courtyard is a karesansui, a traditional Japanese dry landscape garden. You can see large, long, rectangular stones in the gravel. These stones were part of the original foundations of the building and were included in the restoration to acknowledge the home’s roots.
4. Traditional Wooden Home Restoration in Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture Famous for his innovative renovations of run-down buildings, architect Shigeru Aoki was asked to take on this 100-year-old home in the old castle town, Toyota City. Aoki’s main concern was the restoration of the structural engineering of the property, given that Japan is prone to earthquakes. Aoki used a Japanese traditional renovation technique called hikiya, which is used to restore historical buildings. Hikiya involves literally moving the house away from the site, redoing the base and foundations, and then putting the house back in place — a big job.
2. Minimalist Nest House, Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture This contemporary home in the rural region of Nagoya was nicknamed the Nest House by architect Takuya Tsuchida, who wanted to give the homeowners the feeling of living in a nest without feeling tied to a nest’s natural form. As the home is just about 1,000 square feet, the guiding principles of innovation, simplicity and functionality were far more important to the architect than decoration.
Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban, Bangladesh, 1961–1983. The National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has been described as Kahn’s magnum opus, and was completed posthumously in 1983.
Salk Institute, California, 1959–1965. Jonas Salk (1914–1995) discovered the first polio vaccine, and Kahn was recommended to him as the best architect to build his laboratory in La Jolla. The brief was to design somewhere Picasso could be invited to. Kahn created an inspiring and functional space for research that was an architectural masterpiece.
Architect at a Glance Name: Louis Isadore Kahn (1901–1974). Design philosophy: Kahn was interested in community life and the social responsibility of architecture. Distinctive style: Heavy brick and concrete against more refined surfaces, such as glass Major works: Yale University Art Gallery, Connecticut (1951–1953); Salk Institute, California (1959–1965); Kimbell Art Museum, Texas (1967–1972); the National Assembly Building, Dhaka, Bangladesh (1961–1983); Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, New York (1972–2012) Honors: Awarded the American Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal in 1971 and the Royal Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1972 Images from Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture, an exhibition at The Design Museum
Japan Pavilion, Expo 2000 Hannover (2000) in Hannover, Germany, designed with Shigeru Ban
Otto gained fame for his tensile structures that incorporate the use of tension rods and cables to make them strong yet incredibly light. Perhaps the most famous were his stadium roof canopies for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany (shown here).
Otto gained fame for his tensile structures that incorporate the use of tension rods and cables to make them strong yet incredibly light. Perhaps the most famous were his stadium roof canopies for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany (shown here).
Architecture fans were hit with a bittersweet punch today after learning that German architect Frei Otto, known for his pioneering use of lightweight tent-like structures, was awarded the 2015 Pritzker Architecture Prize, an announcement that came just one day after his death, at the age of 89.
The architects at Tate Studio Architects
View of the Cree House from Highway 111. Photo by Lance Gerber House at a Glance Location: Between Palm Springs and Cathedral City, California Size: 1,300 square feet (121 square meters) Architect: Albert Frey
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