Eisenman's House II Revisited

2018-01-15T12:50:00-05:00

Still, the house offers the rigor of thought and careful design and supports projection. Maybe we come to realize that it is our simple, logical certainties that have most misled us.

The advantage to coming to a well-known work late and as an outsider—I’m a writer, not an architect—is that I saw it fresh, away from the noise of adulation and reaction. Making a model of Eisenman's House II gave me a chance to experience it closely, over time, as well as provided a platform to think about our time and much else.

“The public realm has shrunk to an apologetic ghost but the private realm has not been significantly enriched; there are no references—either historical or ideal; and in this atomized society, except for what is electronically supplied or is reluctantly sought in print, communication has either collapsed or reduced itself to impoverished interchange of ever more banal verbal formulae.”

From Rowe and Koetter, Collage City.

This is our world now, where we vacillate between futuristic utopias and visions of apocalypse. Look at the language of the last election and the state of our verbal culture, at how much we have become fractured into narrow whims and abs...

Eisenman's iconic 'House II' is now on the market for $850K

2017-04-18T17:36:00-04:00

Built in 1970, ‘House II’ by Peter Eisenman is a major icon of structuralist architecture—and it’s now on the market for $850K.

One of ten experimental houses Eisenman designed, only four of which were built, House II is heavily influenced by the work of Noam Chomsky. The house comprises three two-story bays sheathed in plywood and intercut with skylights, partial walls, and openings in the floor. But the design wasn’t exactly contextually-appropriate: its flat roof didn’t mesh with the cold Vermont winters. So the original designers added a slightly sloped roof, floor grates, and expanded walls.

Even then, House II suffered from leaks and moisture-trapping paint. Eventually, in 2000, the rather deteriorated house was renovated and brought back to its original design “less as a practical dwelling than as a landmark of late-twentieth-century architecture”, according to the Society of Architectural Historians.

Now it can be yours! Situated on a beautiful 80-acre plot of land, it comes ...

Archinect - News

Eisenman's House II Revisited

Eisenman's iconic 'House II' is now on the market for $850K