I thought I'd start a new thread to tie together some ideas that have been floating around on Thread Central lately: ideas of home, a sense of place, nostalgia, the picturesque, suburbia, and their relationship to contemporary trends in architecture.
One of my favorite movies is Wonder Boys with Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire, filmed almost entirely in various Pittsburgh neighborhoods that, based on some of the scenes in the movie, could be considered pre-war "streetcar suburbs" similar to the one I grew up in.
In the movie, there's a scene where Professor Grady Tripp (Douglas) and James Leer, his socially-awkward student protege (Maguire) break into the childhood home of Tripp's estranged wife. The home is a typical pre-war frame house with a generous yard, hardwood floors, tasteful furniture and bric-a-bric, and the usual family photos on the fireplace mantle. Once they get inside the house, there's a brief dialogue that has always stuck with me:
Leer: “It feels really... good in here.”
Tripp: “Yeah, I know... It's the type of house you want to wake up in on Christmas morning.”
As much as I love architects like Mies and Tadao Ando, I don't think many people would say that about any house they have designed.
This past Saturday I decided that I needed to get out of Manhattan for a few hours so that my head wouldn't explode, so I took the train out to Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, a planned community fashioned after a traditional English village, not unlike Mariemont, Ohio, although a bit more dense.
Forest Hills Gardens in the summer:
This is probably the time to confess one of my architectural guilty pleasures: I generally consider myself a hard-nosed minimalist when it comes to design; give me sleek shapes without any arbitrary lines or useless clutter, large expanses of point-supported glazing, exposed structural elements, clean geometry, and a simple palette of honest materials.
That said, I have a bit of a fetish for Tudor Revival and Gothic Revival architecture, and I have very little desire to live in a glass house. If I could afford it, I'd probably buy a home like this in a heartbeat:
(image hosted here in case it's not showing up above)
One of my professors at UIC had a strong interest in Romanticism and the Picturesque movement, and I found myself sharing some of that interest. I get nervous when new buildings try to emulate historical styles (it's usually done very badly), but I think there's something to be learned from the scale, materials, and details found in such styles. Despite the best efforts of Dwell, et al, such styles remain popular, and I think it's worth exploring why.
I'm a big fan of Mies Van Der Rohe, but despite being the high priest of boxy modernism, he lived in a Streeterville brownstone for most of his career. In a similar vien, I used to know somebody who was a well-regarded classical violinist who has performed at Carnegie Hall and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But when she's at home and not playing the violin, her favorite type of music to listen to was 80's hair metal.
Some questions for discussion:
Is an architect being a hypocrite for wishing to live in a type of house they would probably never design for somebody in a million years?
I think we can safely assume that historicism and romanticism in architecture will always be with us, and that contemporary architects disparage it at their peril. What can be learned from historicist styles such as Tudor Revival, et al? How can those lessons be applied to the type of design work we prefer to do?
What makes a house home for you? Does it involve a style of house that you'd be afraid to admit to your studio critic?
Ah, the love that dare not speak its name - that of ornament/ historical styles.
My Christmas house would have to be a Prairie style bungalow. One with yellow brick and and a big arching band window in the front. I mean, my furniture would never fit in there, but its fantasy so who cares.
Recently I toured several fancy - schmancy architecture offices in Chicago with my studio class. They were virtually identical inside: black carpet tile, arctic white walls. One feature wall (red or reddish orange), full height glass partitions with some minimal frosted element to prevent you from walking into it. For furniture you had either Eames aluminum group or the Barcelona suite or maybe a Saarinen pedestal table. At each office we were greeted by a bespectacled middle age man in a black outfit. By the third one I had completely lost track of where we were and why I should care.
I too love the minimalist modern. When well done it is sublime. When its understood as the only valid approach, it bores me to tears.
Heh... I've probably worked in a couple of the firms you visited, and I agree about the Chicago bungalow. Some of them are incredible.
Your last paragraph pretty much sums up my feelings as well. The Farnsworth House surrounded by a lush natural setting is a thing of beauty, and so is a Tadao Ando house situated in the middle of a historic urban neighborhood. But an entire city based on modernist dogma would look a lot like something from Stalinist Russia.
Rock: Yeah, why? It's fine if you want to use this thread to post a photo of your dream home, but you should be prepared to contribute to the discussion and explain why it's your dream home.
I get what you are throwing down. It was a special trip for me to see Villa Savoye outside Paris, but honestly I don't think I'd want to live there, at least not in that climate. However, for a home in a warm climate I could totally go for the cool feel of concrete, steel and glass. I want my glass house in Miami, not in Wisconsin. Climate and region play a big role in what a house "feels" like.
Close to my midwestern house someone tore down a rather decrepit 40's built bungalo and put up a modern prairie style house. The execution of the design is clumsy in many aspects and the size of it totally over power the lot. That said, it's a place I could see myself living in. My spouse just loves it, and to the owners credit, it's not a brand new McMansion in a "street car" suburb. It fits the region/climate.
I'm no FLW fanboy, but at least his prairie style homes fit extremely well into their context, climate included. Richard Meyer may be a great architect but dropping one of his houses in the north woods just seems irresponsible to me. Don't forget that good design cannot be separated from it's site.
IT's probably one of the best combinations of classical architecture with the a modern high-rise. It's essentially today's insular.
The Upper East Side is one of the only places you can find apartments with parlors, hallways, dining rooms and libraries. It's not because these buildings were necessarily well-to-do back when they were built but more of a historical argument that a lot of them sprang up before open plans.
The problem with old buildings is everything from shared ventilation systems (hello, TB and cockroaches) to a lack of modern fixtures (well that ethernet cord nailed into fancy 19th century cast plaster looks lovely.
This building was partially built to invoke the old european style of compartmentalized livings spaces and social constructs of those living spaces. You can't really find this combination of generous ceilings, proper layout and the historical pastiche. Four thousand square feet, 14 foot ceilings, 20th floor living... right on the edge of central park and right at one of the best intersections in the US.
I think a key poitn made so far is the connection between heather, region and housing style....
For me an English style Tudor or other house seemed the perfect fit when i visited the English midlands but for where i am now (the North Floridian steampile) i wouldn't want anything other than my lovely little, easy to do work on, cracker house with a tin roof and front and back porches.....
There is an area outside of Minneapolis, in a town called Edina. The area is called the Country Club District... Its a very wealthy area, and historically of some note. Built in the 20's or so, i believe it was one of the first planned suburbs in a Riverside, Ill sort of way, and it might have been the first planned suburban area around a country club.
Anyway, its still relatively dense, typically the yards arent grotesquely expansive. The housing stock is gorgeous, and the super wide tree lined streets are truly picturesque.
My aunt and uncle lived there, and we visited many Christmases. Its always had a fond place in my heart, though socially or civic-ly it represents an idealized life my rational mind finds objectionable...
Its definitely a strange paradox...
i find this neighborhood so enticing, yet as mentioned above, i wouldnt ever choose this direction for a house if i were designing one. So does that really make me a hypocrite? Is it the look of the house that attracts me? The age? Or is it that this house has taken on a meaning not necessarily associated with the aesthetic. We can like the ideas or meaning of a thing without liking the embodiment of it cant we? I dont know how to really analyze this...
The aesthetic has already been tagged with many descriptors... there's no separating them anymore in my mind. Therefore, a house that looks like this, already means something. Its identity is largely closed. Perhaps that's why its not necessarily hypocritical to love this house but never design it. Perhaps in our professional lives wed prefer to pursue and avenue more open for experiment and interpretation than the aesthetic of the Country Club District provide...
Let me throw this out for discussion: I think it's tempting to discuss historicism and modernism -- or romanticism and rationalism -- as mutually-exclusive opposites, but what are examples of buildings that successfully straddle the divide? Perhaps the reason for Frank Lloyd Wright's success is that he found a way to dispense with overt historicism and yet still create environments that seemingly responded to human needs (provided you didn't actually sit in his chairs or expect the rain to stay outside).
In addition to architects I've mentioned above, E. Fay Jones has a special spot in my heart, and not just because of his famous chapels. He's done some incredible homes as well:
Loving old homes while designing modern ones does not make you a hypocrite, however choosing to live in one for the sake of its aesthetics while you force your clients to live in modernist homes does make you a hypocrite.
The term "practice what you preach" comes to mind, but I would imagine that if your clients really love the austere boxes you design for them then being a hypocrite is O.K.
Can any architect -- or at least any non-starchitect -- force their client to live in a modernist home they design? In the firms I've worked for, it's usually the client that calls the shots.
Maybe in a few years when I become Living in Gin AIA, a potential client will come to me and ask, "Can you design me an English Tudor home like the one you live in?"
I don't think I'd be able to slap a bunch of half-timbering and a stone chimney onto a McMansion and still be able to look myself in the mirror that night. But I hope I'd be able to talk with the client a bit and find out what he/she finds so appealing about the English Tudor home and incorporate those elements into a design that's appropriate for the site, the client's needs, and in keeping with my own ideas about good design.
Living in Gin...mrs b and myself visited a bunch of Fay Jones homes (I can't come to call them homes) in and around Fayetteville, Arkansas a couple of years ago. It was very interesting to wonder thru these homes...most of them built a number of years ago. We also visited some homes designed by those who came to be in his office after his passing and I can say I don't think they have the stuff. It might be the materials...it might be that their stuff is a bit over the top, but in all of it you can see Fay Jones. If your ever in Fayetteville the Univesity of Arkansas has a great collection of his drawings and models. I would say it is well worth the visit as the context of the site and the building is important in all of his work.
With all that said, "He be the Chapel Man!"
while you force your clients to live in modernist homes
wow, apu, that's a cheery characterization of the relationship between architect and client. You seem to assume many things in your statements above: that architects only design "modernist" homes; that architects have a real love for "great" old architecture on the one hand and then throw off these cold, austere, insincere, crappy designs onto people, cause, you know, they must hate them....as if a piece of modern architecture can't be designed to have the qualities that LiG described above...as if most architects didn't actually buy old houses 'cause they really can't afford to buy land and construct their dream design from scratch, like some of their clients can...well, I could go on, but it's a start.
Ok, force was a harsh word as we all know client's are the ones usually calling the shots. All I am saying is that it is helpful to practice what you preach. Zumthor is about as austere as they get when his work is taken at face value but when you scratch deeper you realize his buildings are steeped in tradition and respect for the site. I'm not saying we cannot take lessons from the past, hell, that's all i try to do.
I guess why i'm a bit vitrolic about this is the fact that Peter Eisenman, who is one of the biggest theorists out there lives in a farm house in Connecticut while all of his clients get to live in his decon BS. He even said himself he would never live in a house he himself designed. His clients asked for it, but hey. Now I know Eisenman is a huge history buff, but the idea that he gets to live in the comfortably built historical farmhouse while students at UIC in Cincy get to have studio in a leaky, drafty, EIFIS covered salmon pink building that looks like its falling over just, well, grinds my fucking gears.
If corb, the man who literally wrote the book on Modernism, lived in a country french house would we have taken him as seriously? I doubt it.
I love looking at these beautiful, austere, practically brutalist modern homes in glossy magazines, the ones that look like they're inhabited by robots, but would i ever live in one? No. Would i ever design one? Not unless i was asked to. I'm not saying all modern homes are harsh and austere but there is a limit to the austerity.
I think the most terrifying thing about that place... other than the gaudy lamp on the second floor, is the fans. Is it me or does that one fan need the staircase look dangerously placed?
as someone who has awakened on christmas morning in a mies house, i will say there are few better christmas experiences than seeing the snowy white landscape roll out from your window and be able to see from the snowy ground all the way up to the snowy tips of the honeylocusts through one framed view.
if i did not live in mies, i would also like to wake up in mckim, mead, and white. a taste for both is not mutually exclusive.
The Tudor Revival house in the second image of my OP above was built sometime in the 1920's or 30's. At that time, Gropius and Corbu were doing their stuff in Europe, but aside from the art deco movement and a few other exceptions, the vast majority of everything being built in the US was some form of historicism or another, and would remain so until the post-war boom brought modernism into the mainstream.
In looking to buy a house, there's an understandable desire for quality of detailing and workmanship, and rightly or wrongly, there's a general consensus in the real estate world that pre-war design and workmanship = good, and post-war design and workmanship = bad. Or maybe pre-war construction just has that comfortable feel, like an old pair of blue jeans.
Sure, you can get excellent detailing and workmanship in a custom house if you're willing to pay for it, but that's not how most post-war houses have been built. And as has been asked above, how many of us will ever really be able to buy our own piece of land and build our own custom dream home to our exact standards?
So, if you're an architect looking to buy an older home in an American pre-war neighborhood, it's pretty much a given that the home you buy will be some form of historicism. I don't see that as a bad thing, and I don't see anything hypocritical about it even if you spend your career designing stuff like in Apu's pic above.
Back to the English Tudor: If you really want to live in an authentic English Tudor house, you'll need to move to England and quite possibly end up living in a house with drafty walls, low ceilings, sloped floors, and no indoor plumbing. I think very few people would be willing to take their Tudor fetish to that extreme.
Speaking for myself, I wouldn't have a problem buying the Tudor Revival house built in 1929, assuming it's been reasonably well-maintained over the years and that I could make some sensitive upgrades. But I have a very hard time seeing myself buying a Tudor style house built in 2005, even if it looked virtually identical and all else being equal. Why is that? In theory, the Tudor style home built in 1929 is no more authentic than the one built in 2005: Neither of them can be considered true Tudor homes, and they're not even built on English soil. But there's still that nagging sense that the 1929 home is more "real" than the 2005 one. I'm curious to read people's thoughts on why.
There's nothing hypocritical about living in an older home if that's what you can afford, but something just gets to me if an architect has the money to build a home to their standards/design and don't, because they would rather not live in a home they themselves designed. I can understand some reasons for this, like disliking your own work, which happens as we all know we've had failures, but what I like about the architect's house is that it would be a great place to experiment with stuff you would never have the balls to try with a client, like Gehry's chicken-wire experiments or even my old boss's shower with the perspex floor (!!!). One of the things I love about Corb and FLW is they really lived in their work. Corb's quaint little bungalow on the Cote D' Azur is a brilliant piece of design which he built because he didn't have the money to buy a full-size house on the coast.
I think it is down to authenticity and a large part of that comes from the intent of the 'creators':
Your 1929 building, whilst probably orchestrated by a developer, would not have had the same kind of intent as a modern developer.
I doubt whether the same standard of craft applies to modern variants.
Definitely not the same mass-production ethos in terms of materials and methodology, copy and paste,
Time is an issue - you cannot replace that sense of occupying a space that has seen a number of different occupants and narratives over time. Perhaps all stylistic revivals are an attempt to infer age in replacement of the embedded energy from past inhabitants and movements.
I think the pre-war/post-war difference in craftsmanship is the key, LiG. Architects I've know though my entire life have loved a beautiful old home and typically filled them with perfectly tasteful modern/iconic furnishings - what student hasn't been to their professor's modest charming bungalow with awesome art and a Barcelona chair? Those glimpses into profs' personal lives were incredibly formative for me.
And a lot of those older homes - specifically the one you posted that you'd like to buy - have a balls-out quirkiness that can't be replicated today.
How to explain that...when I see a truly quirky older house, the author seems anonymous, even moreso than the craftsmen who obviously built it. There's a lack if self-conciousness - I don't know if that's just something that comes with age (it seems to with people...) or if the social milieu back then was simply less self-conscious (on the level of small home designers/builders - certainly bigger projects like Empire State were self-consciously bold). Maybe because there were still more-or-less "proper" ways to design things then, based on how things were built, and therefore houses that bend the rules look intriguing?
It's hard for me to explain, but a Tudor home today looks self-consciously designed. It looks like someone set out to specifically make something that looks old, so it ends up looking somehow manufactured. Maybe in 80 years today's Tudor Revival McMansions will be seen as quirky and desirable, but there's that craftsmanship problem...
Yes, my partner and I do some fairly historic work. But...we're virtually always working with an existing historic house, and adding/renovating in kind. Though to my eye at least, the new work is clearly new - it doesn't look so much like recreated history as like contemporary interpretation. Granted that's a pretty wobbly line, and to non-architects it just looks "historic".
BTW, the interior of my home is quite minimalist(ish...) but it's a lovely place to wake up on Christmas. I go a bit overboard on seasonal decorations, true. But wasn't it Loos who said the home he grew up in wasn't fancy, but the things in it were HIS and therefore meaningful to him if no one else?
i wrote the above before reading lb's comments, but, she's pointing to something crucial,, yes, weather, region, style are important, but so is the personal attachement, which is built and molded over time through experiences and memories,,, Think of it as a condensed, personal version of Giedion's Space, Time and Architecture.
In reference to the craftsman/bungalow homes. I think it is difficult to build a craftsman style home without a true craftsman. It seems like too many people actually building our neighborhoods today are relatively unskilled labor. Craftsman are a dying breed in this country.
I love how my old house in my old neighborhood (120 years) is only 10 feet from the neighbors, but no one has curtains. The way the spaces and the openings are arranged from house to house allows for almost complete privacy, while allowing daylight in and views out to the gardens.
I agree with whoever said it depends on the region in which you live. I've always loved the craftsman bungalow. I don't know why, they just seem warm and inviting to me.
But if I were to live on the West Coast more specifically the San Fransisco area, I'd love live in something with lots o' floor to ceiling windows. My friend's parents lived in one and the views of the hills were killer.
There's actually a pretty strong tradition of Arts-and-Crafts bungalows in California... Not sure about the Bay Area, but I know LA has quite a few of them. I'd be curious to see how they compare to their Chicago counterparts. I agree that region plays a huge role... A Tudor Revival house looks pretty natural in a northern wooded setting, but would look pretty ridiculous in Florida or out in the cornfields of Nebraska. Likewise, I have to roll my eyes a little when I see a Spanish mission style dwelling surrounded by tall pine trees and a foot of snow on the ground.
I grew up Fort Thomas, Kentucky, a pre-war bedroom suburb just outside Cincinnati. Fort Thomas has a mix of larger craftsman-style homes in the upper-middle-class northern part of town, and a lot of 1950's cape cod and ranch houses in the merely-middle-class southern end of town. Very few of the houses are architecturally noteworthy by themselves, but collectively they form a very homey, comfortable feel to the town that hasn't changed much since the early 1950's. (And the locals fight tooth-and-nail to make sure it stays that way, for better or worse.)
The house I grew up in was a modest cape cod in the south end of town. It didn't really have any special features aside from its location on a quiet side street that backed up to some woods, but my grandparents' house in north Fort Thomas was a bit larger with a decorative fireplace, dormer windows upstairs, a huge front porch, and much more of a "lived-in" feel. Most of my fondest childhood memories are from my grandparents' old house, partly because of the house itself, and partly because of the family gatherings that used to take place there.
“The house an architect builds for himself may be considered in general a manifestation of his aspirations, a kind of witness, a confession of his sins, a holograph in which one can not only examine the visible text but also graphically trace the secret motives of the text and the deep-running roots of the poet’s inspiration”
-Ernesto Rogers
People, including architects, are complex and irrational and human and messy, despite what we claim. We're also prone to nostalgia, to utopian dreams and our own ideas of domesticity, which might not match exactly what we've been told we're 'supposed to' think of these things, whether through academia or practice, or even peer-pressure. Architects often appear, at least to me and from my experience, to be almost afraid of not being in agreement with whatever happens to be cool at the moment. I think I'm prone to cynicism, but often we're no better than 15 year olds.
You want to live in a shack by the river? Great! A concrete box in Manhattan? Awesome! Whatever floats your boat.
Mar 31, 09 1:28 pm ·
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The type of house you want to wake up in on Christmas morning
I thought I'd start a new thread to tie together some ideas that have been floating around on Thread Central lately: ideas of home, a sense of place, nostalgia, the picturesque, suburbia, and their relationship to contemporary trends in architecture.
One of my favorite movies is Wonder Boys with Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire, filmed almost entirely in various Pittsburgh neighborhoods that, based on some of the scenes in the movie, could be considered pre-war "streetcar suburbs" similar to the one I grew up in.
In the movie, there's a scene where Professor Grady Tripp (Douglas) and James Leer, his socially-awkward student protege (Maguire) break into the childhood home of Tripp's estranged wife. The home is a typical pre-war frame house with a generous yard, hardwood floors, tasteful furniture and bric-a-bric, and the usual family photos on the fireplace mantle. Once they get inside the house, there's a brief dialogue that has always stuck with me:
Leer: “It feels really... good in here.”
Tripp: “Yeah, I know... It's the type of house you want to wake up in on Christmas morning.”
As much as I love architects like Mies and Tadao Ando, I don't think many people would say that about any house they have designed.
This past Saturday I decided that I needed to get out of Manhattan for a few hours so that my head wouldn't explode, so I took the train out to Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, a planned community fashioned after a traditional English village, not unlike Mariemont, Ohio, although a bit more dense.
Forest Hills Gardens in the summer:
This is probably the time to confess one of my architectural guilty pleasures: I generally consider myself a hard-nosed minimalist when it comes to design; give me sleek shapes without any arbitrary lines or useless clutter, large expanses of point-supported glazing, exposed structural elements, clean geometry, and a simple palette of honest materials.
That said, I have a bit of a fetish for Tudor Revival and Gothic Revival architecture, and I have very little desire to live in a glass house. If I could afford it, I'd probably buy a home like this in a heartbeat:
(image hosted here in case it's not showing up above)
One of my professors at UIC had a strong interest in Romanticism and the Picturesque movement, and I found myself sharing some of that interest. I get nervous when new buildings try to emulate historical styles (it's usually done very badly), but I think there's something to be learned from the scale, materials, and details found in such styles. Despite the best efforts of Dwell, et al, such styles remain popular, and I think it's worth exploring why.
I'm a big fan of Mies Van Der Rohe, but despite being the high priest of boxy modernism, he lived in a Streeterville brownstone for most of his career. In a similar vien, I used to know somebody who was a well-regarded classical violinist who has performed at Carnegie Hall and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But when she's at home and not playing the violin, her favorite type of music to listen to was 80's hair metal.
Some questions for discussion:
Is an architect being a hypocrite for wishing to live in a type of house they would probably never design for somebody in a million years?
I think we can safely assume that historicism and romanticism in architecture will always be with us, and that contemporary architects disparage it at their peril. What can be learned from historicist styles such as Tudor Revival, et al? How can those lessons be applied to the type of design work we prefer to do?
What makes a house home for you? Does it involve a style of house that you'd be afraid to admit to your studio critic?
I want to wake up here
15 Central Park West.... holla!
Why?
Ah, the love that dare not speak its name - that of ornament/ historical styles.
My Christmas house would have to be a Prairie style bungalow. One with yellow brick and and a big arching band window in the front. I mean, my furniture would never fit in there, but its fantasy so who cares.
Recently I toured several fancy - schmancy architecture offices in Chicago with my studio class. They were virtually identical inside: black carpet tile, arctic white walls. One feature wall (red or reddish orange), full height glass partitions with some minimal frosted element to prevent you from walking into it. For furniture you had either Eames aluminum group or the Barcelona suite or maybe a Saarinen pedestal table. At each office we were greeted by a bespectacled middle age man in a black outfit. By the third one I had completely lost track of where we were and why I should care.
I too love the minimalist modern. When well done it is sublime. When its understood as the only valid approach, it bores me to tears.
Why 15 Central Park West?
LiG, This is actually one of my favorite questions ever asked on Archinect:
Is an architect being a hypocrite for wishing to live in a type of house they would probably never design for somebody in a million years?
I don't have time to right now, but this is a discussion I definitely want to come back and contribute to.
Heh... I've probably worked in a couple of the firms you visited, and I agree about the Chicago bungalow. Some of them are incredible.
Your last paragraph pretty much sums up my feelings as well. The Farnsworth House surrounded by a lush natural setting is a thing of beauty, and so is a Tadao Ando house situated in the middle of a historic urban neighborhood. But an entire city based on modernist dogma would look a lot like something from Stalinist Russia.
(cross-posted with FLM)
Rock: Yeah, why? It's fine if you want to use this thread to post a photo of your dream home, but you should be prepared to contribute to the discussion and explain why it's your dream home.
IMHO, and there are going to be many that disagree with me, yes gin, it makes you a hypocrite.
I get what you are throwing down. It was a special trip for me to see Villa Savoye outside Paris, but honestly I don't think I'd want to live there, at least not in that climate. However, for a home in a warm climate I could totally go for the cool feel of concrete, steel and glass. I want my glass house in Miami, not in Wisconsin. Climate and region play a big role in what a house "feels" like.
Close to my midwestern house someone tore down a rather decrepit 40's built bungalo and put up a modern prairie style house. The execution of the design is clumsy in many aspects and the size of it totally over power the lot. That said, it's a place I could see myself living in. My spouse just loves it, and to the owners credit, it's not a brand new McMansion in a "street car" suburb. It fits the region/climate.
I'm no FLW fanboy, but at least his prairie style homes fit extremely well into their context, climate included. Richard Meyer may be a great architect but dropping one of his houses in the north woods just seems irresponsible to me. Don't forget that good design cannot be separated from it's site.
IT's probably one of the best combinations of classical architecture with the a modern high-rise. It's essentially today's insular.
The Upper East Side is one of the only places you can find apartments with parlors, hallways, dining rooms and libraries. It's not because these buildings were necessarily well-to-do back when they were built but more of a historical argument that a lot of them sprang up before open plans.
The problem with old buildings is everything from shared ventilation systems (hello, TB and cockroaches) to a lack of modern fixtures (well that ethernet cord nailed into fancy 19th century cast plaster looks lovely.
This building was partially built to invoke the old european style of compartmentalized livings spaces and social constructs of those living spaces. You can't really find this combination of generous ceilings, proper layout and the historical pastiche. Four thousand square feet, 14 foot ceilings, 20th floor living... right on the edge of central park and right at one of the best intersections in the US.
I think a key poitn made so far is the connection between heather, region and housing style....
For me an English style Tudor or other house seemed the perfect fit when i visited the English midlands but for where i am now (the North Floridian steampile) i wouldn't want anything other than my lovely little, easy to do work on, cracker house with a tin roof and front and back porches.....
Speaking of Stalinist Russia, where do you see modernism here??
LIG, i am right with you on this one...
There is an area outside of Minneapolis, in a town called Edina. The area is called the Country Club District... Its a very wealthy area, and historically of some note. Built in the 20's or so, i believe it was one of the first planned suburbs in a Riverside, Ill sort of way, and it might have been the first planned suburban area around a country club.
Anyway, its still relatively dense, typically the yards arent grotesquely expansive. The housing stock is gorgeous, and the super wide tree lined streets are truly picturesque.
My aunt and uncle lived there, and we visited many Christmases. Its always had a fond place in my heart, though socially or civic-ly it represents an idealized life my rational mind finds objectionable...
Its definitely a strange paradox...
i find this neighborhood so enticing, yet as mentioned above, i wouldnt ever choose this direction for a house if i were designing one. So does that really make me a hypocrite? Is it the look of the house that attracts me? The age? Or is it that this house has taken on a meaning not necessarily associated with the aesthetic. We can like the ideas or meaning of a thing without liking the embodiment of it cant we? I dont know how to really analyze this...
The aesthetic has already been tagged with many descriptors... there's no separating them anymore in my mind. Therefore, a house that looks like this, already means something. Its identity is largely closed. Perhaps that's why its not necessarily hypocritical to love this house but never design it. Perhaps in our professional lives wed prefer to pursue and avenue more open for experiment and interpretation than the aesthetic of the Country Club District provide...
heres the house... link didnt work in the last post...
Nice, lletdownl.
Let me throw this out for discussion: I think it's tempting to discuss historicism and modernism -- or romanticism and rationalism -- as mutually-exclusive opposites, but what are examples of buildings that successfully straddle the divide? Perhaps the reason for Frank Lloyd Wright's success is that he found a way to dispense with overt historicism and yet still create environments that seemingly responded to human needs (provided you didn't actually sit in his chairs or expect the rain to stay outside).
In addition to architects I've mentioned above, E. Fay Jones has a special spot in my heart, and not just because of his famous chapels. He's done some incredible homes as well:
Loving old homes while designing modern ones does not make you a hypocrite, however choosing to live in one for the sake of its aesthetics while you force your clients to live in modernist homes does make you a hypocrite.
The term "practice what you preach" comes to mind, but I would imagine that if your clients really love the austere boxes you design for them then being a hypocrite is O.K.
Can any architect -- or at least any non-starchitect -- force their client to live in a modernist home they design? In the firms I've worked for, it's usually the client that calls the shots.
Maybe in a few years when I become Living in Gin AIA, a potential client will come to me and ask, "Can you design me an English Tudor home like the one you live in?"
I don't think I'd be able to slap a bunch of half-timbering and a stone chimney onto a McMansion and still be able to look myself in the mirror that night. But I hope I'd be able to talk with the client a bit and find out what he/she finds so appealing about the English Tudor home and incorporate those elements into a design that's appropriate for the site, the client's needs, and in keeping with my own ideas about good design.
Living in Gin...mrs b and myself visited a bunch of Fay Jones homes (I can't come to call them homes) in and around Fayetteville, Arkansas a couple of years ago. It was very interesting to wonder thru these homes...most of them built a number of years ago. We also visited some homes designed by those who came to be in his office after his passing and I can say I don't think they have the stuff. It might be the materials...it might be that their stuff is a bit over the top, but in all of it you can see Fay Jones. If your ever in Fayetteville the Univesity of Arkansas has a great collection of his drawings and models. I would say it is well worth the visit as the context of the site and the building is important in all of his work.
With all that said, "He be the Chapel Man!"
wow, apu, that's a cheery characterization of the relationship between architect and client. You seem to assume many things in your statements above: that architects only design "modernist" homes; that architects have a real love for "great" old architecture on the one hand and then throw off these cold, austere, insincere, crappy designs onto people, cause, you know, they must hate them....as if a piece of modern architecture can't be designed to have the qualities that LiG described above...as if most architects didn't actually buy old houses 'cause they really can't afford to buy land and construct their dream design from scratch, like some of their clients can...well, I could go on, but it's a start.
wow, emilio chill out would you?
Ok, force was a harsh word as we all know client's are the ones usually calling the shots. All I am saying is that it is helpful to practice what you preach. Zumthor is about as austere as they get when his work is taken at face value but when you scratch deeper you realize his buildings are steeped in tradition and respect for the site. I'm not saying we cannot take lessons from the past, hell, that's all i try to do.
I guess why i'm a bit vitrolic about this is the fact that Peter Eisenman, who is one of the biggest theorists out there lives in a farm house in Connecticut while all of his clients get to live in his decon BS. He even said himself he would never live in a house he himself designed. His clients asked for it, but hey. Now I know Eisenman is a huge history buff, but the idea that he gets to live in the comfortably built historical farmhouse while students at UIC in Cincy get to have studio in a leaky, drafty, EIFIS covered salmon pink building that looks like its falling over just, well, grinds my fucking gears.
If corb, the man who literally wrote the book on Modernism, lived in a country french house would we have taken him as seriously? I doubt it.
I love looking at these beautiful, austere, practically brutalist modern homes in glossy magazines, the ones that look like they're inhabited by robots, but would i ever live in one? No. Would i ever design one? Not unless i was asked to. I'm not saying all modern homes are harsh and austere but there is a limit to the austerity.
Case in point:
I think the most terrifying thing about that place... other than the gaudy lamp on the second floor, is the fans. Is it me or does that one fan need the staircase look dangerously placed?
as someone who has awakened on christmas morning in a mies house, i will say there are few better christmas experiences than seeing the snowy white landscape roll out from your window and be able to see from the snowy ground all the way up to the snowy tips of the honeylocusts through one framed view.
if i did not live in mies, i would also like to wake up in mckim, mead, and white. a taste for both is not mutually exclusive.
Good discussion all around.
More thoughts to add to the mix:
The Tudor Revival house in the second image of my OP above was built sometime in the 1920's or 30's. At that time, Gropius and Corbu were doing their stuff in Europe, but aside from the art deco movement and a few other exceptions, the vast majority of everything being built in the US was some form of historicism or another, and would remain so until the post-war boom brought modernism into the mainstream.
In looking to buy a house, there's an understandable desire for quality of detailing and workmanship, and rightly or wrongly, there's a general consensus in the real estate world that pre-war design and workmanship = good, and post-war design and workmanship = bad. Or maybe pre-war construction just has that comfortable feel, like an old pair of blue jeans.
Sure, you can get excellent detailing and workmanship in a custom house if you're willing to pay for it, but that's not how most post-war houses have been built. And as has been asked above, how many of us will ever really be able to buy our own piece of land and build our own custom dream home to our exact standards?
So, if you're an architect looking to buy an older home in an American pre-war neighborhood, it's pretty much a given that the home you buy will be some form of historicism. I don't see that as a bad thing, and I don't see anything hypocritical about it even if you spend your career designing stuff like in Apu's pic above.
Back to the English Tudor: If you really want to live in an authentic English Tudor house, you'll need to move to England and quite possibly end up living in a house with drafty walls, low ceilings, sloped floors, and no indoor plumbing. I think very few people would be willing to take their Tudor fetish to that extreme.
Speaking for myself, I wouldn't have a problem buying the Tudor Revival house built in 1929, assuming it's been reasonably well-maintained over the years and that I could make some sensitive upgrades. But I have a very hard time seeing myself buying a Tudor style house built in 2005, even if it looked virtually identical and all else being equal. Why is that? In theory, the Tudor style home built in 1929 is no more authentic than the one built in 2005: Neither of them can be considered true Tudor homes, and they're not even built on English soil. But there's still that nagging sense that the 1929 home is more "real" than the 2005 one. I'm curious to read people's thoughts on why.
There's nothing hypocritical about living in an older home if that's what you can afford, but something just gets to me if an architect has the money to build a home to their standards/design and don't, because they would rather not live in a home they themselves designed. I can understand some reasons for this, like disliking your own work, which happens as we all know we've had failures, but what I like about the architect's house is that it would be a great place to experiment with stuff you would never have the balls to try with a client, like Gehry's chicken-wire experiments or even my old boss's shower with the perspex floor (!!!). One of the things I love about Corb and FLW is they really lived in their work. Corb's quaint little bungalow on the Cote D' Azur is a brilliant piece of design which he built because he didn't have the money to buy a full-size house on the coast.
^it looked alot better in the old pictures when it was filled with his artwork and equipment btw
I think it is down to authenticity and a large part of that comes from the intent of the 'creators':
Your 1929 building, whilst probably orchestrated by a developer, would not have had the same kind of intent as a modern developer.
I doubt whether the same standard of craft applies to modern variants.
Definitely not the same mass-production ethos in terms of materials and methodology, copy and paste,
Time is an issue - you cannot replace that sense of occupying a space that has seen a number of different occupants and narratives over time. Perhaps all stylistic revivals are an attempt to infer age in replacement of the embedded energy from past inhabitants and movements.
Buildings age well...
^i agree 100% with him, that would be a great place to wake up on Christmas morning
I think the pre-war/post-war difference in craftsmanship is the key, LiG. Architects I've know though my entire life have loved a beautiful old home and typically filled them with perfectly tasteful modern/iconic furnishings - what student hasn't been to their professor's modest charming bungalow with awesome art and a Barcelona chair? Those glimpses into profs' personal lives were incredibly formative for me.
And a lot of those older homes - specifically the one you posted that you'd like to buy - have a balls-out quirkiness that can't be replicated today.
How to explain that...when I see a truly quirky older house, the author seems anonymous, even moreso than the craftsmen who obviously built it. There's a lack if self-conciousness - I don't know if that's just something that comes with age (it seems to with people...) or if the social milieu back then was simply less self-conscious (on the level of small home designers/builders - certainly bigger projects like Empire State were self-consciously bold). Maybe because there were still more-or-less "proper" ways to design things then, based on how things were built, and therefore houses that bend the rules look intriguing?
It's hard for me to explain, but a Tudor home today looks self-consciously designed. It looks like someone set out to specifically make something that looks old, so it ends up looking somehow manufactured. Maybe in 80 years today's Tudor Revival McMansions will be seen as quirky and desirable, but there's that craftsmanship problem...
Yes, my partner and I do some fairly historic work. But...we're virtually always working with an existing historic house, and adding/renovating in kind. Though to my eye at least, the new work is clearly new - it doesn't look so much like recreated history as like contemporary interpretation. Granted that's a pretty wobbly line, and to non-architects it just looks "historic".
BTW, the interior of my home is quite minimalist(ish...) but it's a lovely place to wake up on Christmas. I go a bit overboard on seasonal decorations, true. But wasn't it Loos who said the home he grew up in wasn't fancy, but the things in it were HIS and therefore meaningful to him if no one else?
Villa Mairea, Alvar Aalto... u know,, maybe eames house too
I'd rather wake up in my childhood home though,, in all reality. An apartment ina 4 storey psuedo modernist building, long demolished now
of course, my gf house.
i wrote the above before reading lb's comments, but, she's pointing to something crucial,, yes, weather, region, style are important, but so is the personal attachement, which is built and molded over time through experiences and memories,,, Think of it as a condensed, personal version of Giedion's Space, Time and Architecture.
Because my ego just feels this big, and gosh darn it, I miss my sled!
Because my ego is really this big, and gosh darn it, I still miss my bed!
But, I feel this way, right now.
LiG, some of Karsten Harries' writings might be on interest to u
LiG, some of Karsten Harries' writings might be on interest to u
Thanks... I'll have to check it out.
Great comments, LB and diabase. I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head.
In reference to the craftsman/bungalow homes. I think it is difficult to build a craftsman style home without a true craftsman. It seems like too many people actually building our neighborhoods today are relatively unskilled labor. Craftsman are a dying breed in this country.
I just learned that the monthly rent at 15 Central Park West is $27,000 dollars.
:(((.
I love how my old house in my old neighborhood (120 years) is only 10 feet from the neighbors, but no one has curtains. The way the spaces and the openings are arranged from house to house allows for almost complete privacy, while allowing daylight in and views out to the gardens.
I agree with whoever said it depends on the region in which you live. I've always loved the craftsman bungalow. I don't know why, they just seem warm and inviting to me.
But if I were to live on the West Coast more specifically the San Fransisco area, I'd love live in something with lots o' floor to ceiling windows. My friend's parents lived in one and the views of the hills were killer.
There's actually a pretty strong tradition of Arts-and-Crafts bungalows in California... Not sure about the Bay Area, but I know LA has quite a few of them. I'd be curious to see how they compare to their Chicago counterparts. I agree that region plays a huge role... A Tudor Revival house looks pretty natural in a northern wooded setting, but would look pretty ridiculous in Florida or out in the cornfields of Nebraska. Likewise, I have to roll my eyes a little when I see a Spanish mission style dwelling surrounded by tall pine trees and a foot of snow on the ground.
I grew up Fort Thomas, Kentucky, a pre-war bedroom suburb just outside Cincinnati. Fort Thomas has a mix of larger craftsman-style homes in the upper-middle-class northern part of town, and a lot of 1950's cape cod and ranch houses in the merely-middle-class southern end of town. Very few of the houses are architecturally noteworthy by themselves, but collectively they form a very homey, comfortable feel to the town that hasn't changed much since the early 1950's. (And the locals fight tooth-and-nail to make sure it stays that way, for better or worse.)
The house I grew up in was a modest cape cod in the south end of town. It didn't really have any special features aside from its location on a quiet side street that backed up to some woods, but my grandparents' house in north Fort Thomas was a bit larger with a decorative fireplace, dormer windows upstairs, a huge front porch, and much more of a "lived-in" feel. Most of my fondest childhood memories are from my grandparents' old house, partly because of the house itself, and partly because of the family gatherings that used to take place there.
“The house an architect builds for himself may be considered in general a manifestation of his aspirations, a kind of witness, a confession of his sins, a holograph in which one can not only examine the visible text but also graphically trace the secret motives of the text and the deep-running roots of the poet’s inspiration”
-Ernesto Rogers
People, including architects, are complex and irrational and human and messy, despite what we claim. We're also prone to nostalgia, to utopian dreams and our own ideas of domesticity, which might not match exactly what we've been told we're 'supposed to' think of these things, whether through academia or practice, or even peer-pressure. Architects often appear, at least to me and from my experience, to be almost afraid of not being in agreement with whatever happens to be cool at the moment. I think I'm prone to cynicism, but often we're no better than 15 year olds.
You want to live in a shack by the river? Great! A concrete box in Manhattan? Awesome! Whatever floats your boat.
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