Frank Gehry's Winton Guest House must be sold! Completed in 1987 for Mike and Penny Winton, the Winton Guest House in Owatonna, Minnesota is one of Gehry's few residential projects that contributed to his rising fame during the 1990s. According to the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul -- the home's current owner -- the $4.5 million home will be up for auction on May 19 in Chicago, with auction house Wright in charge of handling the sale.
Entryway to the University of St. Thomas St. Paul campus
Mike and Penny Winton commissioned Gehry to design the home in 1982 when they needed extra room for their family to accompany their Philip Johnson-designed residence on their property in Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota. Built from plywood, stone, brick, and metal, the 2,300 sq.ft guest house consists of five separate geometric spaces that include a central pyramidal living room tower, two bedrooms, a kitchen, fireplace room, two bathrooms, and loft space. The house's distinctive geometric-block design is based on Gehry's "house as a village" concept, which was mainly inspired by the bottle paintings of artist Giorgio Morandi. Gehry also applied the concept to his own residence in Santa Monica.
Real estate developer Kirt Woodhouse purchased the home from the Wintons in 2002 and then donated it the University of St. Thomas in 2007 with the provision that the house must be relocated. Between 2008-2011, the university had the house shipped as eight separate parts 110 miles down south to its current location in Owatonna, where it was reassembled and repurposed as part of the Daniel C. Gainey Conference Center.
Ever since St. Thomas sold the Gainey Center, the guest house must begin relocation this June to meet its August 2016 deadline.
80 Comments
...well, this degenerated rather quickly. Sad to see things boil down to personal cheap shots instead of engaging discussion.
Davvid, that Philip Johnson house is also one of my favourites. I took some first year students to it many years ago... I don't think any of them cared.
Non Sequitur I can imagine first year students not understanding the level of restraint needed to pull off a project like that guest house! But I imagine those same kids would get a kick out of this Gehry house, no? There's room for both, thankfully.
to be honest, i don't really care for these little houses. aside from that, they were designed to be guest houses on this estate, which they will no longer be. they've lost their intended function, which has been replaced with just being spectacle.
this level of debate, with dicks and turds and 'fuck you's, is probably appropriate in the context
Donna, you're probably right but I've found many of them to come into arch school already with an axe to grind on old Franky. It's one thing to form an opinion but one should be able to explain it for it to maintain healthy discussion.
I don't think I was aware of this guest house... but watch me go home and find a post-it and some margin notes next to it in one of my old text-books.
Restraint - really? I wouldn't use that to describe an exercise in ego.
Its also probably difficult for students to imagine this part of NYC at the time and how new this kind of architecture was. The guest house was completed about the same time as the Lever House and eight years before the Seagram Building.
curtkram,
I agree that the physical context is lost, but not the historical. It shows Gehry's development of ideas around form, material and juxtaposition that carry all the way through to the present.
Also, this Winton Guest house came after the Loyola Law School and both project show very clear inspiration from the work of Constantin Brancusi and his studio.
miles, i think they're also talking about phillip johnson's guest house, which is pretty good.
davvid, are you suggesting everything gehry worked on should be preserved for some reason, simply due to the fact that gehry worked on it? i see how you're saying that one project influences the next an all. that's a valid point if that influence is important to you. i just find it hard to care.
Apart from the threads dysfunction, my bent on Gehry has nothing to do with his architecture. It has to do with the circus that surrounds it, which he largely has nothing to do with. It's okay for the public to be bedazzled by his twinkling siding but for us what we should be bedazzled by his ability to pull it off. Somebody get me some metallic cardboard and I'll whip you up a Balboa in about an hour, no sweat..... it's what happens after that, that is the bedazzling part.... that's what I admire, that's the part to study... that's the part that's broke in most of us.....convincing people to let us fly.
curtkram,
I favor preservation or reuse most of the time, even for vernacular buildings. If the building was designed by the worlds most accomplished living architect, I would advise that it be preserved or thoughtfully reused. Part of the Winton Guest house has already been modified to suit the school's needs. I don't find it hard at all to care. I enjoy this stuff.
But you can see the swooping curve enter the picture with this project. I'm not sure if we see it earlier. I'll look into it later.
the cult of gehry, oh god.....
Bilbao (self correcting computer that doesn't recognize the spelling of Gehry either)
If the building was designed by the worlds most accomplished living architect
really? a bit exaggerated isn't it?
doesn't mean we have to preserve everything he does.....
Johnson's guest house is a straight up rip of Mies.
Gehry is just part of the media food chain. Controversy in form sells. Controversey in content is ignored because it bucks the trend. Thus starchitects as vapid celebrities desperately trying to distinguish themsleves from each other. Whiney bitches, bird flippers, arcibabblers, all that's missing is content. And they're not even interesting. Nicholson chased photogs with a golf club, Lohan is a drunken trainwreck, Woods a serial adulterer, now that's entertainment.
curtkram,
Koolhaas is probably more influential but I think Gehry's work connects with the broader public more. The attraction to a building like Bilbao is more visceral than intellectual.
Hi carrera!
How are we going to convince people to let us fly when architects are posting pictures of match books on each others successful works? Oh boy literally.
boy in a well,
Is Miles an architect?
"With this idea in mind, Gehry was further inspired by the work of the artist Giorgio Morandi. Morandi, an Italian painter, was known for his still life paintings of bottles, boxes, cups, and vases. Gehry linked this artistic “clutter” to the one room building concept, seeing Morandi’s work as a “village of bottles.[4]” It took four years to settle on the final design, but when he finally did, Gehry noted that it “may be construed as a large, outdoor sculpture.” No windows or doors faced the main house on the property (designed by Philip Johnson), and the house had no base or plinth, making it seem, as Penny Winton wrote to Gehry, “as a great giant sculpture pressed into the ground.”"
Hey, don't start picking on my guy's guest houses!
http://www.archdaily.com/609526/frank-gehry-discusses-project-costs-on-never-before-seen-the-competition-teaser/
JLC – thanks for that, love the crumpled paper approach in second video, think I’m sticking with Walter Netsch’s Field Theory.
^ which is where calatrava started, and then he f***ed up for money. I want to see the documentary, based on the clip, it reaffirms the idea that this frank is just bells and whistles, "should be economic, the only expensive material is this wall cladding, which is not flat, but it makes the structure lighter" yeah, lighter and 25 times more expensive for the crumpled paper to go on top. only people spending other's people money can hire this clown.
JLC - I think the real clown is the guy who asked him how much it would cost.
Right, the big clown, then the buffoon does his dance.
First the disclaimer (inflation), then the more expensive material that will save you money.
Classic.
that photo of Loyola Law School is just lovely. much classical form, geometry, me happy
oregon is back
it's been over 10 years oregon? what have you been up to all that time?
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