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BLOG ARCHIVE Sunday, January 6 Metropolis writer Jeffrey Head recently alerted the public to the current condition of Edward Durrell Stone’s only private residential project in California, a house designed for LIFE magazine (September 22, 1958) and opened for public viewing as a model home. Read about the 50 years of remodels, additions and general character of the Chatsworth neighborhood where this unlikely find occurred HERE. In late November the Union Tank Car Co. dome (circa 1958) in Baton Rouge, LA., designed by Buckminster Fuller, was razed by its owner, Kansas City Southern Railway. Upon its completion, not only was “The Bucky Dome” the largest dome in the world but was also the first industrial use of Fuller’s dome. Despite the local PBS station profiling the building, recent tour inquiries mounting by the Foundation for Historical Louisiana, and the dome being on Louisiana’s top 10 endangered properties, and the Foundation labeling the site as one of the state’s “Treasures in Trouble,” the building was still demolished. The building would have turned 50 years old this year and therefore likely to join the National Register of Historic Places. Learn more HERE. Now here's a great idea - a local college campus offering a continuing-education course on local architectural history for a mere $85.00. "Sarasota's Architecture, Past and Future" begins January 16 at the Academy for Lifelong Learning on the University of South Florida's Sarasota-Manatee campus. Among the highlights are sessions "The Sarasota School of Architecture." and "Modern Architecture in Florida" (courtesy of Jan Hochstim, author of Florida Modern) as well as a mid-century modern house tour. For more information go HERE. Fifty years after a dark episode in University of Washington history, a new book on the late Seattle architect Lionel Pries goes a long way to restore some of the honor that once surrounded his name. Jeffrey Ochsner's book Lionel Pries: Architect, Artist, Educator: From Arts and Crafts to Modern Architecture (UW Press, $60) spells out why and how, at the age of 61, Pries was turned out with no pension. Mortified and in need of money, he had to accept demeaning positions as a draftsman and designer, working for former students and associates. Read more HERE.
Friday, January 4 Happy New Year from the massive corporate staff and shareholders of Modern San Diego. Like our own Lillian Rice, many long forgotten early female architects are finally getting their due praise. As academics find more and more valuable contributions by the likes of Lilly Reich, (who worked with Mies Van Der Rohe) and Aino Aalto (who worked with her husband Alvar in Finland), stories like that of Marion Mahony Griffin (1871-1961) continue to surface. By 1908 Mahony, the first woman to obtain an architecture license in Illinois, had been working for Frank Lloyd Wright for a decade. Mahony’s drawings, were an important contribution to the, now infamous, Wasmuth Portfolio, a compendium of Wright’s designs published in Germany in 1910. In 1911 she married Walter Burley Griffin (1876-1937). Read more about Mahony HERE or check out the online version of "The Magic of America," her only known manuscript HERE. Three new sites for you to check out: First, like our own site, one of our fellow modern afficionadoes has launched a new site, Modern Riverside, reflecting on his own local built environment. Another good site to bookmark as we head into February is Modernism Week, a site outlining the festivities surrounding Palm Springs Modernism Week '08. If you are considering Chicago any time soon, click on Chicago Bauhaus & Beyond.
Sunday, December 30 Marcel Breur’s residence for Frank Kacmarcik (1962) in St. Paul, MN is up for sale for the 3rd time in its short life. Get a view of downtown St. Paul and an 1800 square foot masterpiece for $525,000! Learn more HERE and HERE. The new book Frank Lloyd Wright in New York: The Plaza Years, 1954-1959 (by Jane King Hession and Debra Pickrel; Gibbs Smith, 159 pp., $29.95) explores Wright's interaction with the city he professed to hate but seemed to love. Also new to the bookshelves is Makers of Modern Architecture: From Frank Lloyd Wright to Frank Gehry by Martin Filler (The New York Review of Books, 321 pp. $27.95). In this text Filler declares that his book is not a historical review. Filler’s thesis, instead, is the incoherence at the heart of Modern and Postmodern architecture. Read a review HERE.
Saturday, December 29 Cultural historian’s Peter Gay’s (author of The Enlightenment, Weimar Culture, Freud and The Bourgeois Experience) new book Modernism: The Lure of Heresy (610 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $35) is a massive history of the movement in all its artistic forms — painting, sculpture, fiction, poetry, music, architecture, design, film (photography is strangely absent). Modernism, Gay argues, was propelled by two main impulses: the urge to overturn established hierarchies and break rules (“the lure of heresy”) — and a compulsion to explore the artist’s interior world. These primal drives produced “a single aesthetic mind-set,” a “climate of thought, feeling and opinion.” Read one review HERE and another HERE. Also worth checking out is the new book Lionel H. Pries, Architect, Artist, Educator: From Arts and Crafts to Modern Architecture. Pries (1897-1968) was one of the most influential teachers of architecture and design at the University of Washington. A. Q. Jones and Wendell Lovett, Victor Steinbrueck were among the prominent twentieth-century architects educated by Pries, whose style helped shape the development of American Modernisn. Learn more about the book here. Read the essay including Pries' impact on modernism HERE.
Thursday, December 27 The Noguchi Museum is presenting (through March 16, 2008) “Design: Isamu Noguchi and Isamu Kenmochi” an exhibition on the working relationship between artist-designer Noguchi and the man credited with the invention of what came to be known as “Japanese Modern.” Beginning in 1950, Noguchi and interior designer Isamu Kenmochi, who worked at the Industrial Arts Research Institute (IARI), in Tokyo, worked together for approximately two years. The exhibition showcases 85 works (furniture, interior- and industrial-design objects, and drawings and photographs) tracing Noguchi’s early furniture designs, including their impact on Kenmochi, while revealing the latter’s important contributions to twentieth-century design. The exhibit presents two important chairs: an original Noguchi and Kenmochi’s bamboo-and-iron Bamboo Basket Chair (1950); as well as a replica of Kenmochi’s Bamboo Chair (circa 1952) - only five of these were made, all of which have been lost or destroyed. Additional highlights include benches, chairs, and table retrieved from the now destroyed Shin Banraisha (1951–52) designed by Noguchi. Additionally, two vintage examples of Kenmochi’s Rattan Round Chair (1959). Read more here.
Wednesday, December 26 A new book, "Everything by Design" (St. Martin's, 308 pages, $25.95), by Alan Lapidus the son of Morris Lapidus (1902-2001), known for Miami's Fontainebleau Hotel (1954) calls his father "an egotistical tyrant" who gave the author/son no encouragement. Morris did impart one jewel to his architect-son "Always design for your client's clients." The first job of a building is to attract a paying public -- the people your client is actually trying to serve. Read more here. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, recently proposed legislation that would confer special landmark status on all of Oscar Niemeyer’ buildings. But the greatest threat to the structures may not be the developer’s bulldozer, but Mr. Niemeyer himself. After all some of his most revered buildings have been marred by the architect’s own hand. Oscar Niemeyer's recent work (circa 1996-present) is contrasted with his success with Brasilia here.
Saturday, December 22 On the edge of downtown Detroit, Lafayette Park holds the largest collection of buildings in the world designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Composed of three sections -- a high-rise apartment building and 21 multiple-unit townhouses on the western border, 13 acres of landscaping down the center, and twin apartment towers on the east -- Lafayette Park was built in the late 1950s as one of the first urban renewal projects. Learn more here.
Friday, December 21 Formerly married to sculptor Ed Kienholz, Lyn Kienholz is at work on an encyclopedia of Southern California art history. As yet untitled, it will document more than 600 artists who lived, worked and showed there between 1940 and 1980 as well as the salient galleries, art schools, exhibitions and art-related events of the period. For more information, read the New York Times story HERE or learn more about her non-profit California/International Arts Foundation HERE. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) announced the acquisition of Janice and Henri Lazarof’s major collection of 130 paintings, sculptures, and drawings by leading modern artists that will significantly transform the museum’s collection of twentieth-century art. Among the highlights are works by Picasso, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Archipenko, Constantin Brancusi, Georges Braque, Edgar Degas, Lyonel Feininger, Fernand Léger, Henry Moore, and Camille Pissarro. Works from the collection will be on view beginning January 13, 2008. Visit LACMA's site HERE. A New York Times
slideshow on midcentury modern chairs that have long been out of
production -- and now being produced again can be found HERE.
Saturday, December 15 The Ennis House Foundation's latest efforts to restore Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis Residence (1924) and return the iconic structure to public viewing is profiled here. The latest exhibit on Le Corbusier, ‘From Marsielles to Chandigarh’, (the latter being a UNESCO World Cultural Site) is profiled here. On Wednesday, the French honored Oscar Niemeyer with the Legion of Honor, France's highest honor. On Friday, the Russian government honored presented him with their Order of Friendship. On Saturday December 15th, he plans to celebrate his 100th birthday at his home with his family. Read more here. Or you can read a short profile by Architectural Record here. A nice piece, including a short list of his projects can be found on the TimesOnline site as well here. Just recently the new owners of the 1947 Del Marcos Hotel completed a renovation of the 16-room inn, designed by desert architect William F. Cody. Read more here. Conrad Buff III (1926-1988) of Buff, Straud & Hensman, designed a house in 1977 (in Pasadena) for himself and his family titled Rapor, or Sunset House was just profiled by the LA Times here.
Tuesday, December 11 The District of Columbia’s Historic Preservation Review Board bestowed historic landmark status on brutalist structure Third Church of Christ Scientist (1971) by Araldo Cossutta and I.M. Pei. The decision hampers plans the church had to demolish the building. Church officials who say the modernist concrete structure inhibits their ability to practice their faith. Learn more here. A new exhibit, the first of its kind, on Jean Prouvé is at London’s The Design Museum through March 25 following its debut at the Vitra Design Museum at Weil am Rhein in Germany. Read more here. On the even of his 100th birthday, Oscar Niemeyer is profiled here.
Monday, December 10 Modern San Diego will be interviewed today by Carl Larsen on SD Home on the Net. Listen today betwen 3-3:30pm or check back later - the site archives past programs. Check it out HERE. Architect Wayne R. Williams has died. He was 88. Known widely for his Mutual Housing Assn. Community designs in Brentwood that he worked on with A. Quincy Jones, Smith was born in 1919 in Los Angeles. His USC education led him to study under Whitney R. Smith (forming Smith & Williams 1946-1973). Learn more here. The first major retrospective in 20 years on Swiss-born architect Charles Édouard Jeanneret "Le Corbusier – The Art of Architecture" is being held at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, near Basel. Le Corbusier, who died in 1965, is now widely acknowledged to be one of the most important architects of 20th century. Learn more here. Two new coffee
table books are available at retail: "Frank Lloyd Wright: Mid-Century
Modern" (Rizzoli, $55) offers 53 mid-century homes designed
by the famed architect from 1935-58 when he was at his most daring
and innovative. “Stained Glass: Masterpieces of the Modern
Era” by Xavier Barral i Altet (Thames & Hudson: 216 pp.,
$60) includes works by Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger, Henri
Matisse and Christian Oehler, as well as architects Le Corbusier
(Ronchamp Chapel), Antoni Gaudí and Frank Lloyd Wright, in
this survey of stained-glass masterpieces.
Friday, December 7 The massive corporate staff of Modern San Diego will be at the Design/One holiday party tonight. Drop by 3789.5 Park Boulevard around 7pm. Tomorrow Sotheby’s begins the presale view of the 114 lots in the Dec. 14 auction “Deutscher Werkbund to Bauhaus: An Important Collection of German Design,” devoted to industrial design by architects and craftsmen working in Germany from the late 1890s to the early 1930s. Learn more here. On the eve of Oscar Niemeyer's 100th birthday next week, he will unveil the plans for The Niemeyer Cultural Centre in the city of Avilés, in north-western Spain. Read more here. Two new books out may be good for sharing with others under that pagan x-mas tree thing people erect in their living rooms around this time of year. Toward and Architecture by Le Corbusier (Getty Research Institute, 341 pages; $24.95). A new English translation of the "great manifesto of early modernism" originally published in 1923 has been reissued. This new translation shows how Le Corbusier doctored old architectural photographs to support his ideology. Paulo Mendes da Rocha: Projects 1957-2006 by Paulo Mendes da Rocha and Rosa Artigas (Rizzoli, 368 pages; $85). Brutalism is back. Built mostly around his native São Paulo, da Rocha's work balances Brazilian hedonism and the "suffocating grayness" of his European counterparts.
Thursday, December 6 On November 15, we reported the shaky ground that Houston's Carousel House stood on with realtors and developers. The Roberth Cohen (1964) designed house was demolished by Granit Builders on November 20 - assuredly scraped to build a McMansion on the same site. Read more here. Cecil Payne, who in the 1940s was one of the first baritone saxophonists to master the intricacies of modern jazz, died on November 27th. He was 84. Read more here. If you haven’t visited the Schindler House (Rudolf M. Schindler circa 1922) on Kings Road in Hollywood, now (through February 24) is a good time. In addition to seeing the amazing duplex (for a time cohabitated by the Schindlers and the Neutra family), you can now witness the structure and an audio installation “The Little House” as well. To experience the piece, visitors tour the structure while listening to a story by way of speakers placed in the various rooms. Learn more here.
Monday, December 3 Thanks to all for showing up to our first joint-event with The Pearl Hotel and Objects USA. The jazz, the exclusive cocktails (the Loma Starr, The Rosecrans and the Kona Kai), great conversation, slide show and the the inimitable raffle made for a fantastic, memorable evening. One holiday party down, one more to go. See you at the Design/One party this coming Friday! San Diego Union Tribune Home Editor Carl Larsen quoted Modern San Diego in today's paper. Larsen's article on the forthcoming exhibit “Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner” can be read here. In July, Washington D.C.’s Historic Preservation Review Board voted to confer landmark status on the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library (Mies van der Rohe, 1972). Another of the city's modern icons will be considered Thursday for landmark designation: the 1971 Christian Science complex by I.M. Pei. Learn more about The District’s modernist structures under consideration here.
Saturday, December 1 December is a big month for 20th-century furniture and decorative arts at fairs, auctions, exhibitions and events around the country. Read a roundup of the month's activities here. Back in 2000, Aida and Vahe Yeghiazarian recently bought the Chuck Rice Residence by Jerrold Lomax in Glendale. The architect, who turned 80 this year, worked for the Craig Ellwood for nine years (1953-1962), following which he designed nearly 100 private residences. Learn more about the house and its most recent owners here. Polynesian Modern! The work of Hawaiian architect Vladimir Ossipoff is the subject of a new exhibition "Hawaiian Modern" at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Learn more about the opening night party here. Read more about the show here. Visit the Academy’s site here. Or read about the exhibit catalog here. “Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection” is on view at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art through February 3, 2008. The exhibition offers a selection of paintings, sculpture, and drawings by Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Hans Arp, Alberto Giacometti, Fernand Léger, and Joan Miró. Learn more here.
Monday, November 26 Palm Springs Modern weekend! Jess and I spent the weekend with friends in Palm Springs and 29 Palms. Saw a ton of stuff, met some great folks. Next time we will bring a camera! For the time being we will brush up on our history at The Palm Springs Modern Committee's site here. A new exhibit on Charles-Edouard Jeanneret AKA Le Corbusier is making its way to his, India’s only, “planned city” of Chandigarh. The show, which assembles over 200 of Corbusier’s plans, models, paintings, and photographs from the years 1945-65, will be on view in the location of his largest assignment. The profile of Chandigarh and its creator, displayed in New Delhi this month, travels to Chandigarh in December and to the western city of Ahmedabad in January. Read more here. The original interior designer for LACMA (circa 1965) and the graphic artist behind the mosaic walls in the passenger tunnels at LAX (circa 1961), has died. Charles D. Kratka, died Nov. 8, at the age of 85, of complications from Alzheimer's disease at a senior living facility in Encinitas. Kratka was born in Pasadena in 1922 and grew up in Eagle Rock. After attending UCLA, he enrolled at the Art Center College of Design. During WWII he served as a pilot in the Navy. Between 1947-1953, Kratka worked as a graphic designer for Charles Eames. Kratka left to teach before going into interior design and planning. Read more here.
Thursday, November 22 Happy Turkey Day. Be sure to vote for the people's choice awards in the Orchids & Onions competition. For more information you can go to the San Diego Architectural Foundation or the Orchids & Onions blog. According to Reuters, one of Matti Suuronen’s Futuro houses (circa 1964-68) will go up on Christie’s auction block next week in Paris. The auction house expects to garner between $222,200 - $296,200 for the modular house. The Futuro house was first shown at an exhibition in London in 1968 and was shown recently at the Luxembourg Museum of Modern Art. Wayne Donaldson moved the only known SanDiego example of a Futuro from its longstandig resting spot behind Lloyd Ruocco's The Design Center on 5th. An exhibition “Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner” is planned to run at UCLA's Hammer Museum between July 13 - October 12, 2008. Surprisingly this will be the first large-scale museum exhibition to the architect. The exhibition catalogue will include previously unpublished photographs and drawings. Following the Hammer, the show will have at least two additional stops. Learn more here.
Wednesday, November 21 A new exhibition organized for the Cleveland Artists Foundation, "Cleveland Goes Modern: Design for the Home, 1930-1970," runs through this coming weekend. Featured in the show, at the Beck Center in Lakewood, are designs by local architects John Terrence Kelly, Don Hisaka, Robert A. Little and Ernest Payer. Amidst the scholarly research supporting the show is the inclusion of a 1931 Standard Oil gas station in Cleveland one of six American buildings included in MOMA’s 1932 exhibition on modernist architecture. Learn more here. Textile artist Mary Walker Phillips died at age 83 on November 3rd at her home in Fresno. Known for taking the utilitarian craft of knitting to a new level as modern art Phillips started her free-form, improvisational knitting in the early 1960s while at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Following a stint weaving Frank Lloyd Wright’s drapes and tablecloths at Taliesin West, Phillips earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees and befriended Jack Lenor Larsen. Including bells, seeds, metal wire and other non-traditional materials into her work, Miss Phillips became one of the most influential knitters of the second half of the 20th century. Learn more here.
Monday, November 19 Finally home after a long, fun weekend. Jess and I drove to Los Angeles to stay at The Avalon. On our way up north we stopped in to see the Birth of Cool, Shulman's Los Angeles and “SoCal: Southern California Art of the 1960s and ’70s From LACMA’s Collection.” If you go to see the latter exhibit note that there are pieces from teh '80s and '90s - I wanted to discuss the misleading title with museum staff but I was persuaded to let it go... After all the art we had a fantastic meal in the Avalon's restaraunt. On Sunday we toured R.M. Schindler's Kings Road House, drove to see the Watts Towers by Simon Rodia, then off to Lloyd Wright's Wayfarer's Chapel (1949) for a brief respite. Is that the best birthday a guy could have or what? As Marcel Breur’s Ameritrust Tower in downtown Cleveland is slated for the wrecking ball, a group of folks continue to combat the ignorance of developers and municipal staffers. Die-hards are working to educate the masses through a public showing of Judith Pearlman’s 1995 documentary “Bauhaus in America,” in conjunction with a series of educational events on modernism. Read more here. Dallas designer Shari Lidji is opening her mid-century house for a tour. Learn more here. The San Jose Mercury News publishes the millionth article on Eichlers. Always enjoyable, read more about the region's most-remarked-on housing tract here. A new exhibit “Bauhaus 1919-1933” featuring Walter Gropius's own original copy of the manifesto for the opening of the Bauhaus in 1919 opens this week at MIMA (the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art). The show, running from November 23 to February 17, is the first Bauhaus exhibition in Britain since the Royal Academy show in 1968. Read more here. The father of Texas modernist architecture, architect O'Neil Ford, is making the news as one of the few homes he designed in Austin is on the market for $5.25 million. The residence built in the early ‘60s for the Cohagan family of San Antonio is profiled here. Paul Rudolph’s glass, steel and brick Riverview High School (circa 1957) in Sarasota, FL is up for demolition. After hearing complaints from preservationists the School Board is looking for a plan and money to restore the structure. Learn more here. I found a new blog "Mid Century Architecture" while I was searching for Craig Ellwood stuff on the web. I came across this article on Ellwood's South Bay Bank. Check the blog out here.
Thursday, November 15 Houston's mid-60s "Carousel House" or "House of Formica" is back in the news. Up for sale in a slow real estate market holds its fate. Will it be razed or restored? Learn more here. Michigang's Cranbrook Academy of Art is the first stop on the U.S. tour of "Shaping the Future," and exhibit on Eero Saarinen opens this Saturday. Originated in Helsinki by the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York, the exhibit moves on to the National Building Museum in '08. Read a preview here. Robert A.M. Stern and Charles Gwathmey are working on restoring Pauld Rudolph's brutalist Art and Architecture Building on the Yale Campus (circa 1963). Read more here.
Wednesday, November 14 Happy Birthday to me. Happy Birthday to me. "Seeds of Art: Rediscovering San Diego's Mid-Century Artists" an evening reception to celebrate the careers of Wenetta Childs, James Hubbell, Malcolm Leland, Rhoda Lopez as well as Ruth & Toza Radakovich will be held on November 17. Please join the David Alan Collection and the Ilan Lael Foundation from 6-9 p.m. at 241 South Cedros in Solana Beach.
Monday, November 12 “Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture” a new retrospective exhibition at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. (through February 17, 2008) traces Breuer’s creative evolution from a furniture and interior designer to architect. Following this show, the Building Museum will offer an exhibit on Eero Saarinen. Learn more here.
Saturday, November 10 Regarding the exhibition “The Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury” at the Orange County Museum of Art, SignOnSanDiego critic Robert Pincus writes "Claxton is to cool jazz what Shulman is to California modern architecture. They didn't just document a phenomenon, they gave it visual identity." Read the full review here. Although photography was not originally part of the Bahaus curriculum, teachers and students delved into the medium from nearly the beginning. A portfolio of 20 images, printed and assembled in 1985 with the support of the artists or their estates (Herbert Bayer, Gertrud Arndt, Karl Straub, Katt Both and others), forms one half of an engaging exhibition of modernist photography on view through Nov. 16 at Colorado State University's Hatton Gallery. Read more here.
Wednesday, November 7 For thousands of years the points of the compass have played an important role in architecture to provide orientation between the heavens and the earth….A famous example of this is the pilgrimage chapel in Ronchamp designed by Le Corbusier. The French-Swiss architect, who was born in 1887 in La Chaux-de-Fonds and is still considered one of the greatest modern architects, was a classic example of a "sun worshipper." Bruno Maurer, an architectural historian at the ETH Zurich, describes him as a natural philosopher. "Le Corbusier was a great believer in the power of nature. That’s why the path of the sun, the sun itself and solar orientation are central to his work. This shows up in almost all his work, as well as in his writings on architecture and urban planning…" Read more here. Curious about the impact of the recent wildfires on San Diego's historic sites? Check out the SOHO update here. Have you checked out the San Diego Architecture Foundation's site? Take a look here.
Monday, November 5 Named one of the best-designed homes of 1959 by Architectural Record, the Carl Murchison Residence (in Provincetown, MA) by Walter Gropius’ TAC firm is up for sale for the first time. Despite a house full of custom furnishings, many of which were designed by Design Research, a furniture company founded by a TAC partner, and a $12 million price tag, preservationists fear its demolition upon changing hands. Read more here. "Danish Way of Living," a free public exhibition on view in Vancouver, B.C. through December 15 combines classic examples of modernist furniture and household object design from the 1950s and 1960s with all-new creations. Read more here about how Paul Volther's Corona Chair and Arne Jacobsen Egg Chair are on view with new works.
Sunday, November 4 In a series later dubbed "Wall Houses", Craig Ellwood & Associates continued with the spirit of Arts & Architecture's Case Study House Program. Of the eight designs only four were built including the Anderson, Bobertz and Steinman Residences as well as Case Study House #17. For the first time since it was built in 1956, the Howard Steinman Residence is up for sale in Malibu. Having visited the site and spent afternoons with the original owner (who worked closely with Ellwood on the design), I have to say it's one helluva place to call home. Check it out here. Modern Kentucky! Finally there is interest in the late Lexington architect Richard Isenhour and Louisvillian Norman Sweet - both were influenced by Wright, the International Style, and their contemporaries - California modernists of the 1950s and '60s. One of the owners of an Isenhour home is working on a book The Modern House -- Kentucky to be published in about six months. Read more here.
Saturday, November 3 ReadExpress.com asks the question “Which D.C. Building Deserves to Be Demolished?” And of all the buildings in the District, the site offers up the following sites for sacrifice. Let it be known that I feel creating such a list is flawed from the start: The landmarked Brutalist face of the Third Church of Christ Scientist (I.M. Pei, 1971); The landmarked Mies Van der Rohe designed Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library; Marcel Breuer’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (1968); As well as the headquarters for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (later renamed The Hubert H. Humphrey Building) also by Breuer are on the list. Architect James M. Alexander Jr. has died. After obtaining his bachelor's degree in 1943, James was drafted into the Army during World War II. After the War he moved to New York City for his first job, with Raymond Loewy. Soon thereafter he became assistant professor of architecture at the University of Cincinnati in 1947. Helping create the industrial design department Alexander served as its chair from 1948 until 1976. All the while Mr. Alexander also ran an architecture practice for 40 years. Alexander died Oct. 23 in the home he designed (among the 140 he is credited with), built and lived in for more than 55 years. Preservationists hope that having some of the best examples of modern architecture open to the public will promote an appreciation for the style. "They're not Georgian or Beaux-Arts, so people don't realize their importance in many cases," said Henry Ng, executive vice president of the World Monuments Fund, which started a "Modernism at Risk" project to raise awareness and recognize preservation efforts dedicated to 20th Century buildings. Read more here.
Friday, November 2 Tonight at 7PM join us for Nature: Objectified. At last week’s “Women in Modernism: Making Places in Architecture” conference, Gwendolyn Wright, host of PBS' "History Detectives," offered her insight in a keynote address. The conference’s goal was to re-contextualize the role that women played in modernism. Did you know Lilly Reich co-designed the Barcelona chair, usually attributed solely to Mies van der Rohe? Or that Catherine Bauer was as an early hero of social housing who co-authored the Housing Act of 1937? What about Katherine Mock? Who as head of MoMA’s Department of Architecture from (1942-6) organized an exhibit in entitled Built in USA: 1932-1944 that expanded on Philip Johnson’s 1932 “International Style” exhibit. Read more here. Julius Shulman, at 97, is still working. Shulman’s 1960 photograph of Pierre Koenig's steel and glass Case Study House #22 with two women inside engaged in conversation, puts them floating above Los Angeles at night. "That picture has been published more than any known photograph ever in the history of architectural photography," said Julius Shulman. Read more here. As if it wasn't enough to start Modern Cape Cod in addition to this site, I have started blogging at San Diego's Orchids & Onions's site as well. Read and comment on the entries here.
Thursday, November 1 Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House (above photo) has twice been at the vanguard of new movements in architecture — helping to shape postwar Modernism and later, as a result of a painstaking restoration in the mid-1990s, spurring a revived interest in mid-20th-century homes. Now the divoricing homeowners who undertook that restoration hope Kaufmann will play a role in a third movement: promoting architecture as a collectible art worthy of the same consideration as painting and sculpture. The current owners plan to auction the Edgar Kaufmann Sr.'s (yes, the same client as Wright's Fallingwater in Pennsylvania) at Christie’s in May. The price? A presale estimate of $15 million to $25 million. Read the full article here. Warren Platner’s Kent Memorial Library in Suffield, Connecticut is threatened with demolition. Those smarter than the town council are weighing in. While the building is showing its age; is overcrowded and its roof leaks, Suffield officials have determined that a new structure was "the most cost-efficient and beneficial for the town." Read more here.
Wednesday, October 31 For those seeking a clearer understanding of San Francisco’s architectural history and representative sites are in for a real treat. An Architectural Guidebook to San Francisco and the Bay Area was just released by author Susan Dinkelspiel Cerny. With more than 500 pages of text and over 2,000 entries, the book reflects the region’s history from Gold Rush to Eichler subdivisions to dot-com boom. Read more here. Only two days remaining until Nature: Objectified.
Tuesday, October 30 Modern San Diego, in partnership with Objects USA presents “Celebrate the Holidays in Pt. Loma Modern Style” an evening of architecture, art, food and cocktails at The Pearl, San Diego’s premiere Modern hotel and restaurant on Sunday December 2nd at 6pm. The event will include great food and specialty cocktails provided by The Pearl, a presentation titled “Pt. Loma Modern”, and a complimentary raffle of vintage modern art by ObjectsUSA.com. The Pearl is located at 1410 Rosecrans St., San Diego, CA. 92106 or 877-PEARLSD. RIP: Beth Montes (1965-2007), President of Save Our Heritage Organisation (SOHO) passed away on October 29, 2007 after a 7-month battle with pancreatic cancer. Only three days remaining until Nature: Objectified. Be sure not to miss this event. Modern San Diego will be organizing a trip up to LA to see the exhibition "Julius Shulman's Los Angeles" (at L.A.'s Central Library) put together by the Getty Research Institute. Stay tuned for details on a coordinated visit to see 150 rarely seen photographs from the Julius Shulman photography archive. If you want to go on your own, the show is open through January 20, 2008. More information is available here. The Los Angeles Times write-up on the show is here. Speaking of Julius Shulman, the Craig Krull Gallery currently has an exhibit "Julius Shulman & Juergen Nogai: Recent Architectural" on view through November 20th. More information is available here. Grand Rapids’ "Alcoa Care-free Home", a model house of the future in 1957, is profiled here. Designed by Charles M. Goodman, of Washington, D.C., as a project for the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa). Alcoa planned to construct 50 such houses at selected locations throughout the United States. An exhibit “Close to home: Edward Loewenstein and Modernism in Greensboro” opens Nov. 6 at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. But it’s not just a retrospective. Researchers are actively trying to learn more about Loewenstein’s portfolio of 1,600 commissions and hope this exhibit will yield new information coming forth from visitors, former clients and employees alike. Loewenstein, an inventive architect in the post-World War II era, first established his design practice in Greensboro in the 1940s. Curators say he was heavily influenced by Gropius, Wright and Mies. Read more here.
Monday, October 29 Planning a trip to Scotland? Well, now you have to add architecture to your itinerary. A wide array of structures were the product of an optimistic period when a Glasgow practice, Gillespie, Kidd & Coia (GKC), would acquire a wider reputation for its conspicuously modern designs. Architectural writer Patrick Nuttgens, recognized the talent early on. "Suddenly," he wrote about Coia in 1962, "to background music by Le Corbusier and Niemeyer, he launched into most vital and thrilling designs with an almost cavalier disregard for building construction and maintenance." A new exhibition “Gillespie, Kidd & Coia: Architecture 1956-87” at the Lighthouse, Glasgow (through February 10, 2008) highlights the firm’s decades of design work. Two of the firm’s principal designers Andrew MacMillan and Isi Metzstein, both 79, are enjoying the attention. Read the story and compile a list of sightseeing stops here. Frank Lloyd Wright’s "Water Dome" for Florida Southern College has been dry for decades. Engineers could never make it work right. Now, nearly 70 years after Wright first planned it, the fountain finally gushed into the three-story high dome of water he envisioned thanks to modern engineers, technology and computer control. Read more here.
Sunday, October 28 On view this weekend at San Francisco’s Fall Antiques Show is the exhibition “Taste for the 20th Century: Modern Design Classics From San Francisco Collections.” “What is modern design?,” Jared Goss, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, asks in a catalog essay about the exhibition. He quotes Edgar Kaufmann Jr “Modern design should blend the expression of utility, materials and process into a visually satisfactory whole,” Mr. Kaufmann wrote. It “should be simple, its structure evident in its appearance, avoiding extraneous enrichment.” He added, “Modern design should express the spirit of our times.” Read more here. This weekend, Sollo Rago Modern in Lambertville, N.J., is selling more than 1,000 lots of 20th-century design. See their catalog here.
Saturday, October 27 In addition to the three exhibits on modernism on view in Los Angeles currently (written about previously here), San Diego residents and viewers can take advantage of three local exhibitions showcasing a wide array of post-War art and craft. A new exhibit on local modernist “Everett Gee Jackson/San Diego Modern, 1920–1955” opens on November 3rd at the San Diego Museum of Art. This major retrospective presents the work of Everett Gee Jackson, one of San Diego’s most important Modernist artists. Featuring more than 50 works that span the most significant and productive decades of the artist’s career, San Diego Modern presents a representative range of Jackson’s multi-faceted work, while contextualizing Jackson within the broader scope of mid-twentieth century American modernism. “Robert Irwin: Primaries and Secondaries” is on view at MCASD Downtown through February 23, 2008. The survey, spanning over 50 years of work, is the largest exhibition of Irwin’s work since 1993. The exhibition features his early abstract expressionist paintings, minimal canvases, early sculptural objects, and large installations. “Craft in America,” a landmark, historical survey featuring more than 200 works, spanning a period of nearly 200 years is running through January 27 at the Mingei International Museum. The exhibition highlights include designer craftsmen of the Arts & Crafts Movement, the artists of the 1930s WPA programs and post World War II studio craft pioneers (including Sam Maloof and George Nakashima). A new book, Building Cambodia: New Khmer Architecture: 1953-1970, offers insight into the striking Khmer modernist architectural movement of the 1950s and 1960s. No longer protected by the time warp created by the lost years of the Khmer Rouge tyranny of the 1970s, at risk are many distinctive modernist buildings constructed in the 1950s and 1960s by Khmer architects. According to the text, it was a true local school of design - a "new Khmer architecture" expressing a lost golden age of optimism and modernization after independence in 1953. Read more here.
Friday, October 26 The plan to memorialize FDR with a monument designed by Louis Kahn at the southern tip of Roosevelt Island in the Upper East Side (of NYC) is back in consideration.The plan by Kahn, was announced in 1973, when Welfare Island was renamed in Roosevelt’s honor. A triangular lawn, flanked by riverside promenades, would slope gently down to the tip of the island. There, almost like the period in an exclamation point, would be an open-air “room” — as Kahn called it — framed by granite walls on all but the south side, which commands a panoramic view. The project was sidelined by the mid-’70s fiscal crisis. Read more here.
Wednesday, October 24 With coverage of the San Diego County wildfires hitting news rooms internationally, I am sure you are well aware of the situation here. Many of you have emailed your concerns and well wishes - and even some emails have come in asking for updates on the threat to architecture the fires have posed. In the coming days and weeks I will try to ascertain if we have lost any distinguished architecture and historic sites. Wildfires have swept through neighborhoods new and old containing mid-century inventory so the threat to our modernist heritage is real.
Tuesday, October 23 It all started humbly enough. “Fifty years ago, modern fabrics weren’t readily available,” says Jack Lenor Larsen, in his small, chic Manhattan apartment. After getting an M.F.A. from Cranbrook, Larsen started his eponymous firm in New York in 1952 because the company he wanted to work for—Knoll—wouldn’t hire him. Read the New York Times profile of Larsen here. The New Canaan Historical Society’s 2007 Modern House Tour, featuring examples rarely seen by the public, will be held Saturday, November 3. The tour includes moderns designed by industrial designer and “Harvard Five” architect Eliot Noyes, Edward Durell Stone, Taliesin Fellow Jack Howe, John Black Lee and Victor Christ-Janer. Symposium speakers include “Harvard Five” architect John Johansen, furniture designer Jens Risom and New York architect Peter Gluck, who will address the place of modern architecture, past and present. More information can be found here. The 1956 Thomas Brothers "Popular Atlas of San Diego County" has been scanned. Check it out here.
Sunday, October 21 The above photo is among the first of a batch from the AIA Guide To San Diego Architecture (1976) being uploaded by John Henderson. Join our Discussion Forum and go to the photos section to see more. If you are not familiar with the Crabtree Building check out the site here or the owner Hodge N. Crabtree's 1962 residence (by Liebhardt & Weston) here. Barcelona 1900, a major exhibition of "modernisme" before modernism at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is open until January 20. Read a review here or visit the museum's site here. The Hollywood
Reporter, arguably among the last places one expects to read
about architecture, reported the following: November 24th will be the fourth anniversary of Modern San Diego. I have no idea what to do to celebrate that milestone. Drop me a line if you have a suggestion. With over 1,500 users this month, your company should consider advertising on the site. Contact us for opportunities here.
Friday, October 19 British brutalist architect Basil Spence continues to raise eyebrows for many of his designs labeled as monstrous, genius, ugly etc. His Library at Swiss Cottage, Coventry cathedral, Glasow airport and the University of Sussex are among Spence's projects being reviewed by a new exhibit "Back to the Future: Sir Basil Spence (1907-1976), Celebration of a Modern Architect" at the Dean Gallery, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. The exhibit focusing on the man who designed more 1960s university buildings than anyone else in Britain, including the campus at Sussex, runs from October 19 to February 10, 2008. Read a review here or go to the Spence Archive Project site here. Now, as he nears his 100th birthday on Dec. 15, Oscar Niemeyer has a desk full of projects in his Rio De Janeiro penthouse office. His flowing forms made a modernist statement of Brasilia, the government center that rose from the empty plains of central Brazil. He also helped design the United Nations headquarters in New York City, insisting on the grand curves of its General Assembly building. Read more about Mr. Niemeyer on the eve of his 100th here. Read about seven architecturally significant homes that can be had for bargain prices. For those budget-concious architecture geeks that don't mind moving, read about residences currently on the market designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolf Schindler, Cliff May, Bruce Goff, Keck & Keck and others here.
Tuesday, October 16 Culver City’s Museum of Design Art + Architecture presents their new exhibition “80 Years of Jerrold Lomax, FAIA” October 26 - January 3, 2008. Beginning with a 7:00 PM opening on 10/26 with Lomax present, the show focuses on the life and work of this architectural maestro. Known for his design leadership at Craig Ellwood’s architecture studio (1954-1961), Jerrold Lomax himself may well be one of the most overlooked masters of the late Case-Study movement. During his tenure with Ellwood, Lomax worked onover 20 building designs. For more information click here. Knoxville, TN modernist pioneer Bruce McCarty first gained national attention in the 1950s for innovative home designs promoted by the National Broadcasting Co., Hotpoint Corp. and the National Association of Homebuilders. McCarty cites his own house, built in 1951 on Cherokee Boulevard in Knoxville’s Sequoyah Hills neighborhood, as the project “I feel most comfortable with.” Read more here.
Monday, October 15 With the assistance of ModernSanDiego visitors, I have been able to gather enough information on the architect Clyde Hufbauer. You can view his bio here. This is truly what I was hoping this site would foster - the community coming together to collaborate on documenting San Diego's recent past. I just bought a Fred Hocks painting entitled "Terrestrial Time/Sidereal Time" (1958) and started asking people like Dave Hampton about him. Apparently Robert Matheny found some information online and now ModernSanDiego has a mini-biography of him up. Check it out here. Speaking of Dave Hampton -- he and his partners Ron Kerner and Steve Aldana are readying their next exhibition and sale "Nature: Objectified". If you have not attended -- this is a must-see opportunity. Friday, October 12 The new book TASCHEN: The A-Z of Modern Architecture - is reviewed here. Even the residents of Thailand are facing demolition of important parts of their built environment. Read about a current threat to a Bangkok 1932 courthouse here. Yet another New York Times article featuring a new house reflective of mid-century modernist aesthetics can be found here. Julius Shulman turned 97 Wednesday. To mark the occasion, the Getty Center has organized a sweeping treatment of his photography that opened last weekend and runs through January at the Central Library downtown. Read more here. “Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture” explores his furniture, interiors, and buildings. The touring exhibition makes its exclusive North American stop at the National Building Museum from November 3, 2007 through February 17, 2008. More information is available here. Monday, October 8 An A. Quincy Jones house in the famed Crestwood Hills neighborhood was somehow destroyed despite strict CCRs in the neighborhood and heightened visibility of the neighborhood and Jones' work with a recent MAK tour. Read the LA Curbed piece here or via the Crestwood Blog here. A retrospective of one of San Diego's leading mid-20th-century artists “Everett Gee Jackson/San Diego Modern, 1925-1955,” opens Nov. 3 at the San Diego Museum Art. The exhibit will kick off a series of exhibitions at the Museum of Art focusing on notables of the region's art history. Read the LA Times' review of Orange County Museum of Art's new show "Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury" here. Gathering more than 150 objects, "Cool" includes work from Ray and Charles Eames "as well as photographs by Julius Shulman, whose meticulous portraits of Case Study homes (built between 1945 and 1966 under the auspices of Arts & Architecture magazine) established Southern California as a breezy outpost of International Style." Saturday, October 6 Want to know one man's (writer's) opinion on the best modern structures in the world? Check out the article from The Guardian here. A La Cañada/Flintridge restoration/remodel of a 1958 mid-century modern home on Hampstead Road is part of a self-guided tour of kitchens in the area. More information is here. Friday, October 5 The Modern Masters Committee of the San Diego Architectural Foundation has spent considerable time developing a San Diego definition of Modern Architecture. Committee members included Homer Delawie, Robert Mosher, John Henderson, Angeles Leira, Jack Carpenter, Keith York and others. You can read this definition the committee submitted to the City of San Diego for adoption here. Los Angeles Modern Auctions, with co-curator Gerard O'Brien (Reform Gallery), is offering a great selection of California Design in its October 14th auction. The catalogue is now availalbe to view online here. Ken Kellogg's Scott Shore Residence (ca. 1986) is up for sale. Check it out here. Monday, October 1 The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s new exhibition, reframes abstract expressionism. Coupling two American abstractionists with two Europeans, the curator draws us to consider how the New York School was worlds ahead of its European cousins. "Painting after abstract expressionism," chief curator, Michael Auping, says, "became mannerist. Many artists turned to sculpture and three-dimensional space." "Declaring Space, Works by Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Lucio Fontana and Yves Klein” takes a contrarian path and remains there through January 6, 2008. More here. Tomorrow night tune in to KPBS-TV or KPBS-HD at 10:30PM for "Saved From the Wrecking Ball" and see Modern San Diego's first media buy. Your donation dollars hard at work. Saturday, September 29
Modern San Diego is sponsoring the broadcast of the film "Saved From The Wrecking Ball". The documentary on Mies Van Der Rohe's Farnsworth House airs on KPBS and KPBS-HD on Tuesday October 2nd @ 10:30PM. To sponsor the documentary, I am using money from site visitors who have clicked on the "Make a Donation" button in the lower left of this page (you too can contribute to such efforts). The staff (of one) here at MSD is also working on ideas for sponsoring slide shows and movie screenings - so donate now and donate often. Please tune in on Tuesday night (or DVR the show if you can't stay up) to see this fantastic documentary on saving the Farnsworth House following the final episode of Ken Burns' "The War" and then go to our discussion forum and share your thoughts. Friday, September 28 The Santa Monica Conservancy will host a bus tour this Sunday exploring the city's diverse architectural heritage, including the Strick House, architect Oscar Niemeyer's only house in the U.S. More information is here. "Drawing Architecture," an exhibition of more than 50 drawings from the L.J. Cella collection, is currently on display at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. The exhibition features drawings from Frank Gehry to Richard Neutra including the latter's perspective drawings of his Kronish House in Beverly Hills (1953). More information is here. Thursday, September 27 While most buildings have a facade facing the street, the Navy's amphibious base building at the corner of Tulagi and Bougainville roads in Coronado, looks like a swastika using Google Earth or Google Maps. As the story rears its head again (this is not the first mention of Google finding this shape), John Mock's design is making news. Yesterday the LA Times article was "the most viewed". Your US Navy will be spending $600K of its federal appropriation to camouflage the view from altitude with photovoltaic panels, landscape elements and other details. The MAK Center for Art and Education will devote its fall tour (October 6 and 7) to the work of A. Quincy Jones. See a few photos here. In Crestwood Hills, the Mutual Housing Association Site Office will be open for touring, along with examples of model numbers 104, 106X, 108, 111, 111X, 302 and 702. Additionally, the Jones House and Studio (1938), the Bernheim House (Ray Kappe, 1961) and the Lohrie House (Rodney Walker, 1947) will be included on the tour. A lecture by Cory Buckner will be held on the eve of the house tour at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church (A. Quincy Jones and Frederick E. Emmons, 1962). More information is available here. Tuesday, September 25 A new exhibit "Design Isamu Kenmochi and Isamu Noguchi" is on view at the Noguchi Museum in Queens through March 16, 2008. You can go directly to the museum's site here or read a review here. An exhibition born of a two-week collaboration in 1950 between Kenmochi and Noguchi that yielded one strikingly original woven bamboo chair may sound a bit odd. Especially considering that the lone prototype of the chair has gone missing, the collaboration is one of those pairings lost to time, only to be reawakened over the coming months. AUCTION UPDATE: Wright's October 7th Modern Design Auction, including Marcel Breur's Wolfson Trailer House, catalog is now online here. LAMA's October 14th California Design Auction catalogs go online shortly here. Sollo Rago’s October 27th Modern auction will feature works by Peter Voulkos, Betty Woodman, Axel Salto, Otto Natzler, Picasso, Nakashima, Paul Evans, Wendell Castle, Wharton Esherick, Wilhelm Hunt Diederich, Albert Paley, Harry Bertoia, Seymour Fogel, Josef Albers, Rolph Scarlett, Emil James Bisttram and Richard Anuszkiewicz, Rex Ashlock, Norman Carton, Carl Morris, Keith Haring, LAII (Angel Ortiz), Richard Hambleton, Claire Falkenstein, Michael Graves, Ettore Sottsass, Hans Wegner, Finn Juhl, Tommi Parzinger, George Nelson, and Warren Platner. and many more. Read about the auction here or visit the auction site when the catalog goes online soon here. Monday, September 24 Marcel Breur's Grosse Point Central Library (circa 1953) has been the subject of a preservation battle that has elicited response from Breuer fans nationwide. It looks like the Boston architectural firm Design Lab may have found a solution for more square footage. Rather than demolishing the elegant two-story library, they hope to add-on to the rear of the building where the parking lot currently is. Read more here. Friday, September 21 On the eve of his 97th birthday, Julius Shulman—the éminence grise of architectural photography—is excited about Modernism Rediscovered, his new three-volume set from Taschen featuring more than 400 architectural projects taken over a seven-decade career. Think of any significant Modern building in Southern California and chances are that Shulman has documented it at one stage in his career. His photograph of Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House #22, the one with the two girls looking over the Hollywood Hills, has arguably become the most widely published image in the history of architecture. Ask him about an iconic house and he’s not likely to talk about its aesthetics—the way most midcentury Modern architecture is fetishized today—but to focus instead on its innate connection between indoors and out. “The reason why this architecture photographs so beautifully is the environmental consideration exercised by the architects,” Shulman says. “It was the sense that here we have beautiful canyons, hillsides, views of the ocean…” For more click here. Wednesday, September 19 In New York City soon? A new exhibition “Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art” opened yesterday and runs through February 3, 2008. Formed in the early 1950s, The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection has long been recognized as one of the preeminent collections of Abstract Expressionist art in the country. This exhibition presents major canvases by Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko along with works by slightly younger American artists working in the early 1960s, such as Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Claes Oldenburg. Paintings and sculpture by European modernists Hans Arp, Alberto Giacometti, Fernand Léger, and Joan Miró are also on view. I've come to visit the Glass House, an emblem of the International Style of architecture and Johnson's acknowledged 1949 masterpiece. This style relied on strict geometric forms and industrial materials, and its origins date to the 1930s Bauhaus architects. Johnson was not the first to conceive of a house with glass walls, but his was the first actually built... writes the Christian Science Monitor. If you find yourself heading out to Arlington, TX stop by the new exhibit “AIA 150: America's Favorite Architecture” on the campus of University of Texas at Arlington. The Fort Worth chapter of the American Institute of Architects is sponsoring the traveling exhibit – which is a collection of a wide range of structures selected by AIA members and the public in an online poll. From Frank Lloyd Wright to Santiago Calatrava, the exhibit reflects a wide range of styles and time periods. The show, titled "Le Corbusier: Art and Architecture--a Life of Creativity," will last through Monday at the Mori Art Museum in Minato Ward, Tokyo. On view are 300 items by the internationally acclaimed architect including models of his architectural work, paintings and furniture. In Japan, Corbusier is known for designing the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno, Tokyo. Thursday, September 13 Architect Andrew Geller, now 83, had gained fame in the '50s and '60s for small and startling modern beach houses that set cubes on edge, angles atilt and conventions aside. NewsDay.com now profiles the architect and homeowners of his inimitable designs here. Be sure to click on the photo essay and other links. Wednesday, September 12 While there are many pleasures to living in a Craig Ellwood designed home, when his other designs come up for sale the mind wanders. Unfortunately for most people, though great for me, Ellwood's extent designs are extremely expensive. For example, the Kuderna Residence is back on the market for $3.3 million. Check it out here. In 1958, James Hubbell, an artist and artisan, and Anne Hubbell, a teacher and musician, decided to build their dream house in the backcountry of San Diego County, beginning with nearly nothing. They were in their 20s and James was working for Sim Bruce Richards, an architect and follower of Frank Lloyd Wright who relied on Hubbell for ironwork, stained-glass windows, mosaic tile works and fanciful sculptures... before it caught fire in 2003, even before its first indoor kitchen was built in the early 1960s, the place looked different from other houses... Read the rest of the LA Times article here. The campaign to keep one of Australia's most important examples of modernist architecture in public hands has failed. The Robin Boyd House II was put back on the market last weekend, to the chagrin of Boyd enthusiasts. The house, designed in 1958 by the late Robin Boyd ("arguably the most influential architect there has been in Australia"), was set to be auctioned in July, but the sale was postponed at the eleventh hour in a bid to allow the State Government, the Robin Boyd Foundation and the Royal Australian Institute of Architects' time to find a way to fund the mortgage. The house will go up for auction again shortly. Read more |
