A section view - XHouse2

A cut through the stair at the center of the house shows how the levels are connected.

I think having spaces that you use day to day at the stair landing level makes the house feel larger, and also makes the floors feel more connected.

Look Mom, no porch posts - XHouse2

Making much progress on the schematic house model. The entire house is blocked out now, and we will be adding more detail next before we begin painting surfaces.

Porch posts are the last big piece here. We are still missing the big steel frame from the XHouse2's daddy the 3030 house, but we are trying to bring out a bit of finesse rather than the brute strength of its progenitor.

Les maisons les plus insolites

My Swiss friend, the musician and graphic/web designer Nico Monguzzi, posted this link to some pretty odd buildings from around the world. – GF

The house itself was a movie star

Again, thanks to Grain Edit for alerting us to this tidbit: the MCM house featured in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off – The Ben Rose home designed by A. James Speyer and David Haid – is for sale. – GF

Mid-century Modern summer fun via Grain Edit

Some fun from a booklet of Mid Century Modern vacation and leisure home plans. Seen on the wonderful site, grain edit. – GF

New Design Prints in production - XHouse2

The new house plan set based on the 3030 House design is now under production and we'll be updating the creation of the Design Prints moving forward right here in the blog.

Looking a bit like a wooden puzzle here, this is the interior spaces without the shell of the house exterior. Windows and doors are not punched through the walls yet.

Carpe Diem - Why you should build your modern/green house now

We all know why you don't have the modern or green house you've always wanted. None of the usual suspects build them - developers that offer them are few and far between. Building them custom costs a premium you can't afford. And construction prices had gotten high, high, high - about as high as they have ever been. You have to wait. Wait until you were making more money, had more saved, or till the kind of house you wanted was more widely available. And on top of all that you felt pretty powerless to do anything about it. Only if you could just go out and find/buy the kind of house you liked. But you couldn't. Its just not out there. You were powerless to change the status quo.

And then it all busted, prices went through the roof, loan qualifications became ridiculous, and suddenly everybody was fearful about the near future. Insecurity does not breed long term commitments to construction projects. In case you haven't noticed there is not much happening with housing right now. Builders fat from the past 5-10 years are sitting on their hands waiting for things to turn. Developers left with bloated McMansions are trying to clear them out.

But where does that leave you? There's no 12 month supply of modern and green houses on the market, is there? That has not changed. But what has changed? Well what has changed is the collective housing market is on its knees from the greatest gut kick in history, and the opportunity to remake the industry, or at least our little corner of it is at hand. We just have to take it. Continues after the link:

Here is why you should be building your modern or green house now.

Number one: there are a lot of builders out there that 2 years ago would have passed on your "crazy" project or screwed you with high pricing just to avoid venturing into the unknown, happy to just keep doing what he's always been doing. That same guy today is likely happy to build your project, with great attention and customer service, with a lower profit, and in some cases no profit just to keep men busy. I'm not saying you should take advantage of somebody when they are down. The lack of projects in the market is creating this and you don't want to hire somebody to go down the drain in the middle of your construction. But the gist is the time has never been better, whether that means more house for your budget, or an infeasible budget is now workable. Its not going to get any better than now.

Number two: lending has begun to return to normalcy. Of course normal means its harder to qualify than it was during the balloons hey day, but better than the scared to loan terms that came about near the end in 2008. Smaller lenders who were not caught up in the crazy lending policies were never in trouble, and have been lending throughout the crisis. Many of them are hungry to lend now because all borrowing has slowed down. Other lenders are returning to the market and looking for candidates. Rates are low, maybe not record low, but reasonably low.

Number three, and this is really the big one: this is your chance to be empowered to do something about the housing market, to reshape it to your vision. Remember earlier when I said how before we were powerless to make change. Well now you have the power to make change, and if you are passionate about seeing the housing industry begin to offer the kind of housing you want, be it modern, or green, or both, now is the time to shape the future of housing. If everybody out there who ever hoped, dreamed, pined for a modern/green house got a project underway then modern green houses would suddenly be the majority of what was being built in housing. And you can be sure that everybody in the market would take notice. Builders and developers would see that this was something that was selling while nothing else was. People who never even had modern or green on their radar screen before would take notice, and be exposed to this new kind of house. Some will not care, but many more will come on board. And all this will combine to carve out a segment of the housing market for the kind of houses we love, so that in the future its not such a pipe dream to get a modern or green house. And even after the market recovers we can have staked out our part of it now.

So even if you don't build the house that you wanted for ever and ever, you can build an interim home that will have value moving forward, and if I dare to speculate those of you that build it in this down market will do well later when you sell it to build your next modern green home, the forever one. And if nothing has ever been green enough for you, your standards are higher, even you can see how an interim house now will build the momentum of green building, be it new or renovation. And you will find a home that does meet your standards will come faster than if you just wait it out.

I know everybody is worried about the future, security, their jobs. But this is a self fulfilling prophecy, and it can just as easily have a self fulfilling solution. If we build modern green homes in numbers it will help the recovery, and money flowing in home building spreads to all other corners of the economy. If you are passionate about these issues and want to see change, not just lip service, its time to stick your neck out. The more who do it, the less risk each of us will take.

So can we make a movement of this? Can we spread this through all of the channels through which we exchange ideas? You big blogs that read here - yeah you, the ones with thousands of page views per day - will you spread this to your readers? And you, the home owner doing their own house project now and blogging it, will you post this to your readers, all the ones watching you and hoping for their own house to happen some day. Can we push this idea far enough that the dinosaurs in old media pick up the story? That's what I call the ReModern Movement.

Walls? Who needs 'em?!

Apparently not the clients of Brazilian architect Marcio Kogan. Every one of the completed houses by Studio mk27 includes glass walls that slide open to equally stunning landscaping. Although these houses are a bit grandiose for humble little old me, the opened up structures are my dream . . . –GF

"Where were you when we needed you, DoCoMoMo?"

We can always count on Metropolis senior editor, Kristi Cameron, to be on the New Canaan Historical Society's Modern Day House tour. Here is a link to what she wrote about it this year which features an issue brought up by the first speaker of the day, Toshiko Mori. The accompanying slide show sums up the day very nicely. – GF

3030 House - making progress

Hand rails have been installed inside and outside of the house now. The owner is contemplating LEED certification which may delay the closing in of the interior walls. This will be our first EcoSteel project to under go LEED evaluation and I'm eager to see how the steel construction falls within the criteria.

LEED certification best done from the outset of construction, really from the conception of the design, but in any case for work built and in place the walls need to be open so the construction methods and materials can be verified. This means that the close in with wall board and the installation of other finishes will be delayed until the audit can be completed.

More progress photos follow after the link.

A Day at the Old Fashioned Ballpark

I happened to have liked Shea Stadium (as I wrote here), which happened to be probably the first, and last, baseball stadium that was also a work of modern architecture. Shea is gone now -- so gone, in fact, that yesterday at Citifield, I parked in a space between what had been second base and the pitcher's rubber at Shea (both are clearly marked on the blacktop).

Architecturally Citifield is a fraud, of course. It's built to look like it is part of a city neighborhood, built to look old. But it's incongruous, and even a bit ridiculous, in the middle of parking lots and hemmed in by highways on two sides.

However I don't go to baseball games for the architecture. I go to watch the game, and Citifield was a good place for that. We had good seats (my son won them in a raffle at his elementary school, in December) close to the field and could see and hear everything beautifully. The staff at Citifield was shockingly friendly and accommodating. The inside of the park (not the field but under the stands) looked more like a hotel lobby than what I think of as a ballpark. We ate decent food. There were plenty of vendors but they were quiet -- no great New Yawk voices shouting out, "Beah heah," for example (always a source of amusement at Shea). The seats were wide and cushioned (and hot in the bright son). When the game was over, no one rushed us out; in fact people were allowed to come down near the field to take pictures.

We didn't pay for the tickets ($140 each) or the parking ($18). If we had, and after you add in the $10 tolls on the Whitestone Bridge and the modest amount of food we bought (but not the four or so gallons of gas it took the get there), the day would have cost me $349.

I guess for that kind of money the place better be clean and the staff friendly. Luckily the Mets won and we had a terrific afternoon, and I'm sure few people among the 40,000 even questioned the architectural authenticity. -- ta

Jens Risom is 93 Today

Our favorite living modern furniture designer, Jens Risom, turned 93 today! We saw him and his wife, Henny, a week ago at the cocktail party for the New Canaan Modern House Day, looking amazingly well for a fellow his age. One of the dumbest things we ever did was to not buy a couple of half-price, floor model Risom web chairs when we saw them in a local shop about 15 years ago.

If you like Jens's work (or if you like Jens himself), here's a Jens Risom fan page on Facebook (the page administrator is apparently a mystery), and here's his website.

His first name is pronounced Yenss, by the way (it almost rhymes with "fence") -- not Gens.

And check out this picture of renowned furniture designers, from a 1961 Playboy magazine. Each designer is posing in or near his own work; Jens is on the far right. Can you identify the others?

Beach house interior design

Beach house interior design over views beautiful beach.

Colorful bathroom wallpaper

Colorful bathroom with luxury bathroom furniture and bathroom accessories. This is luxurious bathroom felt sensation bath in this amazing bathroom.

Zen design bedroom

Zen design bedroom combination with soft color its very comfortable and elegant bedroom

White living room picture

White living room with design modern minimalist concept. Complete with beautiful rugs and TV stand.

Health and clean kitchen ideas

Health and clean kitchen ideas made from stainless steel, its very amazing kitchen design combination with beautiful lighting arrangement.

Interior lighting bedroom

>Interior lighting bedroom arrangement make comfortable atmosphere bedroom.

its a wrap - XHouse1 posted to the catalog

After messing with the images for several weeks it was just time to get this show on the road. Design Prints are done and available immediately.

The XHouse1 at lamidesign.com/plans

Did Eliot Noyes Design this Mobil Station in Sweden?

An email arrived the other day from a woman in Sweden, with a tale and a question. She and her husband, who are aficionados of modern architecture, bought a building that was about to be torn down, and are dismantling it and moving it to their property, to use as a small guesthouse. She wrote:

... it is an old Mobil station by Eliot Noyes according to books, newspapers & other facts. ... The building was in place in Holm/Sweden in 1959. According to papers/books it was built in the US & shipped to Sweden in a box. (We had at least 4 of these buildings shipped to different locations in Sweden but our building is the last one to stand.) The only problem we can see is this : According to the book about Eliot Noyes he started to work for mobil in 1964. But these stations are made in 1959...

So that was her question. If the buildings (you can see what they looked like shortly after they were built, above, and on this blog post) were shipped to Sweden in 1959 and Noyes started working on the Mobil account in 1964, how could he have designed them? In a subsequent email she told us more:

We have have moved parts of the old building, (construction / teak / glass / details etc.) The community of Halmstad had "doomed" the building and it was going to be torn down but we manage to save it with some help from a local paper. We will rebuild it in our garden... We are living in a house ... built 1954 & the "Eliot Noyes" building/station will be a small guesthouse ... for our friends ... We love the design of the old station. We also managed to save the Canopies designed in 1973 by Eliot Noyes & they will also be placed in front of building.

And she added these details in a subsequent email:

We have blueprints from 1958 from the station area in Holm made by MobilOil (USA). At least 3, (maybe 4 or 5) of these stations had their grand opening in 1959/Sweden. ... According to articles from different papers 1959/1960 they were made in the US & shipped to Sweden in boxes. (We have talked to old staff & children, they also say that they were shipped to Sweden in boxes.)

I of course had no idea if Noyes designed the building but because I happened to be working on the brochure for the New Canaan Historical Society's Modern House Day, I had been in touch via email with Alan Goldberg, who had been Eliot Noyes's partner. I forwarded our Swedish correspondent's email to Alan and told him I was skeptical about the Noyes connection. Here's what Alan said:

You’re correct, our office was not working on the Mobil account when the station was reported to be built. I can say with some certainty (I have a rather extensive file on all the design work for Mobil) that the building was not designed by our firm. However, the circular lighting fixtures in the forecourt were one of the elements (kit of parts if you will) for the “Pegasus Design”. I suspect the lights were added later which is why people may attribute the design to Eliot Noyes & Associates.

So Noyes did not design it, which I'm sure disappointed our Swedish correspondent somewhat, although she said she had received email from people who contended that Breuer designed it, perhaps in conjunction with Gropius. That sounds like wishful thinking to me but you never know. I've asked her to let us know if she learns more. You can see what the building looks like now, before renovation, here on her Flickr page. -- ta

We Didn't See Martha But She Was There

Did we mention that Martha Stewart was on the Modern House Day tour?

She wasn't on my bus or Gina's, and she wasn't at the morning symposium or the evening cocktail party. But there were several Martha sightings, including one by Katherine Markiewicz, whose house was on the tour. She said it was fairly intimidating to have Martha Stewart giving the once-over to her furniture and rugs, but Martha herself was very polite and quiet.

For gossip purposes, that's the best we can do. But there were other people worth noting on the tour.

Cristina Ross, for example. Cristina owns the Alice Ball House, in New Canaan, which Philip Johnson designed, and gained great notoriety when she threatened to demolish it. That threat dissipated and now she wants to sell it and to build a new house behind it. Some people on my bus expressed the wish that Cristina's relatively new-found interest in modern architecture might prompt her to design and build a modern on the site, instead of a McMansion.

The tour was also notable because the offspring of three notable architects were there: Fred Noyes, the son of Eliot Noyes (although there was no Noyes house on the tour); F. Taylor Gates III, the son of Taylor Gates, who designed the older section of the Markiewicz house; and Kathy Christ-Janer, Victor Christ-Janer's daughter. - ta

Who Was on My MHD Bus?

I managed to take the Modern House Day tour on Saturday for free by volunteering as a bus docent. The organizers gave me a list of the 19 people on my bus -- 19 including myself and Lazlo Papp, who was our "bus architect" -- and I dutifully checked off everyone as they got on for the first time. After that I chatted with everyone and counted heads as they got back on the bus after each house, but I almost immediately forgot which name went with which face.

Which is a bummer because there were some interesting people -- an architect from Rye, for example, who lives in a Ulrich Franzen house (which Gina and I visited during a modern house tour in 2003 or 2004); two guys who live in a Breuer house in Litchfield County; two other guys who live in a modern house (I think) near Usonia, in Armonk; among others.

If you read this and if you were on my bus, send me an email or better yet, use the comments section to tell us what you thought about Saturday. -- ta

5 Moderns

Here are my quick impressions of the five houses that were part of Saturday's Modern House Day in New Canaan (Gina, who designed the brochure cover on the left, might offer her opinions later). (No one was allowed to take photos except the day's official photographer, Bob Gregson, who was on my bus, so unless Bob reads this and sends me some, which I would welcome, I'll have to make do with older shots.)

The Goldberg House is a gem, simple and beautifully proportioned and scaled. Alan and Trudy Goldberg have lived there since the early 1970s, when Alan moved to New Canaan to work for Elliot Noyes (he later became Noyes's partner). Alan told us what the original house, designed by John Johansen, was like -- well-designed but very small -- and how he essentially rebuilt on the same site and added to it over the years. The latest addition -- a new wing connected to the main part of the house by a glass walkway overlooking the woods and wetlands -- is seemless. Trudy told us that Alan worked with the contractor every day for months to get it right.

Victor Christ-Janer's house sits on a lovely, rolling piece of land, with apple trees, and ponds that Victor himself dug, and the house itself is nestled nicely into a small hill. I didn't like the inside as much as I liked the Goldberg house though. Gina pointed out that the materials were not as high quality, which I probably sensed but couldn't articulate. If Alan's additions were seemless, Victor's were less so. One of the guys on my bus loved it however. The house is on the market and is normally empty, but it had been "staged," as they say (a new use of that word for me) by Victoria Lyon Interiors.

We learned at Friday's MHD cocktail party (at a really interesting, under-construction modern townhouse, with three stories and an outdoor room on the roof, being built by David Prutting in downtown New Canaan) that John Johansen's Bridge House had sold -- we walked in at the same time as the guy who bought it, Michael Fedele. He was there on Saturday, along with Johansen himself, who, at 90-plus, is fit and lively, his hair and beard snow-white. I was somewhat shocked by just how pink -- or salmon, I guess -- the outside of the house is ("Mrs. Warner probably wanted pink and so Johansen made it pink," Gina guessed). It's a beautiful house and, although a guest house has been added, it was the only house on the tour that had not been changed, and so buying it is probably akin to buying the Glass House or the Farnsworth House -- something to be preserved and kept intact, a showplace probably more than a home. The Rippowam River was beautiful and clear as it ran under the house, and two mallards swam quietly downstream, undisturbed by all the coming and going.

The Gates House was interesting and homey -- the original section small, with low ceilings, typical of a mid-century modern and charming for it, and the new section brighter, more open. Mark Markiewicz, who has lived there since the early 1990s, designed and built the new section for his elderly parents. He was proud of it -- justifiably, I thought -- and he was also happy to meet and talk with the original architect's son, F. Taylor Gates III (who grew up in the house) and his wife, Susan, who took the tour and stayed for the cocktail party afterward.

The Breuer II house was something else again. Toshiko Mori did what she did at the famous John Black Lee II house on Chichester Road -- raise the ceiling and put in clerestory windows. Some visitors preferred the original low, wood ceilings, and were disappointed by the change; I thought the windows made the original Breuer section bright and comfortable. Mori's new, spare-no-expense addition is spectacular but it evoked different emotions among my group. One person said he liked it so much it gave him chills when he walked up the stairs and through the corridor. Another told me that maybe over time he could accept it. I thought it would be a terrific place to spend a long weekend but I'm not sure I'd want to live there. But it certainly is stunning. -- ta