A Brutal Exhibition

If I had to offer a quick opinion about the effect of so-called Brutalist architecture on society, I'd say, "Not so great," and then just as quickly admit that it's a gut reaction.

But maybe I'd change my mind, and certainly I'd have a more informed opinion, if I went to see an exhibit opening in Westport, Connecticut, tomorrow that will explore the question:

Aggregate: Art and Architecture -- a Brutalist Remix is an art exhibition inspired by the 20th-century architectural style of Brutalism, including concrete architecture in the shoreline region of CT. Aggregate explores the impact of Brutalist architecture on society, exhibiting artworks that reflect, evaluate, and expand upon its goals, materials, and mixed receptions.

There's also an interesting speaker series that goes with it, featuring John Johansen, the ancient architect himself and last surviving member of the Harvard Five (as you know, if you're in New Canaan you must bow your head when you say the words "Harvard Five").

The photo here was sent to me by Andreas Kornfeld and is part of the exhibition. It's a shot (I think) of the Yale Art Gallery, which doesn't strike me as brutalist at all -- the Architecture School across the road, yes, but not the gallery.

All the details are here. -- ta

Coming soon: Modern House Day Tour + Symposium 2009

Modernism Moves Forward is the theme of the '09 MHD, which is being held May 2 in New Canaan, CT. 5 speakers will discuss, from the point of view of their respective disciplines, how Modern homes are being modified to accommodate the requirements of their 21st-century owners. The Symposium + Tour offer an opportunity to hear from foremost experts on modern architecture and design, meet the homeowners, designers and architects themselves, and participate in an in-depth guided tour of some of New Canaan's fine examples of Modern architecture.

The symposium speakers are:

• William D. Earls, AIA, author of The Harvard Five in New Canaan will moderate
• Bassam/Fellows, design team who integrate architecture, interiors and furniture of their own design, recently featured in the New York Times Magazine
• Toshiko Mori, AIA, architect and former dean of Harvard School of Architecture
• David Prutting, insightful builder of modern homes in New Canaan
• Linnaea Tillett, lighting designer and faculty member at Parsons and Columbia

The program begins at the New Canaan Country School. Breakfast will be served before the seminar starts at 10:00am. House tours will follow the seminar. Attendees will be driven to each house via private tour vans, escorted by an architect or historian of the Modern Movement who will be available to answer questions. Among the homes to be visited will be homes designed by Marcel Breuer, Victor Christ-Janer, Gates and Ford, Alan Goldberg, and John Johansen.

The first Modern House Tour in 1949 attracted more than 3000 visitors. The 2004 and 2007 Tours were sold out. Space is limited to only 200 attendees, and tickets are $250 per person which gets you breakfast, the symposium, the exhibit, lunch, a cocktail reception and transportation from the New Canaan Country School to all tour houses. Symposium only (no tour) tickets are $50.

Note: If you are arriving by train, the symposium location is about 5 miles away and you'll need to take a taxi from the train station.

The '09 MHD Tour + Symposium will benefit The New Canaan Historical Society’s preservation program. – GF

For Sale

Judging from the real estate notices I keep getting, this doesn't seem like the most propitious time to sell a mid-century modern house in New Canaan. On the other hand, if you're a buyer maybe you can get a (relative) bargain.

John Johansen's Bridge House (shown at left; asking $5 million), Philip Johnson's Alice Ball House (asking $3.5 million), the house Victor Christ-Janer's designed for himself on Frogtown Road (asking a shade under $3.5 million), and a house designed by Taylor Gates ($1.9 million) are among those still on the market. And if you want to live in a 1966 modern/contemporary on the same road as the Bridge House, there's one listed for $1.375 million, down from the original asking price of $1.425 million.

Skip Ploss, by the way, reports that Cristina Ross, who owns the Alice Ball house, "has all of the permits needed to build the second home she wants to build on the site while still preserving the Ball House." - ta

A Bit More on the Tour in New Canaan

The New Canaan League of Women Voters' Peggy Dannerman was nice enough to get back to me this morning with information about their upcoming modern house tour, the details of which were, in true League of Women Voters fashion, discussed democratically among league board members until a consensus was reached about what they could say publicly. Here's what she told me:

I spoke with our League of Women Voter's Board yesterday about your question, and they agreed that we could inform the public about the architects of the homes, but not the names of the home themselves, a policy we have followed in previous tours. Suffice it to say that we have two homes by Philip Johnson, one by Eliot Noyes and one by John Johansen. There are two fairly "grand" homes and two smaller homes.

I'm not sure I'd shell out a hundred bucks to see four modern houses unless I knew what the houses were, particularly since I've been on two New Canaan Historical Society modern house tours that included two Johnson's and a Noyes and I wouldn't necessarily want to pay to see them again. Offhand I don't know how many Noyes or Johansen houses there are in New Canaan, but there are six Johnson's -- the Glass House, the Alice Ball House and the Boissonas House, all of which have been on the historical society tours; the Hodgson House, which was going to be on last year's historical society tour, I think, but was being renovated; and the Wiley House and Wiley "spec" house, which I'm unfamiliar with.

A Visit to Johansen’s Bridge House

Purely by chance, I found myself inside John Johansen's Bridge House yesterday, receiving a condensed history of the house, from concept through materials, spending as much time as I wanted to poke around and ask questions.

Tom sent me on a reconnaissance mission to see if the house is visible from the road and to maybe get some photos. As luck would have it, yesterday was open-house day for area realtors, and even though I am not in the profession, Rita Kirby of William Pitt | Sotheby's International invited me to have a look around.

Rita explained how the owners (who are the original owners and still live in the house) asked Johansen not only design them a house, but also to find the land it would exist on. According to Rita, Johansen always had a river house "in him" to design, and this site presented the perfect opportunity to realize that idea. One of the more prescient and romantic concepts was that in crossing the water, one was purified and the concerns and distresses of the outside world were washed away, making his "Villa Ponte" truly a haven.

The house is an extended, slab-serif capital "H" (in typographic terms, extended means wider than normal, and a serif is the small line, curve, stroke, or slab projecting from the main stroke of a letter), the cross bar of the "H" being the living/dining area beneath the famous gold leaf multi-barrel ceiling, and under which flows the Rippowam River.

Each "slab serif" of the "H" is a wing, or pavilion, with a different purpose which is denoted by a unique symbol that Johansen designed which is pressed into the stucco walls, on both interior and exterior walls, in random-looking (by design) groupings: The children's wing has an egg shape, the parents' wing has an elongated 4-point star, the kitchen wing has a stylized hourglass, and the guest wing has open circles, representing champagne bubbles.

Predictably, the house has narrow hallways and rooms on the small side (with the exception of the exceptional living room), and to make best use of the small spaces, there's lots of clever built in storage throughout. Every room has a door and windows to the outside to let in the sound of the river and make the woods immediately accessible.

I noticed that Johansen also designed the garage. Must have been a lot later, since the feel is so different from the main house. It's not bad from the outside, but the inside is uninteresting.

I was not permitted to take photos, but there are plenty here. To give you a better idea of the configuration of the house, I scanned the outline with its measurements from the Wm. Pitt packet on the house. I was told that an actual floor plan will be up on the house's website in about a week. – GF

John Johansen's Classic Bridge House In New Canaan Is On the Market for $5 Million

John Johansen's Bridge House, one of New Canaan's truly classic mid-century modern houses, is on the market for $5 million. 

Johansen, of course, was one of the Harvard Five -- in fact he's the only one still alive (Philip Johnson, Eliot Noyes, Landis Gores and Marcel Breuer were the others).

The house, which is on Louise's Lane, a tiny dead-end road near the Pound Ridge border, is called the Bridge House because it spans the Rippowam River, a small stream the eventually drains into Long Island Sound. The Bridge House was built in 1956 and is still owned by the person who commissioned it.

There's surprisingly little about the Bridge House online, and I'll have to go to the library to refer to Bill Earls' Harvard Five book or Christian Bjone's First House book for more, but here's what the real estate listing (by Gillian DePalo, of the William Raveis agency) says:

The Bridge House ... is the culmination of a great modern architectural genius .... The house has expansive walls of glass & gorgeous sunlite rooms; both dramatic and intimate interior spaces, including the gold leaf barrel LR ceiling, the Star, Champagne, Egg and Hourglass Pavilions, and many signature designs executed personally by the architect...

It hasn't been shown on either of the Modern House Day tours I've participated in, and I'm fairly certain it wasn't on the 2001 tour that Gina worked on but I didn't. Johansen spoke at the 2004 and 2007 symposiums that preceded the tours and showed slides of it both times, so he's clearly proud of it. I wrote a long post about the tour and symposium and included much of what Johansen talked about, for my other blog; you can read it here. 

Johansen, by the way, is 91 and lives in Dutchess County, New York, with his wife, Ati, who is Walter Gropius's daughter. -- ta