Next House: Prefab that fits all

I really like some of the things I see on Next House's site. I even like the site itself, which is really saying something; I find so many architects’ sites so fussy and difficult to navigate, which is odd given the inevitable descriptors in their “about us” statements: elegant, functional, minimal, clean, etc. I love that the flat-pack houses come in sizes XS, S, M, and L. – GF
(via Below the Clouds)

Neutra's Kaufman House Sells for $16.8 Million

In the leafy suburbs of Connecticut, Stone's Celanese House sold for $4.1 million. But in the California desert, Neutra's Kaufman House sold for much more -- $16.8 million. Christie's sold it, along with a trove of paintings. The Times reports:

Considering that a painting went for more than $50 million, the Kaufmann House, in Palm Springs, Calif., a 1946 Modernist landmark in glass, steel and stone designed by the architect Richard Neutra, was a veritable bargain. It was being sold by Brent Harris, an investment manager, and Beth Edwards Harris, an architectural historian, who are divorcing.

The home, which was originally commissioned as a desert retreat by Edgar J. Kaufmann, the Pittsburgh department store magnate for whom Frank Lloyd Wright built Fallingwater in Pennsylvania a decade earlier, met its low $15 million estimate (or with commission, $16.8 million).

After the sale, Marc Porter, Christie’s president in America, said the buyer, whom he declined to name, exercised an option to purchase an orchard adjacent to the property for an additional $2.1 million that includes three cacti that were a present from Frank Lloyd Wright to Mr. Kaufmann on his first visit to the home.

It isn’t the first time a Modernist house has been sold at auction. Over the years both Christie’s and Sotheby’s have offered such architecturally important dwellings as Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House and a 1950 town house on East 52nd Street that Philip Johnson designed as a guest house for Blanchette Rockefeller, the wife of John D. Rockefeller III.

I borrowed the photo, above, from Flickr. -- ta

A coherent account of the Housing Boom/Bust

This is tangental to my blog, no doubt, but the state of the housing industry is relevant to our interest in the resurgence of modernism as a housing product. If you have money to build or are able to borrow in this credit climate, its actually a good time to build. And that's an opportunity for modernist to get a foot in the door, for developers flat out of luck its a market that still has demand. So read up, or listen up as the case may be, and learn what actually went down in the credit bust.

This radio program "This American Life" just did a review of the recent history of the ongoing credit crisis, and the housing crisis it spawned, and the overall stinky economy following on its heels. This is the best plain language, easily understandable account of what has transpired that I have heard to date. It was put together by a pair of reporters, one a financial correspondent for NPR, and the other a regular from This American Life. So it puts together accurate financial reporting with a human outlook and good story telling. If you think "yeah, I know there is a credit crisis but I don't really know what just happened" then this is a worthwhile listen. It puts it in very human terms as well - via the experience of a lot of people who participated in it.

I'd really love to blame somebody. Sure there was greed in there, but not nearly as much greed as sheer stupidity. You know, its like those C students I went to high school with, the ones that were not nearly as smart or responsible as me, but today make so much more money than I ever did or ever will. Its like these are the ones we leave our economy to. And they'll put it into a tree on a joy ride as readily as they did with their dad's Old's Cutlass back in high school.

http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=355

These podcasts are only available as a free download for a week, starting this past sunday. So get it now or pay later.

Technorati Tags: modern design, modern house

It's a Deal for Edward Durell Stone's Celanese House

Really good news for modern house aficionados out of New Canaan today: The deal for the Celanese House closed. Joel Disend, an executive at New York Life, bought it for $4.1 million, half-a-million below its last listing price.

I say good news because we can only assume that Disend bought the house, which Edward Durell Stone designed, to live in rather than to tear down. It's an oddity outside, no doubt, but stunning inside. We loved it when we saw it, unfurnished, during New Canaan's Modern House Day in November. Except for its price, which was almost $4 million above what we could afford, and its location, on Oenoke Ridge Road, which is too main street for us, we might have bought it ourselves.

But its good news too for Jackie and Bruce Capra, New Canaan residents who bought the house because they didn't want to see it torn down (they had seen that happen too many times to modern houses in New Canaan), invested in the renovation and now, presumably, will get a payoff for their effort (Fred Bernstein wrote a good account of the Capras in the Times, here).

There's also lots of background information on this blog and on my other blog, Sphere. -- ta

0751 Suburban House - third scheme

Time to look at another schematic scheme from the suburban house project. This scheme was centered around an interesting idea about how to organize the house, but also departed from the previous schemes because of this. Here the living+dining+kitchen space is imagined as a glazed rectangular volume set atop a plinth containing the rest of the functions of the house.



This may be a little bit harder to imagine because the schematic model really does not give a good representation of how this would be integrated into the landscape. The plinth would be masonry, sunk into the earth, the stairs at the front looking like a bit of a ruin, emerging out of the landscape (which with fill needed for the site would not be as long as shown in the illustrations). The bar atop is lighter, framed, with many windows, cantilevering off the base on both sides.

Click the link below to continue reading.



When you approach the house there are two ways to enter. If you go up these steps at the front of the house you then walk across pavers on a green roof to a "front" door in the living dining kitchen bar. There is a smaller volume extending towards the front of the house here which is relatively solid, and beyond it the volume of the bar is more transparent. You enter through the door and step into the broad view through the bar into the landscape beyond. Another green roof and roof terrace mediates between the room and the landscape.



The second way to approach is to descend into the grotto that exists between the pair of front steps which will take you to an entry door. This door brings you into a center hall at the lower level of the house. The home office and studio is to one side, and the entry to the house from the garage is at the other. Beyond is a stair with light descending from above, and further the two secondary bedrooms. Each of these rooms is at grade and has a small patio, its own private outdoor space sheltered by the bar above. At the end of the hall is the master bedroom suite which also has its own patio at grade extending off the end of the house.




I've tried to describe the house more as an experience, since this rough model does so little to describe the definitive characteristics of the house. This proposal did not meet the brief for the project in many ways, but it still remains an intriguing idea for me. Perhaps it will find its place as a house plan in the future.

Technorati Tags: modern design, modern house

Modern Sewage Treatment

In one of my other lives, I write about Long Island Sound, where pollution and improvement to sewage treatment plants is a big issue. New York City is investing tons of money to fix its treatment plants, four of which sit near the far western end of the Sound. A bit farther west, in Brooklyn, the city is upgrading its Newtown Creek plant. The Times published this terrific picture of it today. -- ta

Stone's Celanese House on the Verge of Being Sold

While maneuvering continues about the fate of the Alice Ball House, two doors away on Oenoke Ridge Road in New Canaan, Edward Durell Stone's Celanese House is on the verge of being sold. Contracts have been signed; the closing is still to come.

Of course anything can happen between signing of the contracts and the closing, but it looks as if the Celanese House, a real gem inside and a conversation starter if nothing else on the exterior, will be bought. The listing was for $4.9, so if the final price is anywhere even near that, it won't be a teardown. There's background here and here.