Daphne, Christ-Janer, Landis Gores

The fellow at the MCArch blog doesn't post often but when he does he writes about choice houses new to the market and, as his blog title implies, from the mid twentieth century. The other he wrote about this terrific house, known as the Daphne residence, in Hillsborough, California. There are a lot more good pictures on his blog, here. And scroll down to see his post called "Who is Jack Viks?" He's also way into Neutra and has good stuff about him and his houses.

In our part of the world a house designed by Victor Christ-Janer, for himself, in New Canaan in 1949, just came on the market. Until I figure out how to get a photo off the realtor's site, here's a link. When Christ-Janer died last May, the Times wrote of him:

Like the far-better-known Marcel Breuer and Philip Johnson , Mr. Christ-Janer helped transform the town from a haven of traditional Colonial-style homes into an incubator for distinctive Modernist dwellings as well.

It also says he designed the New Canaan Post Office, which isn't particularly distinguished, and a market, which probably was Walter Stewart's, on Elm Street, near the train station. Its site says:

In 1957, Stewart's moved to our current location on Elm Street. The unique, concrete dome roof and extensive glass frontage were considered avant garde at the time.

Christ-Janer was also a developer who built a rather ugly condo development down the road in Vista, which is in Lewisboro, New York, and when Gina had her design studio on Main Street, New Canaan, 15 years ago, Victor was her landlord.

There's also a house on the market on Wahackme Road, in New Canaan, that was partly-designed by Landis Gores. His widow, Pamela Gores, told me that the house had been a rather undistinguished ranch but that the owners hired Landis to design a pavilion for it, as she called it. Here's the listing. -- ta

Mod Cape Cod

Seems like now would be a great time of year to visit Cape Cod and see houses that the Cape Cod Modern House Trust is working to preserve, especially if you sightsee by canoe, the way the author of the latest Design Within Reach Design Notes newsletter did. – GF

Photos from top:
Weidlinger House. Photo by Bill Burke, courtesy of Tom Weidlinger.
Weidlinger House. Photo by Maddeline Weidlinger-Friedli, courtesy of Tom Weidlinger.
Hatch House. Photo by Jack Hall, courtesy of Noa Hall.

Presidential Seating

We're not really sure what to do with this chair. Gina's aunt and uncle, who lived in our house before we did, bought it ages ago. It was designed by Hans Wegner and it's something of a Danish Modern icon but it's not really a living room chair, we don't need it in our bedroom, and we have only one so we can't use it at our dining table (the seat looks pretty shiny and it's highly possible that Gina's uncle, in is dotage. had it covered in Naugahyde). [NO! Not true – it is original, beautiful leather, and the only piece we have of theirs that isn't marred by careless everyday use. – GF]

But as I was clicking through our blogroll this morning, I learned on Mid-Century Modernist (which learned from the New York Times) that there is a use for the chair -- you sit in it attentively while waiting your chance to rebut. It's called the PPS 503 chair and nicknamed the Kennedy Chair. Of course if the 1960 election had turned out differently, it might have been called the Nixon Chair.

Feel free to add your own jokes about what the Obama Chair or the McCain Chair might look like. -- ta

More drawing trials

Still playing around with trying to make the drawings for the Hus1 appear like they came out of a magazine from 1957.



which is a halftone filter run over a black and white image of the model. More variations below the fold.



maybe sunset yellow?



or working with an image that approximates an old blueprint

Technorati Tags: house plans, Hus1, modern design, modern house

3030 House - light framing has begun

The light gage framing for the exterior walls has begun, and a fresh coat of primer is going on the steel, good progress on the 3030 EcoSteel House.



Just a quick update with new photos in a browser after the link below.




Visit the 3030 House flickr group to see all of the photos forwarded by the owner.

Technorati Tags: 3030 House, ecosteel, modern design, modern house, prefab house

Staying in a Wright House

Terry Teachout, an arts writer, spent a few days in Frank Lloyd Wright's Penfield House and then blogged about it. The post is here and although you have to read through the narrative of his entire trip, and more, to get to his impressions of the house, they're worth reading:

The Penfield House is one of six Wright-designed houses that can be rented on a short-term basis. It's located in Willoughby, a quiet suburb east of downtown Cleveland. The house isn't visible from the road--it's in the middle of thirty acres of heavily wooded land--and you have to look closely to spot the Cherokee-red gate which tells you that you've gotten where you're going. You push open the gate and drive down the gravel road, and all at once the house comes quietly into view, a simple two-story home built out of glass, wooden beams, concrete blocks, and light tan asbestos-and-concrete panels. Like all of Wright's Usonian houses, the Penfield House seems to melt into the landscape rather than dominating it. As you pass through the unostentatious entrance, you feel as though you're still out of doors, for one of the walls of the twelve-foot-high living room is made almost entirely of glass, and the ceiling and floor extend beyond the glass wall in such a way as to create the illusion that the house is wide open to the surrounding woodland. The Chagrin River is nearby, and Paul Penfield, the owner, has cut a trail through the woods, making it possible for guests to wander at their leisure. Even though the house is only twenty minutes from downtown Cleveland, the city feels as though it's on the far side of the world. One afternoon I sat in the living room watching the leaves fall, and a half-dozen deer sauntered through the yard as though I didn't exist. ...

[One definition of a true Manhattanite is a person who is still enchanted by deer.]

At night we drove into the city to dine and see shows, but we came back to the house as soon as we were done, for we knew within minutes of our arrival on Sunday that we'd want to spend as much time there as possible. Since both theaters were dark on Monday, Mrs. T and I spent the whole day and night at the house, leaving only long enough to buy groceries. After dinner we turned on all the lights, went outside, and marveled at its warm, unassuming beauty. Even though the Penfield House is a work of art in and of itself, Paul and his wife Donna have gone to considerable trouble to make it look and feel like a home, not a museum. I've never stayed in a more comfortable place, or a more soothing one. Some part of this comfort, I know, arose less from the house than from the circumstances of our staying there. To spend four days in a Web-free woodland retreat could scarcely fail to please an Upper West Side writer who lives in the middle of the hum and buzz of urban culture. But it wouldn't have been the same had we stayed in a log cabin or a McMansion, for the all-pervading orderliness of the grid that Wright used to generate the floor plan and architectural detail of the Penfield House is both relaxing and reassuring to the eye. Modern the house most definitely is, but not in the hectoring manner of the International Style. It is, above all, tranquil, a point of repose in a world of pandemonium, a place where you can hear yourself think--or, if you like, where you can think of nothing at all. Wallace Stevens wrote a poem called "Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself." Such self-sufficient things were the stuff of which our four days at Penfield House were made: falling leaves, train whistles in the distance, deer on the lawn, rain on the roof.
That's a good description of what appeals to me about the best modern houses I've visited. A good modern house is "tranquil, a point of repose in a world of pandemonium, a place where you can hear yourself think--or, if you like, where you can think of nothing at all."

Of course I have no idea what he's talking about when he refers to the "hectoring manner of the International Style." Bullying? Swaggering? Intimidating or dominating? The Gropius House in Lincoln, Massachusetts, is International Style and it's as warm and comforting as a New England farmhouse. Ditto for the Noyes II House, in New Canaan. I've never been in the Mandel House, which is down the road from where I work in Bedford Hills, but even if it were cold and austere, I have a hard time imagining how it would be hectoring.

Regardless. Impressions differ. Teachout's enthusiasms can be hard to take but I like his description of the FLW house. -- ta

Lecture @ The Aldrich

If you're in the area, The Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, CT is hosting what sounds like an interesting lecture on Sunday, 26 October at 4pm. Non-member admission: $10, members free.

The architect Joeb Moore will present Conversations with Suburbia: Rethinking the Harvard Five. Moore is a principal in Joeb + Partners, Architects > l.l.c. in Greenwich, CT, an Adjunct Assistant Professor and former Assistant Director of the Undergraduate Architecture Department at Columbia University, and Studio Critic in the Graduate Housing Studio at the Yale School of Architecture.

As part of his talk, . . . Moore will discuss some of the underlying cultural and commercial relationships and historical trajectories between modernism, American mid-century modernism, and the private house during the twentieth century. He will link these trends and influences to his own recent work and research and then connect it directly with the New Canaan Townhouse, a private residence currently under construction in the town of New Canaan that attempts to continue the innovative design tradition of the Harvard Five and reframe the modernist/post-modernist, high culture/low-culture dialogue and debate in the post-ideological landscape of the twenty-first century.

Lecture or no, the Aldrich is a fine destination for an autumn weekend.

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
258 Main Street, Ridgefield, CT 06877
203.438.4519 www.aldrichart.org