ann kent

Invitation To Spend A Weekend At Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater

 

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright?  Unless you were well connected, you likely never had the opportunity, like me.  Well, now, if you are fortunate enough in this economy to have a spare $1200, you too can spend a weekend at FLW's Fallingwater near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvannia and perhaps even dine with a luminary from the architecture world.  See this article for details!

How To Decorate A Modern House, Ranch Or Split Level.

If you read some of my earlier posts (e.g. this one about Amy Butler's home) you know that I grew up in a modern ranch home built in the sixties.  Once I struck out on my own, however, my taste manifested itself in colonial design.  I wanted all of those Palliadian references - symmetry; decorative molding; high ceilings; and tall, arched windows.  Nevertheless, I recently arrived at a new appreciation for modern design in residential dwellings and have a burgeoning respect for my parents design choices back when I was a child. My new appreciation has been fueled in the last year by my visit to New Canaan, Connecticut to participate in the 2009 Modern House Tour where I met Toshiko Mori who spoke about modern design.

With my new near obsession with 1960s residential design, I often find myself thinking about how I would decorate a modern home or even my parents' 1960s ranch if I had the opportunity.  I peruse new modern design magazines and blogs that showcase modern interior design.  I see many homes faithfully following the 60s design ethic and owners even purchasing accouturements from the 60s on E-bay or Craigslist. 

Yet, I find something wanting in those interiors.  I find that I am missing a lightness, modern color schemes, and a reference to the past.  I crave white interiors to maintain a bright, clean ambience.  I find the color schemes of brown, orange, and mustard brought forward from the 60s to todays interiors to be saddening.  Rather, I love pops of modern, bright colors against a neutral background.  And I continue to have a passion for eclecticism - perhaps a modern interior with an antique or two to mix it up and make it real. 

In any event, if you have a modern residence and are presently updating and sprucing it up, my recommendation would be to start with white walls, paper a wall or two with an interesting design, and use bright color in strategic places.  Fill your home with modern furniture and light fixtures but mix it  up with tasteful antiques.  The classic lines of the antiques will provide a savvy guest with contrast that will emphasize your fine modern lines.  So, try not to copy the 60s design aesthetic; strike out and create something unique, something of today, something clean and fresh.  The results will make you happy!

Images via Sixx Design (1,2,7,8); Brocade Home (3,4); Chic Sensibility (5)  Serena & Lily (6); Christina Lundsteen (9); Decorology  (10, 12, 13); Anthropologie  (11).

Modern House No. 4

I am coveting this house in Chicago right now, not because it was the filming location of Ferris Bueller's Day Off but because of the trees, the clean modern lines, the glass walls and ... it is offered at a mere $2.3 million.  A girl can dream, right?

 

 

  

  

If you are interested in living my dream, here is the Sothebys listing and the related NYT article.

John Johansen's Villa Ponte/Bridge House/Warner House

I had the pleasure of touring the Bridge House on Saturday in New Canaan, Connecticut.  The house was designed by one of the Harvard Five (see this post), John Johansen, in 1956.   Villa Ponte, as it is also known, is noteworthy for it's location (built over a river in a hilly, wooded area) and it's "Palladian ideal" floorplan, essentially a bridge with three arches at the center, with similar square rooms at each corner.  Although Johansen designed modern structures, he appreciated the aesthetic of the classic architecture of Palladio and incorporated many of those elements into his work. 

After leaving Harvard, Johansen worked for Marcel Breuer and later, the National Housing Agency in Washinton, D.C.  Next, he joined Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill in New York and in 1948 he opened  his own practice in New Canaan. Johansen was also an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Architecture.

My impression of the house was that Johansen had successfully "brought the outside in."  When inside, the river, the trees and the sky are visible at nearly every angle thereby giving one a feeling of lightness, calm and serenity.  The structure was well preserved and solid, perhaps built with high quality materials.  It would be interesting to view the house at night and to see the effect of the exterior lighting as well. 

The Bridge house is one of the few moderns built by the Harvard Five that has remained in the hands of the original owners, the Warner Family.  It only recently changed hands and is now owned by the propietor of an art gallery, a man with artistic sensibilities who no doubt will preserve Johansen's design legacy while imprinting the residence with his own style.  Images via the historical home blog.

The Twilight House

I am hopelessly un-hip as far as the Twilight series.  I have not read any of the books; however, a few weeks ago, I found myself at the movie.  I must say that the movie was entertaining.  There was a certain eerie sense to the film that was artfully created with the actors, settings, camera, costumes, and make-up.  I enjoyed the film and appreciated the creativity involved in making it.

Yet, the element in the movie that I left most intrigued by was the modern home inhabited by the Cullen family.  The home was breathtaking in every way.  The lines were perfect with many large panes of glass placed throughout.   The use of the glass brought the surrounding forest into the home and I had the sense that while in the home, one might feel as if one were living with the trees.  The furnishings were thoroughly modern, minimal and artistic.  The home conveyed serenity, quiet and calm.  I wonder if Frank Lloyd Wright would have appreciated the design as it was portrayed in the movie.   I was fascinated.  I later learned from the designtavern blog that the house is actually the Hoke house, owned by a Nike design executive (of course), and located in (I think) Portland, Oregon.  Very nice.

  

The Ice Storm and the November, 1998 Issue of House Beautiful

I had an unusual day last Sunday.  In fact, I would say that it was mired in serendipity.  Sunday in the Northeast was cold, rainy and overcast, not a very pleasant day.  I had a few free hours and so I decided to finally watch The Ice Storm with Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Allen, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci and a very young Katie Holmes.  Although the movie debuted long ago, in 1998, I was intrigued when I found it on a list of novels/movies about suburban angst (research prompted after reading Revolutionary Road).      

Before renting the movie, I vaguely recalled that I may have seen it; however, after watching a clip online I became quickly interested again when I saw that the movie took place in the 1970s and was filmed in several modern (think Phillip Johnson's The Glass House) houses nestled in the Connecticut woods (New Canaan). 

Although I thoroughly enjoyed viewing the lines and minimalist decor of the modern houses in the film, I must say that I rather prefer our present interpretation of modern decor (e.g., see Amy Butler's home via this prior post of mine).  As I am over 40, I also appreciated Ang Lee's (the director) references to that era: the long dresses, the cars, the ponchos, the hair, etc.  In fact, Sigourney Weaver's character looked quite smart and modern in her 60s wardrobe.  Nonetheless, the actual plot of the movie was rather disturbing as all of the four family members who were the focus of the movie teetered on the edge of moral corruption and I won't tell you where they fell at the end of the movie.  All in all, I found the film to be entertaining in that it was complex, suspenseful, and the setting as well as the era were interesting to one obsessed with design. 

After the film, I found myself wanting to browse a new issue of Blueprint or Domino; however, alas, that was not to be for obvious reasons.  So, I perused my stash of design magazines and chose one of my earliest issues of House Beautiful, November, 1998. I was pleasantly surprised.  First, I found an article about Frank Lloyd Wright who I have always been somewhat fascinated by and even more so now after reading Loving Frank and The Women, both about the women in his life.  The article was a good read and I made a mental note to rent the Wright documentary discussed.  

Then, remarkably, I found a most interesting article about the Harvard Five  (Marcel Breuer, Phillip Johnson, Landis Gores, John Johansen, and Eliot Noyes), the five modern architects who met and studied at Harvard's School of Design and who made (in the 50s and 60s) New Canaan, CT a bastion of modernism when they designed their own and many other homes in the area.  Phillip Johnson's The Glass House and others still stand there today.  I so enjoyed reading about that area and the legacy of those five modern architects.  I just may be a little obsessed because I actually grew up in a modern house although not in New Canaan, CT but in Buffalo, New York (see this post  again). 

In any event, my fascination with that article led me to google the Harvard Five and that is when I discovered a new blog, modernhousenotes.  I probably spent hours on Sunday evening reading this blog by a couple who reside in a modern home in New Canaan.  They offer inside information on the condition of modern houses not just in New Canaan but elsewhere in the United States; the modern houses on the market in New Canaan; and other little interesting tidbits concerning the original modern movement in the United States.  In fact, there is even a post about Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin D. Martin House in Buffalo, New York where I grew up.  And so, my path on Sunday was all connected, yielded much enjoyment and led to the discovery of new avenues of interest.  For example, I am now determined to travel to New Canaan to finally view The Glass House.

PS  The old issue of House Beautiful that offered these gem articles also contained articles about two of my favorite designers, Thomas O'Brien and Mariette Himes Gomez (see pictures of her lovely barn complex on Long Island) as well as a view into a favorite Vanity Fair editor's home, Amy Fine Collins.  So happy E-bay hunting, this issue was fabulous!

   

   

Images:  Study and young girl's room from apartment of Amy Fine Collins; bedrooms from Long Island barn of Mariette Himes Gomez' Long Island barn, living room of Thomas O'Brien (Manhatten apartment), House Beautiful, November, 1998.

I Am Intrigued By Horizontal Lines

This past year, Blueprint (oh, how I miss Blueprint) featured the ranch home of Amy Butler located in Granville, Ohio.  The house was designed by George J. Stegmiller and built in 1969.  As I read the article and admired the pictures, I remember being intrigued by the layout for several reasons.  First, I am a total Amy Butler fan and very much adore her fabric.  I loved seeing how she used her fabrics to furnish her home.  What really struck me, however, was how similar the lines were in her home to the ranch in Buffalo, New York that was my home from the age of 11 to 18, when I left for college.   Of course, our family home was not as large as Amy's but the lines were the same. 

The family room wall that faced our picturesque yard (my parents always said that the yard was the most important selling point!) was constructed entirely of glass.  The wall was comprised of three large panes of glass from the ceiling almost to the floor quite similar to the windows found in Amy's house.  In our home, there were little separate windows in the bottom fifth of the wall, below the panes of glass, that opened with a crank; I imagine, to let the fresh air in.  In the first picture of Amy's family room, one sees a little rectangular window along the side wall, a bit higher up than usual.  The windows in our bedrooms were identical. 

Our family room also had a vaulted ceiling which gave height to the little house and a grey stone fireplace.  The ceiling had a few rough-hewn beams painted brown to add horizontal lines even in the vaulted ceiling.  The walls of the kitchen did not reach to the ceiling.  Rather they stopped 7/8ths of the way up.  I never understood the broken walls but now I do.  The broken wall created another horizontal line.  The cupboards in the kitchen were all about line.  There was no hardware on the doors to interfere with the clean and unobstructed surface of the wood.   The design was minimalist.

And so, after I read the article, I had a new appreciation for my childhood home and in fact, could imagine re-decorating and updating the furnishings creating a more eclectic feel with some pieces more reminiscent of the 1960s when the house was built.  Now, I find it interesting to look at the heralded examples of modern architecture from past days and to compare them to the ranch architecture from the 1960s and 1970s.  One can see the derived design.  That is fascinating.

 

Fallingwater (south of Pittsburgh, PA):  Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, commissioned by Edgar Kaufmann, and built in 1935.

The lines of Fallingwater are all about the horizontal, even the brick under the staircase.  I toured this house years ago.  It was impressive.  If you are near Pittsburgh, you should go.  This house is one our country's architectural gems. 

As a side note, I recently discovered that my favorite book, The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand was inspired by Wright's Fallingwater.  And ... I also discovered that the same man that commissioned Fallingwater also commissioned the famed Kaufmann House. 

The Kaufmann House (Palm Springs, CA), photographed by Slim Aarons:  Designed by Richard Neutra, built in 1946, commissioned by Edgar J. Kaufmann. 

As our culture becomes more environmentally aware, maybe these modern designs will become more relevant today and we will begin to eschew the McMansions of our time for these smaller, cleaner, more refined designs. 

The Kaufmann House in the JCrew Catalog. 

"As an architect, my life has been governed by the goal of building environmental harmony, functional efficiency, and human enhancement into the experience of everyday living.  These things go together, constituting the cause of architecture, and a life devoted to their realizaiton cannot be an easy one." Richard Neutra, from William Martin, ed. Nature Near: late essays of Richard Neutra, p.1-2. 

And, of course, there is Phillip Johnson's The Glass House built in 1949. Now that I look back upon my childhood home with a more educated eye, the wall of glass and other features were thoroughly modern. With the perspective of age and the knowledge of structures like those pictured beside and above, I find that I appreciate my childhood home more and I believe I know now what charms the house had for my parents in the early 1970s when it was purchased. The little ranch house possesses features that were directly derived from the important modern architecture of the day.