Icons: The Breuers

Marcel Breuer and son Thomas, lost in a game of chess.  Wife Constance relaxes with the family dog in the background.  Breuer Cottage, Wellfleet, Massachusetts, 1950.  Photo by Walter Sanders / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images.

Part of a series of photos I will be posting (via Knoll) leading up to Fathers Day, which takes a more intimate look at the life of these design icons.


Also, if you happen to be in New York this Thursday June 13th, don't miss the grand opening of Knoll's first ever retail showroom, Knoll Home Design Shop, at 1330 Avenue of the Americas (at 54th Street).  Richard Schultz will be present and signing every Petal end table sold.

Special thanks to Elizabeth Mallory and Sarah McLellan.

Daily Dose: Sainte Marie de La Tourette, by Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis

Incredible capture by architectural photographer Åke E:son Lindman.

Via the modernlove tumblr.

Classic Spaces: 1962: Gunnar Birkerts: Schwartz's Residence

Rare views of Gunnar Birkert's lost masterpiece Schwartz's Residence, which was located in the middle of an apple-orchard in Michigan.  One of my favorite features is a simple but beautiful sunken fireplace alcove.  The furnishings were a treasure trove of modernism, including works by Paul McCobb, Poul Kjaerholm, Eero Saarinen, and Arne Jacobsen.

From an essay by Martin Schwartz:

Birkerts’ Schwartz Residence,3 built in Northville, Michigan in 1960, admits light from three sides into the living room. The three walls of glazing in this room provide the additional pleasures of a continuous visual panorama and a strong connection with the landscape. This may be considered to be a variation on the idea of the courtyard in which one feels protected by a surrounding wall while connected to the sky above, the source of light. In this house however, the enclosure and flow of open space are reversed. With a roof overhead and an open perimeter, the daylight streaming in from the sides introduces less light than would be available from the sky, but the feeling of being “inside” a defined room and protected is maintained while the connection with the adjacent landscape is strengthened.

At the Schwartz Residence, light admitted around the living room was further balanced with light drawn into the center of the house through a skylight at the central core. Light pours in at the center, just where we would expect to see the greatest solidity and the least light; it pleases us additionally because it is a

surprise. The glazed perimeter and skylighted center enhance the impression that the roof plane floats, both establishing and challenging the sense of enclosure. The skylight is directly above a white wall surface, which receives the daylight and bounces it into the living room. The narrowness of the room makes it easy to balance the illumination; nevertheless, Birkerts successfully adapted this pattern to his later, larger commissions where this technique was particularly welcome.

The home was demolished in 1986.

Via my instagram, follow me!

 

Watch: Leslie Williamson's Handcrafted Modern Europe: At Home with MidCentury Designers

Help Leslie make this book a reality! Handcrafted Modern Europe will feature an intimate look inside the homes of thirteen of the most important mid-twentieth century architects and designers in Europe, including Alvar and Aino Aalto, Bruno Mathsson, Finn Juhl, Carlo Mollino, and more.

Visit here for all the project details, and please share this post!

Classic Spaces: Miller House

Exterior detail of the Eero Saarinen/Alexander Girard/Dan Kiley masterpiece, Miller House, as captured by the late great photographer Balthazar Korab. See my earlier full feature on the Miller House and Garden here.

Classic Spaces: A collection of 1971 interiors by Robert Harling

A few photos from Robert Harling's 1971 Modern Furniture and Decoration, featuring a wealth of 20th Century design classics, including Kjaerholm, Panton, Castiglioni, and Sarfatti. It's really amazing how timeless these interiors are, and how current this jacket description is:  

"The contemporary revolution in interior design has a very tolerant philosophy. It accepts with delight unusual combinations of periods, motifs, products, colors, notions. An eighteenth-century commode, an Art Nouveau lampshade, a rare Benin head, a mass-produced poster—any one of these is equally likely to be placed in a room alongside a Breuer tubular chair, an Italian lamp, or a Saarinen table. Present-day designer-decorators see the whole world as a quarry from which to carry away their material. They can now choose natural wool from merino or vicuna, or synthetic fibers from the chemical engineer; steel from the mills or metallic paints; glass from the floater or blower or clear plastic from the molder. Their new ideas will appeal to the young in heart, if not in years, and give rise to a new tradition based on ingenuity and imagination. 

The rooms shown here, assembled and described by Robert Harling, Editor of House & Garden (London), come from many countries and serve many purposes. They range from one-room apartments furnished with plastic inflatable sofas to multi-purpose living-areas featuring Le Corbusier's steely reinterpretation of the traditional chaise longue. But all of them have one very important thing in common: they are rooms marked "Personal". 

Thanks to pdxmod for the scans.

Watch: Classic Spaces: Jens Risom's Weekend Home: Block Island

A couple of years ago I had posted a few archived photos of Jens Risom's prefab weekend retreat, from a 1967 Life magazine feature. Skeptics expected it to only stand a year before being blown down by winds. It was a nice surprise to learn that not only does the structure still stand, it is still being used by Jens Risom and his family today.

In this beautiful short film from Dwell, Risom reminisces on the construction of this truly amazing home.


 

Another Perspective: TripAdvisor reviews of Gio Ponti's Hotel Parco dei Principi

As the saying goes: one man's trash is another man's treasure.

See my feature on this Gio Ponti masterpiece (well... in my opinion at least) here.

Icons: Domus pays tribute to Gae Aulenti

It is truly something special when one icon pays tribute to another. In this case, Gio Ponti's Domus pays a loving tribute to the late Gae Aulenti, one of Italy's most influential architects and designers of the past century:

From the many times her work graced the pages of Domus, we've chosen to republish two projects Aulenti designed for Olivetti in the 1960s. Beyond the virtuous association of the names Aulenti-Olivetti, the pieces republished today are especially enriched by a vivid photographic survey, where the interiors in Paris and Buenos Aires reveal a smiling, charming Gae Aulenti, exactly how we wish to remember her.

The article "The new Olivetti show-room in Paris" was originally published in Domus 452 / July 1967
The article "The new Olivetti shop in Buenos Aires" was originally published in Domus 466 / September 1968

My favorite feature is the design of the door handles in the Buenos Aires showroom. Each handle is a sculpted brass hemisphere, and when the doors close, the sphere completes.

See the full story with the project details here.

Daily Dose: Ready for winter: Noyes House, 1955

Eliot Noyes' courtyard with Alexander Calder sculpture, as captured through the lens of George Silk for Life Magazine.

Via the Modern Love Tumblr.

Watch: Maria Pergay: Place des Vosges

A conversation with the incredible Maria Pergay, the Parisian designer whose stainless steel and brass furniture defined the ultimate in 1970's French chic.

From Nowness:

From a 17th-century perch on the re-glamorized Place des Vosges in Paris, hip-again furniture designer Maria Pergay briefs filmmaker Pamela Hanson on why her seductive 70s metal minimalism feels so at home on the parquet. Pergay, who occupies a rarefied niche between interiors and contemporary art, began as a window dresser for couturiers and has designed limited-edition furniture and commissioned decor since the 60s. Both her new and early pieces remain in demand, and she is being recognized this year with a Légion d’honneur. To celebrate the 55th anniversary of her career, Pergay co-organized a retrospective in the French capital with galleries Demisch Danant (New York) and JGM (Paris), where she arranged a sampling of work from the past five decades into one living environment. The sculptural cabinets, seats and side tables reveal the designer's ability to revitalize traditional boiserie with highly polished metalwork that folds back like the exquisite leaves of a “jardin sécret.” Turning her camera towards the decorative details of the showroom, Hanson flips us through a catalog of Pergay’s most recent collection, while the artist shares what inspires her with gallerist Suzanne Demisch.

Via Demisch Danant's facebook.

chandigarh - portrait of a city: le corbusier + pierre jeanneret

A fascinating modern day look at the Indian city of Chandigarh, through the lens of Paris-based photographer Manuel Bougot.  Chandigarh was India's first planned city post independence in 1947. The first Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, commissioned Swiss architect and urban planner Le Corbusier to design Chandigarh, to reflect the new nation's modern, progressive outlook.

From superfuture:

opening today [7pm] at photoink gallery is a solo exhibition by paris-based photographer manuel bougot as part of the gallery's architectural photography program. called chandigarh - portrait of a city, the show features a fantastic series of photographs of le corbusier's often neglected utopian structures in the northern indian city of chandigarh. bougot’s interest in le corbusier’s architecture began in the 1980s when he worked on french art historian's caroline maniaque’s architecture thesis on the master's jaoul houses built in 1954 in neuilly-sur-seine, france. more than a decade later bougot renewed his interest in le corbusier, attending talks on his chandigarh project and photographed the only building the architect ever built for himself: a summer cabin in the french riviera. now completely mesmerized, going to india to photograph chandigarh was necessary to fully understand le corbusier's dynamic vision. what makes this exhibition even more appealing is the fact that bougot has not only merely documented impressive architecture, but also buildings as quite literally a context of people's lives. this has resulted in a highly nuanced and refreshingly different view of chandigarh today [on through oct 27]. location: mgf hyundai building, 1 faiz road, ground floor [jhandewalan].

From top to bottom: Neelam Cinema, Legislative Assembly, Private Villa, High Court - Le Corbusier + Pierre Jeanneret.

Icons/Creative Spaces: Irving Harper at Home: by Herman Miller

From Herman Miller's wonderful Why Design series, Irving Harper (formerly of George Nelson Associates) explains his passion for paper sculpting.

Watch: House of Finn Juhl

House of Finn Juhl from Thorsten Dreijer on Vimeo.

A great video tour through the home of the legendary Finn Juhl.

For some great photos and a background on the history this house, be sure to see my previous post: Finn Juhl's House.

Watch: Classic Spaces: La Maison de Jean Prouvé

Watch this great short film on documenting the story of Jean Prouvé and his house.

Classic Spaces: Mies van der Rohe: Toronto Dominion Centre

Located in the heart of Toronto’s financial district, the Toronto Dominion Centre symbolized Toronto’s emergence as a major city and established a new standard for office buildings in Canada. The Centre launched in 1967 with the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe with B+H as Architect of Record in Joint Venture with John B. Parkin and Associates. 

The original TD Centre consisted of two skyscrapers plus the banking hall. The first phase to open was the TD Tower, which was symbolically dedicated on Canada’s 100th birthday, 1 July 1967.

At 56 stories and a height of 222.86 metres, the TD Tower is the tallest Mies structure in the world (Philip Johnson called the entire complex “the largest Mies in the world”).

It was Mies’s last major work before his death in 1969.  

Note all the slick black aluminum signage with white custom font, as originally designed mandated by Mies.

Text and photos via B+H Architects, Pema Hegan, vancouverlights, wikipedia, and designkultr.