sold!

A round house in Phoenix, Arizona, built by legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright, sold for $2.38 million in late December 2012, saving it from demolition.  One of the architect’s later works, the historic 1952 structure prefigures the circular design of the Guggenheim Museum.

The house was almost lost. A development company, 8081 Meridien, bought the property for $1.8 million in June 2012, planning to subdivide the land, demolish the house, and replace it with two luxury homes. Interviewed by the New York Times a few months later, one of the firm’s two principals admitted that he had no idea of the structure’s significance, or even of the difference “between Frank Lloyd Wright and the Wright brothers.”

organic architecture in ohio

The Orcutt House, on sale in Worthington, Ohio, consists of two intersecting circles, one forming the body of the house and the other forming a smaller kitchen area.  Designed by architect Theodore van Fossen in 1958, it is a single story structure on a 0.7 acre lot.

The house is part of a residential community called Rush Creek Village, inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s principles of organic architecture. Made up of 49 single-family houses linked by a system of curvilinear streets, the neighborhood and each of its homes were designed by van Fossen, who had worked for Wright on construction projects in the late 1930s in Indiana.

an affinity for curves

With the death of Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer on December 5, the world has lost one of the leading proponents of curved, rounded, wavy and spiraling forms. A modernist innovator, Niemeyer, who began working in the late 1930s, eschewed the straight lines and boxy shapes that had characterized modernism up to that time.

“Right angles don’t attract me. Nor straight, hard and inflexible lines created by man,” explained Niemeyer in The Curves of Time, his 1998 memoir. “What attracts me are free and sensual curves. The curves we find in mountains, in the waves of the sea, in the body of the woman we love.”

reprieve for frank lloyd wright round house

A deal was signed last week by the developer who owns the 1952 Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house in Phoenix, and the city of Phoenix, which delays the demolition of the house for at least a month.

The developer, 8081 Meridian, contends that the city issued a valid demolition permit that would allow the house to be torn down.  Having bought the house in June 2012 for $1.8 million, he has reportedly turned down a cash offer of more than $2 million from a prospective buyer looking to save the historic structure.

“It is probably the most important residential design of the last decade of his career,” said Janet Halstead, the  executive director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. “Many architecture experts consider it among the 20 most important Frank Lloyd Wright designs ever built.”

The search for a buyer who can satisfy the developer’s financial demands continues.

circular frank lloyd wright house in peril

Developers are threatening a historic round house in Arcadia, Arizona, designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.  Built for Wright’s son David in 1950-1952, the house is made of curved concrete blocks, and is accessed via a spiral ramp reminiscent of NYC’s Guggenheim Museum -

8081 Meridian, a development company that builds “Highly Livable Luxury Homes,” bought the property in early 2012 for $1.8 million. The company has filed plans with the city to divide the 2-acre property, a possible first step toward demolition.  In an interview with the Arizona Republic, managing partner John Hoffman reportedly said that “it’s not a given that the house can be preserved.”

After negotiations with the city and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, Hoffman said in mid-July that his company has put its plans on hold for 60 days while seeking a compromise solution to save the house. The waiting period ends on August 21.

radius house

Closer to a half-circle than a circle, the Radius House, built in 1958, was designed by architect Daniel J. Liebermann.  An apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West, Liebermann was only 28 years old when he built the house for himself and his wife.

The house was built of salvaged brick, exposed beams of Douglas fir reclaimed from a bridge in Ukiah, and skylights obtained from WWII bombers. A 2010 renovation led by Vivian Dwyer of Dwyer Design opened up the interior, updated the wiring and appliances, and added modern elements.

a 1940s housing bubble

Wallace Neff, a Southern California architect who made Spanish-style mansions for Hollywood stars in the ’30s and ’40s, also tried his hand at designing innovative, low-cost housing for the poor.  His Airform houses, often called bubble houses, were inexpensive and easy to build -

Meant to remedy 1940s housing shortages, the houses never caught on in the United States.  Only a few hundred of them were built here, rather than the thousands that Neff expected, and nearly all have since been torn down.

une petite maison ronde

Le Chasseur Français, a French hunting magazine, ran an article on round houses in December 1950.

The author, architect Gérard Tissoire, described a small round house, presumably of his own design, in exhaustive detail, from the entryway to the windows to the bedrooms to the closets.  He responded first to the claim that such a house was impractical -

Good people will say, “A round house isn’t ‘livable.’  How are you supposed to arrange furniture when you have round walls?” These good people forget that round houses are divided up by walls and partitions that form flat surfaces; that in general the rooms will be in a nice fan shape, with windows in an arc toward the view; that where necessary a cupboard can conveniently and usefully correct an irregularity, and that one can even, exceptionally, build furniture with cylindrical backs.

mid-century modernism in a civil rights suburb

Pioneering African-American architect Joseph W. Robinson designed this modernist round house in 1956, at a time when architecture as a profession was largely closed to black Americans -

The house is located in the iconic African-American neighborhood of Collier Heights, built to house the cream of black, middle-class Atlanta.  Residents like the Reverend Ralph Abernathy and attorney Donald B. Hollowell organized civil rights protests, led get-out-the-vote efforts, and changed the world for the better.

“Collier Heights was built by blacks for blacks and financed by blacks,” said Juanita Abernathy, Reverend Abernathy’s widow.

Collier Heights has since been added to the National Register of Historic Places. During African-American History Month, the National Register of Historic Places is highlighting some of the historic properties that exemplify African-American achievement.

 

tomorrow’s life today

That’s how Life magazine described this 1957 modernist showpiece, designed by architect Cecil Alexander, who studied under Bauhaus masters Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius at Harvard in the 1940s -

Located in Atlanta’s wealthy Buckhead neighborhood, the house was falling apart when Theodore and Susan Pound bought it in 2005.  They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars restoring it, relying, in part, on blueprints and advice from the original architect.

“You seem so normal to us, you don’t seem like a contrarian,” Mr. Pound told [Cecil Alexander] recently. “But this house is such a basically nonconformist idea. It’s still something of a mystery to me: why is it round?”

Mr. Alexander, a jovial raconteur with a razor-sharp memory, has an explanation for everything. “My first plans were L’s or squares or rectangles,” he told the Pounds. “But then I realized those shapes waste so much space — a circle is compact, it gives you the maximum interior room for the minimum amount of exposed wall.”

The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in March 2010. The registration form explains that Alexander built the house for his family’s use, and that the circular plan ensured that the family would get together at least once or twice a day. As he told Progressive Architecture in a 1959 interview, “lt was our conception that the family should feet itself a unit — thus, the circular plan …. The central covered and sky-lighted court has constituted a constant place of meeting.”