house of the future

Famous for his iconic Egg chair, Danish architect Arne Jacobsen designed furniture, plumbing fixtures, lamps, speakers, door handles, flatware and other objects, as well as dozens of houses. His architectural resume includes not only banks, embassies and concert halls, but also, from 1955, a sausage stand.

Together with Flemming Lassen, Jacobsen designed a round house called the House of the Future in 1927, at the beginning of his career -

A flat-roofed glass and concrete structure, the House of the Future was fitted with a helipad, boathouse, and garage, as well as “windows that rolled down like car windows, a doormat that would automatically vacuum-clean visitor’s shoes, a conveyor tube for receiving mail and a kitchen stocked with ready-made meals.” It epitomized modern life, or rather a fantasy of what modern life would be. Having won the architectural competition for which it was designed, the structure was erected, in temporary form, for a 1929 exhibition in Copenhagen.

Jacobsen’s love for rounded and curved forms was evidenced in many of his other designs, like chairs in organic shapes, with playful names like the Tongue, the Ant and the Swan. In 1957, he designed a round house for smokehouse owner Leo Henriksen, in Sjællands Odde, Denmark.

Not only does the house still stand today, many of Jacobsen’s product designs are still being made.

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.”

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.

casa colunata

A new house in Lagos, Portugal, combines angularity with circularity -

Designed by architect Mario Martins, the all-white structure is made of local materials and faces the sea.

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 the architect told Progressive Architecture in a 1959 interview, “lt was our conception that the family should feel itself a unit — thus, the circular plan …. The central covered and sky-lighted court has constituted a constant place of meeting.”

o house

Not a circular house but a house with circles -

Located in Vierwaldstättersee, Switzerland, the house was designed by Philippe Stuebi Architekten with Eberhard Tröger.  Construction was completed in 2007.