Midcentury houses today : New Canaan, Connecticut

by Lorenzo Ottaviani, Jeffrey Matz, Cristina A. Ross

This is the story of American modernism that has not been told in full before. Midcentury Modern Houses takes on the unparalled concentration of residential modernism in New Canaan, Connecticut, and demonstrates how the houses are experienced and lived in today. Architects Philip Johnson, Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, Eliot Noyes, Edward Durell Stone, and others created an extraordinary collection of modern houses in New Canaan, Connecticut, in the 1940s and 1950s. The bucolic New England town - a suburb of Manhattan - became the site of fervent experimentation by some of the leading lights of the movement in the United States, the architects known as the Harvard Five, whose modern aesthetic could be traced to the Bauhaus school of design. There they promoted their core simplicity, openness, and sensitivity to site and nature, and built glass, wood, steel, and fieldstone houses that established architectural modernism as the ideal of domesticity in the twentieth century. Architects Jeffrey Matz and Cristina A. Ross, photographer Michael Biondo, and graphic designer Lorenzo Ottaviani present this vanishing generation of iconic American houses as more than an issue of restoration or preservation, but as an evolving legacy that adapts to contemporary life. Selecting a representative group of sixteen houses covering the period between the 1950s and 1978, they portray each one in great detail, with floor plans, timelines, and both archival and luminous new photography - from the clean, minimalist look of the initial construction, to subsequent additions by some of the most significant architects of our time including Toshiko Mori, Roger Ferris, and Joeb Moore. Voices of the architects and builders, original owners and current occupants combine to describe how the houses are enjoyed and lived in today, and how the modernist residence is more than just a philosophy of design and construction, but also a philosophy of living.

Genres: Architecture, Art

240 pages, Hardcover

First published October 21, 2014

Reviews

[Mike Violano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Discovered this book by accident and glad I did. The book features 16 midcentury modern houses concentrated in New Canaan, Connecticut all designed by noted architects Phillip Johnson (of the Glass House) Marcel Breuer, Eliot Noyes (curator of design at MOMA), Landis Gores, and John Johnson-- collectively known as the Harvard Five and colleagues from the Harvard School of Architecture.
The houses designed and built from 1947-1962 owe more to the Bauhaus School of design than to Frank Lloyd Wright's modern style.
All the original houses are modest-- about 2,000 square feet-- and later renovated and in many cases expanded. The photographs and floor plans from the original structures are paired with floor plans and furnishings of the current owners. Each house is an fascinating visit to the past with embellishments and conveniences of the 21st century.
Very enjoyable and well worth a visit on the page or in New Canaan.

[Mary Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hoping for more variety. It was only Connecticut. But very well-done. Fabulous for serious architecture buffs.