WHAT IS MID-CENTURY DESIGN
Mid-Century Modern is an architectural, interior, product and graphic design aesthetic that is characterized by simplicity, openness, and sensitivity to site and nature. Its origins are traced directly from the celebrated German Bauhaus School.
Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius began his ascent to leadership in the modern movement with his 1911 design for a shoe factory. Gropius designed the building on a steel skeleton and included an unusual quantity of glass, creating an open, airy feeling. That innovative design brought him the commissions he needed, and his success was a major factor in the rise of avant garde Modernist ideals.
Gropius believed creativity could be applied in any area, and parlayed his success as an architect into commissions to design everything from furniture to a sleeping car for the German railway, and even a diesel locomotive. The arc of Mid-Century design eventually encompassed the fields of fine art, furniture, lighting, ceramics, advertising, automobiles, and clothing. The Bauhaus led the modern movement in Europe and then transplanted its roots in the New World when the school was closed down by the Nazi regime (the anti-Classical ideals of the Bauhaus were considered “decadent” by the Nazis).Gropius brought his genius to America, as did his protégé, Marcel Breuer.
On the East Coast, Breuer and four of his students at Harvard (Philip Johnson, Landis Gores, Eliot Noyes, and John Johansen) were hugely influential, and were dubbed “The Harvard Five.”
These five built glass, wood, steel, and fieldstone houses in the rural area around New Canaan, Connecticut during the period from the late 1940s to the late 1960s. Their work was a shock to the local system, totally unlike the staid clapboard New England colonials that were the norm. The quiet little town saw an influx of gawkers and “house tour” participants, and the bold new designs were vilified by locals with descriptions such as “an architecture as gracious as Sunoco service stations,” “cracker boxes,” and “packing boxes.” One unhappy neighbor penned this little verse….
“They’re lousing up the countryside with buildings most alarming,
It isn’t like New Canaan, where everything’s been charming.”
Pure Mid-century home design eventually took a back seat to the “modern” mutations of 1970s suburban tracts, and then to the “McMansions” of the 1980s and later. But in more recent years, it has had a roaring comeback.
Some of that surge of interest can probably be attributed to Baby Boomers who have become nostalgic for their childhood environment. However, the Mid-Century cachet seems to be even more attractive to the fast-paced, tech-savvy young people who are now in the process of building, renovating, and buying all the accoutrements associated with home design. The return to favor of the ideals expressed in Mid-Century architecture has brought on a wave of skyrocketing prices for the furnishings and art that were languishing in second-hand shops and attics for years.
Here are a few examples of striking, well-known mid-century homes designed by some of the architects who became “stars” of the period . . .
Glass House: The revolutionary Glass House, New Canaan, CT was designed in 1949 by architect Philip Johnson as his own residence. Interior space is divided by low walnut cabinets and a brick cylinder that contains the bathroom. Glass House is set in a beautiful open landscape.
VDL Studio and Residence: Architect Richard Neutra originally designed a 1933 research house in Silver Lake, Calif., and named it after his benefactor, Dr. C.H. Van Der Leeuw. After a fire destroyed the original structure, Neutra rebuilt in 1966, calling the updated abode VDL House II.
Farnsworth House: Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, this 1951 house in Plano, Ill., is known for its transparency and simplicity.
Stahl House – Case Study House 22: This spectacular 1960 glass house seems to float above Los Angeles in the Hollywood Hills, was designed by Pierre Koenig.
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S USONIA HOUSE
Much of Frank Lloyd Wright’s genius lay in his ability to be a fearless innovator. His idea of building decentralized, affordable communities in harmony with nature eventually led to his design of the “Usonian” house. There are a number of these houses throughout America, and Westchester County’s Pleasantville is home to an entire community called “Usonia.” Designed and planned by Wright in the late 1940s, the 47-plot site stands as a testament to his belief in “organic” community living. About sixty per cent of the property is forest and meadowland. Wright’s love of the natural was present in all of his work, and he once said that “nature is the only body of God we shall ever see.”
Wright coined the name Usonia as a sort of acronym for “United States of North America,” a tribute to the American way of life and his desire to interpret it for the modern world. He designed large beautiful homes for some wealthy clients, but his fond dream was to allow America’s middle class families to have simple homes of great beauty and style that would offer them a connection to the natural world in their everyday lives.
He short-circuited many building costs to create affordability. Usonian homes were designed to be built on flat slabs (no basement digging required) fitted with radiant heat. The plan followed a compact L-shape with two wings. Wright cut out layers of materials that were in general use….lathe, plaster, paint, wallpaper…. and used wood, concrete and brick in their natural state. He designed built-in furniture, storage and lighting. Wright originated the use of the “carport” to eliminate the cost of building a garage. Usonian houses are sited to make the best use of the particular landscape, and are built largely from materials native to the geographic area.
Wright designed three of the homes at Usonia himself, and the others were designed by architects who followed his style and sensibility. They include Paul Schweikher, Theodore Dixon Bower, Ulrich Franzen, Kaneji Domoto, Aaron Resnick and David Henken (an engineer and Wright apprentice).Until very recent years, these homes rarely changed hands, and original owners would often add to them rather than leave them.
Ironically, Wright’s fame and lasting style and the high cost of housing in Westchester have increased the value of these homes to a level that makes them unattainable for the middle-class buyer. However, his impact on the American mid-century influenced the development of open-flow ranch style homes and even of the attractive pre-fabricated homes marketed today.
The challenges of preserving Midcentury Modern homes
By Katherine Salant The Washington Post, October 5, 2012
When it comes to historic preservation, every generation is dismissive of buildings from the recent past in favor of those that go further back in time.
As Rice University architectural historian Stephen Fox put it, “Each generation has its own ignorance of recent stuff.”
In the early 20th century, preservationists referred to the Victorian era as “the dark ages” and eschewed its buildings for colonial and federalist-styled ones that predated them, Fox said. Twenty-five years later in the 1950s and 1960s, the preservationists deemed all things Victorian to be the “cutting edge of taste,” but derided 30- to 40-year-old Art Deco-styled buildings as “too decorative.” In the 1970s and ’80s, this style was embraced for the same reason it was once dismissed.
For the current generation of preservationists, the style that’s not worth saving is Midcentury Modern — those buildings and houses that were built from about 1945 to 1965.
Though not surprising, given the pattern of preservationists’ evolving enthusiasm, there is a certain irony in this particular repudiation. The informal lifestyle that homeowners today prefer originated with this style and its most salient features are still wildly popular — an open floor plan with adjacent living, dining and kitchen areas, and large sliding glass doors that open onto adjacent decks and patios, blending indoor and outdoor living areas.
Some of the antipathy toward Midcentury Modern, which has existed since the style was first introduced, can be attributed to its very different look. Most houses of that style featured flat or nearly flat roofs, unusually large windows and a total absence of any of the traditional embellishments normally associated with houses, such as shutters.
Although the houses looked different, many of the architects who pioneered this style cleverly combined the new look with longstanding vernacular housing traditions that had evolved in response to local climate. In Sarasota, Fla., for example, the first Midcentury Modern houses were built before air conditioning was available. To create cross ventilation — essential with Sarasota’s debilitating heat and humidity — the architects replaced the many small window openings found on older houses with two or three huge rolling panels of glass that were often 8 feet high and 10 feet long, so large that it looks as if there’s no wall at all.
When these panels are fully opened to catch the breeze, the line between indoors and outdoors literally dissolves. The visual effect is stunning, but the comfort level is even more impressive. Although air conditioning was eventually installed in all the Midcentury Modern houses that are still standing, it often goes unused for as many as 10 months of the year. Sarasota architect Sam Holladay, who lives in a Midcentury Modern house himself, uses the air conditioning only during June, July and part of August, and the year he moved in, he said, “I was amazed my power bill was so small.”
In addition to astounding visuals and a high degree of comfort, the homeowner who decides to restore a Midcentury Modern house can, in many cases, achieve a degree of authenticity that is nearly impossible with older houses. The architect himself and people who worked with him or who helped to build the house may still be alive, the original drawings are far less likely to be lost, and there may be photographs of the original furnishings.
When Holladay restored the 1955 Cohen House by Paul Rudolph, the most famous of Sarasota’s Midcentury Modern architects, he was able to consult an architect who had worked with Rudolph and study photographs of the house taken at its completion. A colleague also traveled to Washington to examine the Rudolph archive in the Library of Congress. An intriguing result of this research: Holladay was able to re-create the long-gone built-in furniture for a conversation pit. Though Rudolph’s version of a conversation pit is only 8 inches below the adjacent living area, Holladay said, “It’s enough to become its own gathering area during parties.”
Old home movies and family photo albums that document how a house was actually lived in and what should be emphasized in a restoration are another important resource, said Houston architect David Bucek. When his firm was tapped to restore Neuhaus and Taylor’s 1960 Frame Harper House, the entire structure, both inside and out, had been painted white and the kitchen and master bath had been ripped out. The color photographs in the albums of the original owners helped Bucek and his partner Bill Stern determine the original color scheme and what their furnishings looked like and understand how the family used the spaces. They were also able to interview one of the daughters who grew up in the house.
Not all Midcentury Modern houses have such extensive documentation, however. Thousands were constructed by anonymous builders and radically altered by subsequent owners. To bring such a house back to life, Sarasota architect Greg Hall said he’s taken artistic liberties while honoring the “push the envelope” spirit of that era.
This often requires a degree of inventiveness that matches that of the original designers because modern-day fixes must meet more stringent building codes and safety requirements, Hall said. For example, the huge 8-by-10-foot sliding glass panels that were a hallmark of the Midcentury Modern style in Sarasota are no longer allowed, so any rebuilt glass walls will have much narrower sliders. When these are closed, you see the vertical lines of the frames and know that you’re inside. But when the doors are fully opened, the line between inside and outside dissolves, just as it did in the original houses.
For his “Garden House,” a reimagined restoration of a 1960 Midcentury Modern tract-built house, Hall took the glass wall idea one step further. Two walls of sliding glass doors in the living room pull back from the same corner. When the doors are fully opened, the wall dissolves and half the room is completely open to the outside.
Should an episode of the television drama “Mad Men” that’s set in the 1960s take place in Florida, Hall’s Garden House would be a perfect location shot. One can easily imagine Don Draper emerging through the opened glass walls of the living room to lounge on the adjacent patio and sip an Old Fashioned as he watches the sun slowly sink beneath the horizon.
Katherine Salant has an architecture degree from Harvard. A native Washingtonian, she grew up in Fairfax County and now lives in Ann Arbor, Mich. If you have questions or column ideas, she can be contacted at salanthousewatch@gmail.com or www.katherinesalant.com.
MID-CENTURY LINKS
Would you like to be more knowledgeable about Mid-Century design and products? Check out some of our favorite links (we’ll be adding to the list from time to time). We’re sure they will lead you to other sites!
MID-CENTURY SHOPPING LINKS
http://www.flippingvintage.com/