Marcel Breuer was a famous modernist, architect and furniture designer. Born in Hungary, he became one of the first and youngest students at the Bauhaus, a wholistic arts and architecture school founded by Walter Gropius, who ended up being his lifelong mentor. When Gropius became the Chairman of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 1937, Breuer followed his mentor to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Over the next 30 years, Breuer worked with a number of partners and associates, including Herbert Beckhard.

Structure is not just a means to a solution. It is also a principle and a passion. – Marcel Breuer

Herbert Beckhard was Breuer’s partner and design coordinator. The two of them collaborated on many projects throughout Europe and the United States, including the Jacques Koerfer Residence in Ascona, Switzerland; the Wilhelm Stehelin House in Zurich; the US Department of Housing and Urban Development Headquarters in Building in Washington, D.C.; the St. Francis de Sales Church in Muskegon, Michigan; and of course, the Hooper House. Their close collaboration even resulted in a book, Architecture Without Rules: The Houses of Marcel Breuer and Herbert Beckhard.

Their design played a major role in shaping 20th century architecture design and were known for buildings that combined innovative design with keen attention to function and materials. These characteristics define the Hooper House as well. What is particularly special about this modern house is the courtyard, which is located in the center of the home and divides the house into two separate wings. When you enter through the front door, you can see past the walls of glass, through the courtyard, beyond an opening in the stone wall, to an unobstructed view of Lake Roland.

Each wing has separate functions. In the north wing of the house, there are the bedrooms, bathroom, and children’s playroom; while in the south wing of the house, there is the living room, dining room and kitchen. As Breuer noted, “You want to live with the children, but you also want to be free from them, and they want to be free from you.” The thick stone walls even have an impressive noise management system, so that the adults can entertain guests in the south wing, without disturbing the children in the north wing.

The exterior is composed mostly of stone and metal, yet almost every room has an entire wall made of a floor to ceiling sliding-glass door. Since this was before the era of insulated glass, the doors are made of ¼ inch plate glass and remain clear even after 50 years. Altogether, the home seamlessly integrates itself with the surrounding forest outside.

Source

North, Richard. Hooper House Owner. (2019, January 7). Interview Email.

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Just as a good host tries to anticipate the needs of his guest, so a good architect or a designer or a city planner tries to anticipate the needs of those who will live in or use the thing being designed. – Charles Eames

The Eames House, also known as Case Study House No. 8, is a mid-century modern home located in Los Angeles. It was designed and constructed in 1949 by husband-and-wife architects Charles and Ray Eames to serve as their home and studio. As such, the modern home was thoroughly lived-in, usable and well-loved, despite its avant-garde design.

From the beginning, the Eames’ purpose was to build a house that would not destroy the nearby meadow and trees and to maximize volume from minimal materials. The result was two glass-and-steel, rectangular boxes, one of which served as a residence and the other as a working studio. Both are nestled into a hillside backed by a concrete retaining wall. The structures are aligned along a central axis, with one court between the structures and another court on the ocean-side of the house. On the studio-side, there is a space for parking. The facades are painted grids with different-sized inserts of glass (clear, translucent or wired), grey cemesto panels, stucco (off-white, blue, black and red), aluminum (silver or painted) and specially-treat panels (fold-leafed or with a photographic panel).

In contrast to the cold steel framing, the interior of the house is warm and comforting, with soft light penetrating into each room throughout the day. The Eameses were well-known for their contributions to furniture and industrial design and lined their walls with books, fabrics, folk art, shells, rocks and straw baskets. Wooden staircases floated effortlessly inside, connecting the lower and upper levels, each of which had a mezzanine balcony overlooking a large central room. The use of natural materials in the interior blended the modern home seamlessly with the outdoors, where a row of eucalyptus trees was planted at the entrance.

While many icons of the modern movement are depicted as stark and barren spaces, the Eameses approached architecture as an adventure, combining discipline with a sense of place. Their live-work lifestyle continues to be an influential model in the built environment.

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Less is more – Mies van der Rohe

Villa Tugendhat is a modern home designed by the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the industrial heirs Grete and Fritz Tugendhat. Completed in 1930 in Brno, Czech Republic, the modern house is a steel-framed, glass and concrete construction finished on the interior with some remarkable materials, such as ebony and onyx.

Built on an extreme slope, Mies divided the front and back into public and private faces. On the street side, the building is just one story but on the garden side it is two stories. The steel supporting columns have a cross-sectional profile and are anchored in concrete bases and brick masonry. In the main living area, the columns have a brass chromium plating while those on the terraces have a brass cladding with a patina coating.

In the main living area, individual zones are divided by walls of striking materials, such as the honey and yellow colored onyx from Morocco and the half-circular wall of Macassar ebony wood from the island of Celebes in south-east Asia. Two large windows opposite the onyx wall and the dining area can be retracted via electric motors all the way to the floor, opening up to the gardens.

Mies also designed all the furniture in the house, precisely choosing the placement of each piece. The furniture includes some of his finest designs, including the Brno chair, the Tugendhat chair and the X coffee table.

Just 8 years after its construction, the Tugendhats fled the country before the German occupation. The Nazi Gestapo set up flats and offices in the abandoned house, during World War II. A calvary regiment also moved in, all of which devastated the house. The linoleum on the floors were destroyed by the hooves of the horses. Most of the windows were blown out during the air raids. Furniture was either used as wood fuel or was stolen. The height of the chimney was also increased and additional inner walls were inserted in the interiors.

Upon liberation from the Soviet Army in 1945, a private dancing school was situated in the Villa until 1950. Later it became a rehabilitation center for children with spinal defects as part of a nearby children’s hospital until the end of the 1960s. In 1967, Grete returned to the Villa with experts, aiming to restore it; however, the Communist era intervened and stalled full efforts.

In 1992, the Villa was used in the formal signing that separated the country into present day Czech Republic and Slovakia. Two years later, it was opened as a museum to the public. In 2001, it was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site as an outstanding example of the International Style in the Modern Movement in architecture. Finally, in 2011, a full renovation and restoration of its original appearance was completed. In addition, the interiors were equipped with exact replicas of the original furniture.

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A building’s success should be judged on whether it is filled with people. – Jacques Herzog

The Stone House, built in Tavole, Italy in 1985, is one of Herzog and de Meuron’s earliest and most significant works. Friends since childhood, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron are skilled at transforming ordinary shapes and materials into the extraordinary.

Set amidst an abandoned olive grove, the three-story house consists of a concrete frame filled with external dry stone. The stones come from demolished neighboring buildings and are stacked like rubble within the concrete frame. Light filters through between the cracks of the rubble facade. While the architects used native materials and construction traditions common to the region, it remains distinctly modern, its plan revealing an unusual arrangement of passages and rooms.

The building consists of three main parts: the slightly raised rectangular plateau framed by a concrete pergola, the piano nobile, and the top floor, labelled “studio” in the plan. The kitchen, living room and master bedroom are all located in the piano nobile. The vertical strip windows at this level are operable with metal shutters that limit both views and light. Meanwhile, the top floor features a loft-like space with a horizontal ribbon window on three sides, creating panoramic views of the valley and sea.

Inside, the building is characterized by a cross floor plan, where two walls intersect at right angles. Passage from room to room must be along the building’s periphery. In the plan, the architects renounced corridors, serving and served places, making it quite different from the typical country house plan common to the region. Overall, the project is one of great subtlety and strength.

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Buildings are deeply emotive structures which form our psyche. People think they’re just things they maneuver through, but the makeup of a person is influenced by the nature of spaces. – David Adjaye

Sunken House by David Adjaye Sunken House is a modern prefab home built in 2007 and located in Hackney, London. The simple cube structure consists of large engineered timber panels manufactured off-site and installed in about a week. This prefab element not only kept the construction costs down but also allowed the construction to be completed in an impressive one week timeframe. The facades of the home are clad in a cedar rain screen, creating the impression of a continuous surface that embraces the enclosed and open spaces.

The building is composed of three storeys, of which the lowest floor is partially submerged, creating a sunken kitchen, dining room and home office. Inside, the house is just as clean and minimal as it is on the outside. In addition, the upper storeys are brightly lit through long horizontal and vertical windows.

David Adjaye is a British citizen born in Tanzania to Ghanaian parents. He is most famous for his public works, such as the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, described him best, stating that “His work – deeply rooted in both the present moment and the complex context of history – has envisioned new ways for culture to be represented and reflected in the built environment”.

Adjaye won the London Design Medal and has recently received knighthood. He was also named among Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2017.

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All the buildings I would do were an interpretation of (the Hamptons) landscape. – Peter Blake

The Pinwheel House by Peter Blake is a mid-century modern beach house located in the Hamptons. Born in Germany, Blake’s family left for England during the Nazi occupation. Eventually, he made his way to New York, writing and editing for Architectural Forum. After WWII, during which he worked as an intelligence officer in the US Army, he returned to the US and was associated with a group of artists on Long Island, including Robert Motherwell, Willem De Kooning and Jackson Pollock.

A lifelong supporter of the modern movement in architecture, he believed in the beauty of clean lines and the elegance of simple, functional forms. He also believed that architecture had a social function and that its purpose was to make life better for those who lived and worked in the structures that architects create.

He built many mid-century modern beach houses in the Hamptons, but the Pinwheel House is his most innovative. He designed it in 1954 for his own family as a simple square box with two bedroom. Its most distinctive feature were the four large movable panel walls. Both the quarter-inch-thick plate glass windows and the white-painted plywood panels were mounted on a metal track system running the length of each facade. The walls could slide along the track allowing the occupants to decide how much or little air and light to let in. It also allowed for the walls to close down and protect the house from hurricanes. When the walls were extended out, it resembled a pinwheel.

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Life is not about maximizing everything, it’s about giving something back – like light, space, form, serenity, joy. You have to give something back.

The Fredericks-White House by Glenn Murcutt, Australia’s most famous architect, is a beautiful modern farmhouse. As a sole practitioner who designs environmentally sensitive modern homes, he embodies Aamodt Plumb’s Slow Space values. Henry David Thoreau, a writer and naturalist, heavily influenced Murcutt’s architectural style. Murcutt likes to paraphrase: “since most of us spend our lives doing ordinary tasks, the most important thing is to carry them out extraordinarily well”.

In 2002, he received the Pritzker Prize, which honors living architects who produce consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture. Bill Lacy, the executive director of the Pritzker Prize, stated, “His is an architecture of place, architecture that responds to the landscape and the climate. His houses are fine tuned to the land and the weather. He uses a variety of materials, from metal to wood to glass, stone, brick and concrete—always selected with a consciousness of the amount of energy it took to produce the materials in the first place.”

The Fredericks-White House is located in a rainforest and directed towards distant valley views. The building consists of a double pavilion with curved roofs of corrugated metal. It’s structural frame consists of timber, which also lines the interiors. The modern farmhouse lies on a perfect longitudinal orientation along an east-west axis. The northern side has a glazed screen oriented to the sun for natural light. The southern wall is solid and implies the backside. The plot was once an old farmhouse. However, the only remaining element is the chimney, which features as a junction between the two pavilions.

This modern farmhouse won Glenn Murcutt a Merit Award for outstanding architecture from the Royal Australian Institute of Architects.

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Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier

Villa Savoye, a modern home on the outskirts of Paris, is considered to be one of the most significant contributions to modern architecture. Completed in 1931, it was designed by Swiss architects Le Corbusier and his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret. The home became a historical monument in 1965.

Villa Savoye is a perfect example of Le Corbusier’s “Five Points” manifesto, which the architect formulated as the fundamental principles of the Modern movement:

1. A ground-level pilotis, which elevates the building and allows for a walkway or garden underneath.
2. A roof terrace, which brings natural elements to the building. At Villa Savoye, there is a hanging garden on the first floor and a solarium on the second floor.
3. An open plan layout, in which the walls have no load-bearing functions. Instead, a network of concrete posts supports the walls. Therefore, at Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier was able to create a living room with three full-length windows and a single window panel measuring an extraordinary 9 x 3 metres.
4. An open facade, which allows the walls and windows to be free of load bearing considerations.
5. Ribbon windows, which provide illumination and ventilation. This feature gave Villa Savoye the nickname Les Heures Claires, which means “bright times” in French.

Inside, Le Corbusier designed a series of promenades throughout the modern home. This required inhabitants to slow down and experience the movement between spaces.

Form must have a content, and that content must be linked with nature. – Alvar Aalto

Villa Mairea by Alvar Aalto

Villa Mairea was designed by the Finnish modernist architect Alvar Aalto in Finland in 1939. The clients told Aalto he should regard it as “an experimental house.” Therefore, Aalto used this opportunity to test all his creative ideas. Today, the modern home is famous for marking the transition from traditional to modern architecture. It is one of Aalto’s most important works.

The plan is an L-shape, which creates a semi-private enclosure to one side and a more exclusive edge on the other. The lawn and the swimming pool are within the angle of the L, and a variety of rooms overlook them. Influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, horizontals and overhangs in the main composition echo the ground plane.

Undulating, wave-like forms were a leitmotif of Aalto’s work. These forms are present throughout the house from the shape of the swimming pool to the balcony. According to Aalto, “the curving, living, unpredictable line which runs in dimensions unknown to mathematics, is for me the incarnation of everything that forms a contrast in the modern world between brutal mechanicalness and religious beauty in life.”

Wooden, vertical columns placed throughout the house mimic the surrounding forest of birch trees. Aalto created this to emphasize the continuity between the environment inside and outside the house.

Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright

Fallingwater, also known as the Kaufmann Residence, from 1935 is one of Frank Lloyd Wright‘s best modern homes. In 1966, it was designated a National Historic Landmark, and it is listed in The Smithsonian’s “28 Places to See Before You Die”.

Built partly over a waterfall in the Allegheny Mountains of rural southwestern Pensylvania, the house was a weekend getaway for the Kaufmann family. The sound of the water permeates the house, especially during the spring when the snow is melting. Locally quarried stone walls and cantilevered terraces resemble the nearby rock formations. This creates a harmony between the built and natural environments. The design incorporates broad expanses of windows and balconies, which reach out into the landscape.

Years later, Kaufmann’s son said, “[Wright] understood that people were creatures of nature, hence an architecture which conformed to nature would conform to what was basic in people. For example, although all of Falling Water [sic] is opened by broad bands of windows, people inside are sheltered as in a deep cave, secure in the sense of the hill behind them.”

The Glass House by Philip Johnson

The Glass House, also known as the Johnson House, is an iconic example of modern architecture, located in New Canaan, Connecticut. Built in 1949, Philip Johnson designed it as his own residence, and it is one of the first modern homes in the US to use industrial materials, such as glass and steel. The building is an essay in minimal structure, geometry, proportion and the effects of transparency and reflection. In 1997, it became a National Historic Landmark.

The home overlooks a pond and a stone wall conceals it from the road. The exterior is completely open to the outdoors by glass walls except for a cylinder brick structure at the entrance to the bathroom. The red brick floor is 10 inches above the ground, so that it appears as if it’s floating. Inside, the kitchen, dining and sleeping areas are all in one glass-enclosed room and with low cabinets and bookshelves used as dividers.

The Farnsworth House by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe completed The Farnsworth House in 1951 as a one-room weekend retreat in Plano, Illinois. Dr. Edith Farnsworth, a Chicago nephrologist, commissioned the modern home as a place where she could play the violin, translate poetry and enjoy nature.

The modern home is a single story structure consisting of eight steel columns that support the roof and floor frameworks. In between each column are floor-to-ceiling windows that open up the shelter to the surrounding landscape. The building is essentially one large room with zones for sleeping, cooking, dressing, eating and sitting. This concept is an architectural aesthetic that defined Mies’ American career.

The Schindler House by Rudolf M. Schindler

Completed in 1922, Rudolf M. Schlinder’s Schindler House is an unconventional two-family house located in West Hollywood. Shared between the Schindlers and the Chaces, it allowed the two couples to save both money and labor. This building would set the tone for many modern homes for decades.

The house is two interlinking L-shaped apartments. A common utility room, with a kitchen, laundry, sewing room and storage, connects the two apartment. Each apartment had two studios, one for each of the four members of the household. Everyone would converge in the communal kitchen for domestic chores. Instead of bedrooms, there are two rooftop sleeping baskets made of redwood four-post canopies, protected from the rain by canvas sides.

The Schindler House was both architecturally and socially unconventional, as the residence was a cooperative live and work space. The concrete walls and sliding glass panels made novel use of industrial materials while the open floor plan integrated the environment into the residence.

The Eliot Noyes House by Eliot Noyes

The Noyes House (1955) was designed by Eliot Noyes for his own family. The modern home is a single story structure with a courtyard plan. One rectangular volume contains the bedrooms, while the other houses contain the living areas. The north and south walls are of local fieldstone, giving the house privacy from the road. Meanwhile, the east and west walls are of floor-to-ceiling glass, allowing light and air to move through the house.

Natural materials allow the house to blend in with the environment. However, the juxtaposition of the glass walls gives the home a striking quality. Both Life and Time magazines featured the modern home. It won the AIA Award of Merit in 1957.

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