Doing a Bing search on the article's title brings a one-time access to the Financial Times article. It's the same with the Real Clear World Web site on other FT articles.
On the subject itself, not on your tintype. Architecture is art as well as design, but modern architecture overemphasizes the art aspect. These guys' homes belong on art gallery walls; they're not actually livable.
I much prefer the older architectures which emphasized function and design-for-purpose, and not for art's sake. It's much the same with modern furniture, too: the pieces belong in art galleries; they can't possibly be used for sitting and reading or conversing or TV watching, much less for sprawling on.
The Japanese architect's house might be worth a look. And the Palm Springs house might be worth a look.
EH has a point about some places, but there are so many houses out there to choose from, it's almost a moot point, since none of those 'art' houses are really built for 'average' people.
More interesting are attempts like Wright's "Usonian" houses which were envisioned for working class owners, although the 2 examples I have personally seen were both built for wealthy mid 20th century businessmen. Go figure.
There is a whole cottage (heh) industry of 'small' house designs out there, but updating existing houses is probably the real direction that ought to be pursued.
Okay, so I’m going to take it on and ‘review’ every house mentioned in that text. The most interesting one for our purposes will be the last one.
Frank Gehry House- I’m not a fan, and I’ve never been inside it. It’s not much aesthetically, for sure, but he still lives there, and he could afford to build a newer nicer house, so I guess it’s livable for him, and that’s the client in this case, so there’s that.
Daisuke Ibano House, Tokyo- It’s actually nice. It has substance, which is often missing from contemporary architecture. Good lighting, some nice moments in it. If you gave it a medieval surface style, perhaps it would be more palatable to you, Grim? It has many of the same spatial elements. Given it’s siting in a close urban area, the indirect light and windows are a good solution (better than staring at the neighbors, or worse their walls). It also gives a cave-like sense to some spaces, but with the indirect light, negates the downsides to ‘cave-like’. The aesthetic is a good interpretation of some Japanese traditions. I have no desire to live in the midst of the city, but if you must, this seems pretty good to me.
Selgas Cano’s Silicon House- Not so wild about the aesthetic, but I like the spaces, and the relationship to ground/site.
Garcia Abril/Mesa Cyclopean house- Well, it’s appropriately named for a monstrosity. It’s awful in every way. I’m betting it’s actually less a house for them than a satellite office. Looks like it, anyway. Their Hemeroscopium house isn’t much better. Apparently they never got beyond building blocks.
Pezo Von Ellrichshausen Casa poli- Well, it’s a great site. Eames house- This one I’ve been inside of, and it has many good qualities- connection to the outdoors and relationship to the site, it acts as backdrop to the residents life instead of demanding to be a foreground. Also, it was an idea about providing inexpensive housing using the postwar industrial base. If I could take you to it, you might at least soften your opinion of it. Eames furniture is also far more livable than much furniture by modern architects. They weren’t modern in the European way, I think, and their work is much better for it if you ask me. It also has a really cool doorbell.
Luis Barragan House- It’s really very reminiscent of adobe structures with it’s mass and limited light, and very Mexican in coloration. He tries to play with visual progression here with limited success, but I’ve been in a hotel designed by Ricardo Legoretta (heavily influenced by Barragan) in Cancun, and it’s wonderful. This house also seems to be first an office and secondarily a house, which may explain a few things.
Jean Prouve House in Nancy- It’s a simple house, so it’s a perfectly livable plan. Detailing is influenced by industrial and aeronautic aesthetic (which all Prouve works are). It’s ok, a little odd, but the living room is nice.
Le Corbusier Beach Cabin in Roquebrun Cap Martin- I’ve actually been to and inside this, and it’s very small- studio sized- and pretty basic. It’s also wood construction, not concrete like almost all his other works. It’s ok, not much to object to as it’s just the basics, and it’s a great site.
Philip Johnson’s Glass house- Not worth discussing. Pure marketing.
Oscar Niemeyer’s jungle house Canoa- Modern materials, but basically a jungle pavilion next to/over a cave to stay cool in. I think it’s got potential. Would have to see it in person.
Albert Frey House II, Palm Springs- Fantastic site, great relationship of building to site, great boulder in/out of the living room. I think it’s pretty nice.
Okay- lastly, The Red House- William Morris and Phillip Webb- As a Neo-Gothic throwback rebuttal to the industrial age, and an advocation for the Arts & Crafts movement, I might think this one Grim would find appealing. It has many fine details and examples of hand wrought hardware. From pictures alone, it’s difficult for me to comment on the spaces themselves, however it is quite beautiful. As for the article’s mention that it “sparked Modernism” (attributed to Nicholas Pevsner), I can only suppose that it means in rebuttal or maybe in it’s break from Classicism, but I think the former is more likely. Again, I’d think Grim would see that as a positive.
At any rate, I think the articles take on the architects themselves is quite good- “Do architects’ houses contain fundamental truths about the nature of architecture, a kind of essence, the source? They are certainly architecture at its purest and at its most arrogant and unrestrained.” And the final warning is sound advice- “Either way, it is best to visit an architect at home before you give your life over to them.”
I confess, Douglas, that I posted this chiefly as bait to draw you out, which you have ably taken. You're right that I like the Red House. The Medieval (or Neo-Medieval) aspects are lovely, and often well-executed.
Thank you for your detailed comments, which are of benefit to us all.
I'll add one thing- when we see pictures of architecture people usually respond to the styles they see, and not the spaces themselves. That is to say that if you changed the superficial, might you like the place? In some cases that's all it would take, and I'd generally call that reasonably good architecture that's just not your style. Other times, the style makes demands on the spaces that can't be overcome with a face lift, and well, that's not so good architecture. It's also why with some of the listed houses, I'd have a hard time evaluating it from pictures alone, though some you can get a sense of and relate it to something else you've experienced.
A glass-walled house in the desert. I would not like to pay the air conditioning bill on that. In blunter English- what kind of effing idjit would design a heat sink kind of house in a desert climate? Any idiot who designed such a house in the desert should be condemned to either live in that house or pay the air conditioning for it.
Were I to design a house in the desert, I would place all or most of it underground, to mitigate the heat. Indirect light would help.
I live in Texas with minimal use of air conditioning, so it isn't as if I have no experience with hot summers. Unfortunately, underground doesn't do well in this part of Texas as there is only about 3 feet of soil before you hit hard rock country, a.k.a. basement.
William Morris's Red House reminds me of the house I grew up in. My father built cabinets and wood panels for our house. He also put in a floor. One difference with the Red House is that for the most part my father varnished the wood instead of painted it.
Luis Barragan house in Mexico. I like the different light in the house, the pink wall, little view from the street but open views in the private patio.
Japanese small house w different floors. Pretty, but I think when I age, I might get tired of the split level always climbing stairs. I like having the beds double as storage spaces. Ditto the views from the roof. Clean, simple design.
Selgas Cano’s Silicon House- don't like having the interior so visible from the outside.
The article was behind a wall, so I did not read it.
Most postmodern architecture is a monument to the architect- the worst being public buildings where the money faucet has enough DPM (dollars per minute) to wash away any trace of utility. The people in the spaces become irrelevant. I am reminded of the addition to the Seattle Art Museum, where a grand staircase ascends to a few stark rooms , white rectangular boxes with a few pictures on the wall. Give me the rat warren of the British Museum, or the Philadelphia Art Museum, or the Met- places of mystery, where every room has a surprise and one can get lost walking through the rooms. The much acclaimed EMP museum in Seattle is appropriate , I guess, as it looks exactly like a collection of mangled 747's waiting for the scrapper.
A home's basic design parameters was established when we were still in caves. The REASON for a home is simple- PROTECTION. Everything else is a nice to have but not essential. Protection from the weather, from animals, from vermin, from raiders . Look around the world, and that is the single unifying trait, no matter the culture. A long period of peace in the USA has resulted in the idea of physical protection being very much diluted- stick framing with foam sheathing and drywall and cheap doors may be fine for retaining the last available BTU, but provides little security. Look to history and we find stone, heavy beams, adobe walls, log cabins, and courtyards with perimeter walls. We get away with this by convincing ourselves we don't need protection, that society will provide it for us. Instead of physical security, we have alarm systems.
If a home will not slow a burglar, or a bullet, it is an expensive tent.
Style is an each to their own sort of thing, but IMO the most beautiful homes have a form follows function esthetic. Glass houses? The stupid burns..
Gringo, re: the Frey House in Palm Springs, I suspect that the idea is that the boulder (and likely the earth if it's a slab floor) and the masonry garage and footings of the house would act as the heat sink, soaking up the heat coming into the house during the day, and once loaded up to or near capacity, letting it off into the cooling night. Whether or not it works that way I don't know. Curiously (or perhaps by design), architectural reviews rarely focus on the actual results and function of the buildings.
Re: the glass house- it appears that it's deep in the jungle, so the curtains are your landscaping. It's not for everyone, but we almost always leave our blinds up in our bedroom because it faces the hillside behind us and there's no one there. Having more window wouldn't bother me in the least, as I'd just feel more connected to the little piece of land we enjoy living on. But people are different and like clothes, buildings don't suit everyone, especially houses.
Raven, it's interesting that you don't like the simple white box museums (the argument in favor being it leaves the art to take your attention instead of competing with it), but instead prefer an 'adventurous' architecture for museums. I haven't been to the EMP, but I have been to the Disney Concert Hall here in L.A. and honestly, it has a sense of that 'exploring through spaces' feel you're describing. If you were in L.A., I'd love to go there and see if you feel the same after going through it and experiencing the spaces. You might find some things to like, even if the aesthetic isn't your cup of tea.
Funny you bring up the cave and the tent. One of my favorite buildings is an architect's house- The Schindler House. The whole premise of the house draws on the analogy of cave and tent- the concrete slabs forming the outside walls act as the cave- providing a sense of solidity and security, while the courtyard facing walls are essentially shoji screens and glass- like a tent, providing the necessary cover from the weather, but allowing a close connection to the landscape beyond. This made a lot more sense when the house was built and West Hollywood was mostly agricultural (it's now apartment buildings all around there). If there's no one around, I don't mind a bit of tent level protection in my house. It's also the first house with an outdoor hearth that I'm aware of since we moved them indoors. But to each their own.
Mostly, I think that there can be good architecture in almost any style, but a lot of styles, because of the ideological or philosophical connections, are less conducive to them because the architect is too busy being woke (essentially) to make the spaces good and functional. You could also say that I think we place too much value on 'style' and not enough on 'space' and function.
Douglas, the warming/cooling could well work for January in Palm Springs, with an average high/low of 70/45 F. (At such a temperature cycle in Texas, I don't heat the house.) The architects' houses article included a concrete box of a house in Mexico City that specifically talked of concrete's daily warming and cooling cycle. That would work in Mexico City, whose year-round climate at 8,000 feet would be similar to Palm Springs in January.
However, the warming/cooling cycle wouldn't work at all in the summer in Palm Springs, which has average highs/lows of 108/78 F in July and August. With such a hot daytime high, you would want to protect the house's interior from the heat. Which is why I pushed underground. Those glass walls would trap all that heat inside the house.
Regarding glass and high temperatures, west facing windows in Texas summers heat up a house a lot more than windowless west side walls do.
I recall reading that some Frank Lloyd Wright house, famed for its beautiful lines, was hell to heat and hell to maintain.
Radiant heat is nice- when we designed and built our house I took pains to calculate the roof overhangs and sun position so the winter sun comes in the windows on the upper floor, but the summer sun never reaches them. It helps a lot with climate control.
People do weird stuff, especially builders who pick a stock plan and pop it down with no regard at all for orientation- garage faces the street, regardless of North, South, East or West- seems almost criminal to put the garage facing south in a cool climate, so the main house never gets any winter sun...
regarding protection- there is a guy named selco on one of the prepper sites who lived through the balkan war- just the other day he stated it seemed like his building was hit about every five minutes for a year......I love concrete. Insulated concrete forms is what I would use today. Damned hard to pry a steel jamb when it is backed by grout and rebar.
Was the glass house referred to in the article, the glass cube some big name built in the midwest in the 50's or '60's?
raven People do weird stuff, especially builders who pick a stock plan and pop it down with no regard at all for orientation-
The builder's story from my hometown was the builder who for HIS HOME, built the house with solar heat. The only problem was that he installed the solar heating on the NORTH SIDE of the house. Solar heating on the north side of the house doesn't work too well in New England.
Gringo, being all my life in L.A., I know the desert and Palm Springs fairly well. That house is on an Eastern outcropping of a roughly North-South ridge of the San Jacinto's, which have peaks over 10k feet. It's one reason Palm Springs is where it is- it's largely shaded after about 2-3 in the afternoon, certainly where that house is it is, maybe earlier.
From the piece on it I linked- "Before its design, Frey spent a year studying the sunlight’s affect on the home’s anticipated mountainside location."
So given the particulars of that location, you can start to see why it didn't need huge overhangs- it only needs to block the high sun from about 11 to 2 in the summer (and it's better to let it in a bit in the winter). Add to that the fact that the windows are actually almost all huge (12 foot wide) sliding glass doors, and you start to understand that he's counting on cross ventilation as part of the equation- and if you know Palm Springs, it's almost always breezy in the afternoons. I once did a biathlon there and for the bike portion, we were literally at one point riding angled over about 8 degrees into the crosswind just to go straight ahead!
Now, I'm sure it gets hot on summer days in that house, but it's likely no worse than your average bungalow without a/c, and maybe better for the ability to open up the walls almost 50% open.
That said, your move of going partially underground is a sound one.
I honestly think the house would be too cold in winter, a little hot in summer (but it's a dry heat!- and that matters to desert rat me!), but really, really nice in spring and summer.
Also, *all* FLLW houses are hell to maintain. Some are impossible, like his Textile block houses where he used native soils to provide the sand for the concrete blocks. Too bad the native soils are acidic. Those blocks a deteriorating at a molecular level now.
Raven- "People do weird stuff..." True, but often we just don't know the mitigating factors. There are lots of things I'd like to do on our designs, but if the client doesn't value that the way I do, it ain't happening (we tend to give the clients what they want, not what we want). Also, sometimes you're up against something that you can't work around reasonably, like code requirements, or budgets, or whatever, and there's no way to show that in the design, so it might look like the architect or designer didn't do their job well, but maybe they did the best they could in difficult circumstances.
And I do wish more people would spring for radiant heat- it's the best.
ICFs are nice (I've not worked directly with them), but from a security standpoint, block is better and monolithic poured in place best. You have to remember that about a third of the thickness of an ICF wall is just foam. But they're quick and easy and that translates to inexpensive to build.
And I'm literally cracking up at the North wall solar heating!! Maybe he was an Aussie ex-pat?!? I suppose he could install big mirrors just North of that to reflect the light in...
16 comments:
Link's behind a paywall.
Doing a Bing search on the article's title brings a one-time access to the Financial Times article. It's the same with the Real Clear World Web site on other FT articles.
On the subject itself, not on your tintype. Architecture is art as well as design, but modern architecture overemphasizes the art aspect. These guys' homes belong on art gallery walls; they're not actually livable.
I much prefer the older architectures which emphasized function and design-for-purpose, and not for art's sake. It's much the same with modern furniture, too: the pieces belong in art galleries; they can't possibly be used for sitting and reading or conversing or TV watching, much less for sprawling on.
Eric Hines
The Eames house looks fine.
The Japanese architect's house might be worth a look. And the Palm Springs house might be worth a look.
EH has a point about some places, but there are so many houses out there to choose from, it's almost a moot point, since none of those 'art' houses are really built for 'average' people.
More interesting are attempts like Wright's "Usonian" houses which were envisioned for working class owners, although the 2 examples I have personally seen were both built for wealthy mid 20th century businessmen. Go figure.
There is a whole cottage (heh) industry of 'small' house designs out there, but updating existing houses is probably the real direction that ought to be pursued.
Paywall you say? So it is. I wonder how I managed to read it the first time?
Okay, so I’m going to take it on and ‘review’ every house mentioned in that text. The most interesting one for our purposes will be the last one.
Frank Gehry House- I’m not a fan, and I’ve never been inside it. It’s not much aesthetically, for sure, but he still lives there, and he could afford to build a newer nicer house, so I guess it’s livable for him, and that’s the client in this case, so there’s that.
Daisuke Ibano House, Tokyo- It’s actually nice. It has substance, which is often missing from contemporary architecture. Good lighting, some nice moments in it. If you gave it a medieval surface style, perhaps it would be more palatable to you, Grim? It has many of the same spatial elements. Given it’s siting in a close urban area, the indirect light and windows are a good solution (better than staring at the neighbors, or worse their walls). It also gives a cave-like sense to some spaces, but with the indirect light, negates the downsides to ‘cave-like’. The aesthetic is a good interpretation of some Japanese traditions. I have no desire to live in the midst of the city, but if you must, this seems pretty good to me.
Selgas Cano’s Silicon House- Not so wild about the aesthetic, but I like the spaces, and the relationship to ground/site.
Garcia Abril/Mesa Cyclopean house- Well, it’s appropriately named for a monstrosity. It’s awful in every way. I’m betting it’s actually less a house for them than a satellite office. Looks like it, anyway. Their Hemeroscopium house isn’t much better. Apparently they never got beyond building blocks.
Pezo Von Ellrichshausen Casa poli- Well, it’s a great site.
Eames house- This one I’ve been inside of, and it has many good qualities- connection to the outdoors and relationship to the site, it acts as backdrop to the residents life instead of demanding to be a foreground. Also, it was an idea about providing inexpensive housing using the postwar industrial base. If I could take you to it, you might at least soften your opinion of it. Eames furniture is also far more livable than much furniture by modern architects. They weren’t modern in the European way, I think, and their work is much better for it if you ask me. It also has a really cool doorbell.
Luis Barragan House- It’s really very reminiscent of adobe structures with it’s mass and limited light, and very Mexican in coloration. He tries to play with visual progression here with limited success, but I’ve been in a hotel designed by Ricardo Legoretta (heavily influenced by Barragan) in Cancun, and it’s wonderful. This house also seems to be first an office and secondarily a house, which may explain a few things.
Jean Prouve House in Nancy- It’s a simple house, so it’s a perfectly livable plan. Detailing is influenced by industrial and aeronautic aesthetic (which all Prouve works are). It’s ok, a little odd, but the living room is nice.
Le Corbusier Beach Cabin in Roquebrun Cap Martin- I’ve actually been to and inside this, and it’s very small- studio sized- and pretty basic. It’s also wood construction, not concrete like almost all his other works. It’s ok, not much to object to as it’s just the basics, and it’s a great site.
Philip Johnson’s Glass house- Not worth discussing. Pure marketing.
Cont'd:
Oscar Niemeyer’s jungle house Canoa- Modern materials, but basically a jungle pavilion next to/over a cave to stay cool in. I think it’s got potential. Would have to see it in person.
Albert Frey House II, Palm Springs- Fantastic site, great relationship of building to site, great boulder in/out of the living room. I think it’s pretty nice.
Lina Bo Bardi Casa Di Vidro (glass house), Brazil- I imagine the living room feels like a big fancy tree house. But the bedrooms are human filing cabinets, and it could really use some rugs.
Okay- lastly, The Red House- William Morris and Phillip Webb- As a Neo-Gothic throwback rebuttal to the industrial age, and an advocation for the Arts & Crafts movement, I might think this one Grim would find appealing. It has many fine details and examples of hand wrought hardware. From pictures alone, it’s difficult for me to comment on the spaces themselves, however it is quite beautiful. As for the article’s mention that it “sparked Modernism” (attributed to Nicholas Pevsner), I can only suppose that it means in rebuttal or maybe in it’s break from Classicism, but I think the former is more likely. Again, I’d think Grim would see that as a positive.
At any rate, I think the articles take on the architects themselves is quite good-
“Do architects’ houses contain fundamental truths about the nature of architecture, a kind of essence, the source? They are certainly architecture at its purest and at its most arrogant and unrestrained.”
And the final warning is sound advice-
“Either way, it is best to visit an architect at home before you give your life over to them.”
I confess, Douglas, that I posted this chiefly as bait to draw you out, which you have ably taken. You're right that I like the Red House. The Medieval (or Neo-Medieval) aspects are lovely, and often well-executed.
Thank you for your detailed comments, which are of benefit to us all.
You caught me at a good time, and it was my pleasure. Thanks for posting it, it was an interesting article.
I'll add one thing- when we see pictures of architecture people usually respond to the styles they see, and not the spaces themselves. That is to say that if you changed the superficial, might you like the place? In some cases that's all it would take, and I'd generally call that reasonably good architecture that's just not your style. Other times, the style makes demands on the spaces that can't be overcome with a face lift, and well, that's not so good architecture. It's also why with some of the listed houses, I'd have a hard time evaluating it from pictures alone, though some you can get a sense of and relate it to something else you've experienced.
Albert Frey House II, Palm Springs
A glass-walled house in the desert. I would not like to pay the air conditioning bill on that. In blunter English- what kind of effing idjit would design a heat sink kind of house in a desert climate? Any idiot who designed such a house in the desert should be condemned to either live in that house or pay the air conditioning for it.
Were I to design a house in the desert, I would place all or most of it underground, to mitigate the heat. Indirect light would help.
I live in Texas with minimal use of air conditioning, so it isn't as if I have no experience with hot summers. Unfortunately, underground doesn't do well in this part of Texas as there is only about 3 feet of soil before you hit hard rock country, a.k.a. basement.
William Morris's Red House reminds me of the house I grew up in. My father built cabinets and wood panels for our house. He also put in a floor. One difference with the Red House is that for the most part my father varnished the wood instead of painted it.
Luis Barragan house in Mexico. I like the different light in the house, the pink wall, little view from the street but open views in the private patio.
Japanese small house w different floors. Pretty, but I think when I age, I might get tired of the split level always climbing stairs. I like having the beds double as storage spaces. Ditto the views from the roof. Clean, simple design.
Selgas Cano’s Silicon House- don't like having the interior so visible from the outside.
The article was behind a wall, so I did not read it.
Most postmodern architecture is a monument to the architect- the worst being public buildings where the money faucet has enough DPM (dollars per minute) to wash away any trace of utility. The people in the spaces become irrelevant. I am reminded of the addition to the Seattle Art Museum, where a grand staircase ascends to a few stark rooms , white rectangular boxes with a few pictures on the wall. Give me the rat warren of the British Museum, or the Philadelphia Art Museum, or the Met- places of mystery, where every room has a surprise and one can get lost walking through the rooms. The much acclaimed EMP museum in Seattle is appropriate , I guess, as it looks exactly like a collection of mangled 747's waiting for the scrapper.
A home's basic design parameters was established when we were still in caves.
The REASON for a home is simple- PROTECTION. Everything else is a nice to have but not essential. Protection from the weather, from animals, from vermin, from raiders . Look around the world, and that is the single unifying trait, no matter the culture. A long period of peace in the USA has resulted in the idea of physical protection being very much diluted- stick framing with foam sheathing and drywall and cheap doors may be fine for retaining the last available BTU, but provides little security. Look to history and we find stone, heavy beams, adobe walls, log cabins, and courtyards with perimeter walls. We get away with this by convincing ourselves we don't need protection, that society will provide it for us. Instead of physical security, we have alarm systems.
If a home will not slow a burglar, or a bullet, it is an expensive tent.
Style is an each to their own sort of thing, but IMO the most beautiful homes have a form follows function esthetic. Glass houses? The stupid burns..
The post-modernists are civilizational vermin.
Gringo, re: the Frey House in Palm Springs, I suspect that the idea is that the boulder (and likely the earth if it's a slab floor) and the masonry garage and footings of the house would act as the heat sink, soaking up the heat coming into the house during the day, and once loaded up to or near capacity, letting it off into the cooling night. Whether or not it works that way I don't know. Curiously (or perhaps by design), architectural reviews rarely focus on the actual results and function of the buildings.
Re: the glass house- it appears that it's deep in the jungle, so the curtains are your landscaping. It's not for everyone, but we almost always leave our blinds up in our bedroom because it faces the hillside behind us and there's no one there. Having more window wouldn't bother me in the least, as I'd just feel more connected to the little piece of land we enjoy living on. But people are different and like clothes, buildings don't suit everyone, especially houses.
Raven, it's interesting that you don't like the simple white box museums (the argument in favor being it leaves the art to take your attention instead of competing with it), but instead prefer an 'adventurous' architecture for museums. I haven't been to the EMP, but I have been to the Disney Concert Hall here in L.A. and honestly, it has a sense of that 'exploring through spaces' feel you're describing. If you were in L.A., I'd love to go there and see if you feel the same after going through it and experiencing the spaces. You might find some things to like, even if the aesthetic isn't your cup of tea.
Funny you bring up the cave and the tent. One of my favorite buildings is an architect's house- The Schindler House. The whole premise of the house draws on the analogy of cave and tent- the concrete slabs forming the outside walls act as the cave- providing a sense of solidity and security, while the courtyard facing walls are essentially shoji screens and glass- like a tent, providing the necessary cover from the weather, but allowing a close connection to the landscape beyond. This made a lot more sense when the house was built and West Hollywood was mostly agricultural (it's now apartment buildings all around there). If there's no one around, I don't mind a bit of tent level protection in my house. It's also the first house with an outdoor hearth that I'm aware of since we moved them indoors. But to each their own.
Mostly, I think that there can be good architecture in almost any style, but a lot of styles, because of the ideological or philosophical connections, are less conducive to them because the architect is too busy being woke (essentially) to make the spaces good and functional. You could also say that I think we place too much value on 'style' and not enough on 'space' and function.
Douglas, the warming/cooling could well work for January in Palm Springs, with an average high/low of 70/45 F. (At such a temperature cycle in Texas, I don't heat the house.) The architects' houses article included a concrete box of a house in Mexico City that specifically talked of concrete's daily warming and cooling cycle. That would work in Mexico City, whose year-round climate at 8,000 feet would be similar to Palm Springs in January.
However, the warming/cooling cycle wouldn't work at all in the summer in Palm Springs, which has average highs/lows of 108/78 F in July and August. With such a hot daytime high, you would want to protect the house's interior from the heat. Which is why I pushed underground. Those glass walls would trap all that heat inside the house.
Regarding glass and high temperatures, west facing windows in Texas summers heat up a house a lot more than windowless west side walls do.
I recall reading that some Frank Lloyd Wright house, famed for its beautiful lines, was hell to heat and hell to maintain.
Palm Springs Climate
Radiant heat is nice- when we designed and built our house I took pains to calculate the roof overhangs and sun position so the winter sun comes in the windows on the upper floor, but the summer sun never reaches them. It helps a lot with climate control.
People do weird stuff, especially builders who pick a stock plan and pop it down with no regard at all for orientation- garage faces the street, regardless of North, South, East or West- seems almost criminal to put the garage facing south in a cool climate, so the main house never gets any winter sun...
regarding protection- there is a guy named selco on one of the prepper sites who lived through the balkan war- just the other day he stated it seemed like his building was hit about every five minutes for a year......I love concrete. Insulated concrete forms is what I would use today. Damned hard to pry a steel jamb when it is backed by grout and rebar.
Was the glass house referred to in the article, the glass cube some big name built in the midwest in the 50's or '60's?
raven
People do weird stuff, especially builders who pick a stock plan and pop it down with no regard at all for orientation-
The builder's story from my hometown was the builder who for HIS HOME, built the house with solar heat. The only problem was that he installed the solar heating on the NORTH SIDE of the house. Solar heating on the north side of the house doesn't work too well in New England.
Gringo, being all my life in L.A., I know the desert and Palm Springs fairly well. That house is on an Eastern outcropping of a roughly North-South ridge of the San Jacinto's, which have peaks over 10k feet. It's one reason Palm Springs is where it is- it's largely shaded after about 2-3 in the afternoon, certainly where that house is it is, maybe earlier.
From the piece on it I linked- "Before its design, Frey spent a year studying the sunlight’s affect on the home’s anticipated mountainside location."
So given the particulars of that location, you can start to see why it didn't need huge overhangs- it only needs to block the high sun from about 11 to 2 in the summer (and it's better to let it in a bit in the winter). Add to that the fact that the windows are actually almost all huge (12 foot wide) sliding glass doors, and you start to understand that he's counting on cross ventilation as part of the equation- and if you know Palm Springs, it's almost always breezy in the afternoons. I once did a biathlon there and for the bike portion, we were literally at one point riding angled over about 8 degrees into the crosswind just to go straight ahead!
Now, I'm sure it gets hot on summer days in that house, but it's likely no worse than your average bungalow without a/c, and maybe better for the ability to open up the walls almost 50% open.
That said, your move of going partially underground is a sound one.
I honestly think the house would be too cold in winter, a little hot in summer (but it's a dry heat!- and that matters to desert rat me!), but really, really nice in spring and summer.
Also, *all* FLLW houses are hell to maintain. Some are impossible, like his Textile block houses where he used native soils to provide the sand for the concrete blocks. Too bad the native soils are acidic. Those blocks a deteriorating at a molecular level now.
Raven- "People do weird stuff..." True, but often we just don't know the mitigating factors. There are lots of things I'd like to do on our designs, but if the client doesn't value that the way I do, it ain't happening (we tend to give the clients what they want, not what we want). Also, sometimes you're up against something that you can't work around reasonably, like code requirements, or budgets, or whatever, and there's no way to show that in the design, so it might look like the architect or designer didn't do their job well, but maybe they did the best they could in difficult circumstances.
And I do wish more people would spring for radiant heat- it's the best.
ICFs are nice (I've not worked directly with them), but from a security standpoint, block is better and monolithic poured in place best. You have to remember that about a third of the thickness of an ICF wall is just foam. But they're quick and easy and that translates to inexpensive to build.
When people refer to "the Glass House", they're usually referring to
Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth house in Plano Il. The article mentioned two- Philip Johnson's ripping off of Mies idea and building it first in New Caanan, CT. It also mentioned one in Brazil by Oscar Niemeyer in Canoa.
And I'm literally cracking up at the North wall solar heating!!
Maybe he was an Aussie ex-pat?!? I suppose he could install big mirrors just North of that to reflect the light in...
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