Why I care

I've been thinking a lot about why, with this move and this legacy, I am now so interested in the architecture around me. Getting pulled in by one architect's projects has gotten me in much more deeply than anywhere else I have ever lived. Seattle and Berkeley, my two former homes, had lots of interesting houses and architects to see, but I never really connected deeply to the architectural traditions of the two places. I knew about Maybeck, Morgan, Ratcliff and Greene & Greene (in Berkeley) because of houses we drove by every day, but I knew little about the modern architects of the 50s. There are some great brutalist concrete buildings in Berkeley, including the University Art Museum, which is seismically unsound now and may not be with us forever. I love that building as a work of art itself. I never sought out the architect's name until recently.

The Puget Sound has a rich tradition of modernism, and a friend of mine is making a film about a number of the significant modernists.  I never drove around looking for their houses, or sought out names of architects and landscape designers, or looked at mid-century office buildings with interest.

I do think there is something about this part of the world: I am looking for books now on development in the 40s and 50s on the North Shore so I can learn more about the builders that worked up here. There is some good stuff to see! At the same time, I will be looking at buildings in my other cities with a lot more scrutiny than I used to. There is so much to learn and document.

I think this story is also part of the reason we extended ourselves and bought the house we are remodeling:

In the late 60s my parents lived in La Jolla, CA in one of the houses in the Triad, a Case Study project by Killingsworth. There are pictures of us as kids running around in dressup in the glass hallways. Drawings of this Triad that are in my favorite architectural drawing book (after Frank's, of course) and learned the houses and their wonderful layout from the plans. When we were down there looking at colleges we drove by the house and saw that it has been ruined: the glass atriums had been roofed over, the house had had a dreadful eave added, and as my mom said, the house was included in a show as an example of what NOT to do with a modern house.  Imagine a bit of a carbon copy of house C instead of what is there...

Here are some pics from  my partner-in-research, Google Maps:

 We lived in House B, on the left with the new added ugly eaves.

My parents' friends Mariane and Stuart lived in House C, on the right. 

Contrary to what it says on the modern san diego site linked above, the houses were designed as a triad that related to each other, and the two that shared this drive really worked that way. My parents tell stories of dinner parties night after night where they would carry the dining room table back and forth between the two houses. My mom said that M&S, who are still close with my parents, were the best neighbors ever!

 

Here is the other house across the street in the Triad, House A.

I totally remember the defeated feeling we all felt, sitting in front of that house on a sunny day in 1985. Pictures and stories of living in the glass house were a major part of our childhood, and we all wanted to see it like it was then. I like to think that that feeling has been sitting inside me, gestating. Being re-introduced to these houses (through teaching and the show at LACMA in the early 00s?) nurtured the sense I have now of wanting to learn about and preserve this architecture.

Ooof, gotta go feed the hungry kids. More soon.