Top 10 Architects' Homes - 10 Ngôi nhà đầu bảng
This week, I'm going to try and inspire you by showcasing my selection of Top 10 Architects' homes. When recently I came across the ABC series In the mind of the architect, I was thrilled to see the first episode featuring Sean Godsell and his own Kew House designed for his family. As his buildings possess a certain radical austerity and experiment, Godsell's home expectedly showcased his own theoretical and architectural explorations put into practice. While the camera was rotating around the elegant metal-and-glass structure, his wife commented that
"Living here is about accepting the fact that you are in a very public domain. It's accepting the fact that your husband has a profession and the profession involves experimenting in the private domain."
One would almost admire her understanding learning that very soon after they moved in she had to get used to changing in the cupboard as there were no blinds even in the all-glass master bedroom. According to Godsell himself,
"It's a symbolic gesture as well as a pragmatic one, but it forces a socialization that we need to deal with as a society in Australia. It forces tolerance within the house."
Yet the daring and beautiful house enjoyed little tolerance from outsiders, often subjected to offensive remarks comparing it to a fish bowl, a zoo and even Auschwitz.
"There is the house you dream about living in and then the house you actually live in. Architects' houses are a third thing: we want to live in them, we dream to live in them and then we have to live in them."
says architect David Luck. And while Godsell could probably get over his symbolic and pragmatic gesture being compared to a Nazi camp, urban myths say that a family member broke his leg while trying to inhabit the famous Stonehouse of the radical Austrian Gunther Domenig. After more than 20 years of design and construction, the completion of Domenig's magnum opus in 2008 was celebrated by visionary architects like Thom Mayne, Wolf D. Prix and Hans Hollein. According to Lebbeus Woods, it was conceived as
"a work of architecture limited only by [Domenig's] imagination and skill, at once a manifesto and an experiment, the outcome of which he could not be sure of at the beginning."
And while it is called a house and its interior suggests this, the architect actually never cared much for living there; Domenig observed the construction of his ever-changing beautiful monster from a small trailer in the back yard, where he used to stay. Currently the Stonehouse is a cultural icon, housing concerts, as well as being featured in numerous magazines and television programs. The Top 10 shows more examples of Architects designing their homes - and there is more on the topic after the break.
Because this building forces one to confront oneself, then if you don’t really feel good about yourself, you probably don’t like the building. There is nowhere to hide in that sense.
Domenig's own house became a personal manifesto. With more than 20 years of construction, it was an outlet for the architect's technical and formal experiments over the years, about which he states: “I have reached my limits in every respect. Here we shall see what I really can carry out in architecture."
A decade before the first recognized Deconstructivist public project, Gehry took a seemingly ordinary house in Santa Monica and began transforming it through deconstructing its traditional elements and reassembling them according to a logic of his own.
Hadid’s own flat is more of a showroom of some of her iconic art and design pieces rather than a cozy personal home. Almost entirely devoid of traditional furniture, the place reflects her style as an architect and designer, yet tells little about her personality.
'Just a tin shed" is the way architect John Henry described his Research House, when years ago it was shortlisted for the Interior Design Awards. Executed in Henry's typical hands-on approach, this relatively cheap house (less than 300 000$) features an interior garden and a cascade of stairs and levels filled with the architect's collection of modern furniture.
Architect Dominic Stevens and his artist wife built their own biodegradable house in Ireland's countryside. Stevens designed a modular system in which boxes can be added and subtracted according to changing spatial requirements. In his own words, It’s not the house as a product, it’s more the house as a process. Over the life cycle of our family growing, it can constantly adapt to the needs of different ages of children. The house is amorphous as opposed to static.
Ricardo Bofill discovered an abandoned cement factory in 1973 comprised of over 30 silos, underground galleries and engine rooms. He bought it and not so long after, transformed it through a diverse program featuring his own architectural office, exhibition spaces, guest rooms and a home for him and his family.
Architect Terunobu Fujimori's "tea house placed too high" (as the name translates loosely) responds to an ancient tradition, in which tea masters were designing and building their teahouses themselves. Placed on two chestnut trees, the house is accesible through free-standing ladders and sways in the wind.
Susanne Nobis designed this house for her own family of four. The two shed-like volumes feature areas for daily life and work, carefully separated from each other, yet preserving the feel of an aesthetic and functional entity.
The design of the house was proposed by the Eames as part of the famous Case Study House program (1944-1966), which commissioned major architects to design and build inexpensive and efficient model homes after the end of World War II and the subsequent housing boom. The project which later became their own home and studio reflected Eames' own needs: a young couple's space to live, work and enjoy in harmony with nature.
Perhaps an architect's home is a dream come true, a chance to unleash one's own creativity and design philosophy, often constrained by clients, cost, programme and functionality - after all, which self-respecting contractor would understand that something as trivial as blinds in the bedroom compromises the socio-political message of the building? And in the case of visionaries, it often means imposing one's own quest into the possibilities of architecture to their families, which have to accept the necessary margin of error in experimentation.
However, designing one's own house is something more than simply conducting a spatial experiment on daily life. "We should make our buildings first, then learn how to live in them.", says Lebbeus Woods and the common mantra of clients that "my house should be a reflection of my personality" here deepens to often very candid, poetic explorations of daily life and the inherent belief that architecture can actually transform people, that rather being simply a construct of comfort and utility it is a being on its own, a series of psychological snapshots of the paths one's mind took while creating and inhabiting it. Perhaps I'm stretching a bit too far here: as you'll see some of the selected designs are pretty much common-sense and would work for the majority of us, as they respond to contemporary trends and aesthetics in a tasteful, yet predictable way. And while Stonehouse could be simply seen as the expression of an egomanic spirit who had seemingly departed from the human concerns for functionality, cost and physical safety, I prefer what Lebbeus Woods has to say for it:
"The Stonehouse belongs to a different world than the one we normally inhabit, and it dares us to find ways to inhabit it, or even to talk about it. Yet here it is, both realized, and real. How real are we, as we stand in confrontation with this difficult work of architecture? Let us be grateful to Günther Domenig for giving us a chance to find out."
This week, I'm going to try and inspire you by showcasing my selection of Top 10 Architects' homes. When recently I came across the ABC series In the mind of the architect, I was thrilled to see the first episode featuring Sean Godsell and his own Kew House designed for his family. As his buildings possess a certain radical austerity and experiment, Godsell's home expectedly showcased his own theoretical and architectural explorations put into practice. While the camera was rotating around the elegant metal-and-glass structure, his wife commented that
"Living here is about accepting the fact that you are in a very public domain. It's accepting the fact that your husband has a profession and the profession involves experimenting in the private domain."
One would almost admire her understanding learning that very soon after they moved in she had to get used to changing in the cupboard as there were no blinds even in the all-glass master bedroom. According to Godsell himself,
"It's a symbolic gesture as well as a pragmatic one, but it forces a socialization that we need to deal with as a society in Australia. It forces tolerance within the house."
Yet the daring and beautiful house enjoyed little tolerance from outsiders, often subjected to offensive remarks comparing it to a fish bowl, a zoo and even Auschwitz.
"There is the house you dream about living in and then the house you actually live in. Architects' houses are a third thing: we want to live in them, we dream to live in them and then we have to live in them."
says architect David Luck. And while Godsell could probably get over his symbolic and pragmatic gesture being compared to a Nazi camp, urban myths say that a family member broke his leg while trying to inhabit the famous Stonehouse of the radical Austrian Gunther Domenig. After more than 20 years of design and construction, the completion of Domenig's magnum opus in 2008 was celebrated by visionary architects like Thom Mayne, Wolf D. Prix and Hans Hollein. According to Lebbeus Woods, it was conceived as
"a work of architecture limited only by [Domenig's] imagination and skill, at once a manifesto and an experiment, the outcome of which he could not be sure of at the beginning."
And while it is called a house and its interior suggests this, the architect actually never cared much for living there; Domenig observed the construction of his ever-changing beautiful monster from a small trailer in the back yard, where he used to stay. Currently the Stonehouse is a cultural icon, housing concerts, as well as being featured in numerous magazines and television programs. The Top 10 shows more examples of Architects designing their homes - and there is more on the topic after the break.
Perhaps an architect's home is a dream come true, a chance to unleash one's own creativity and design philosophy, often constrained by clients, cost, programme and functionality - after all, which self-respecting contractor would understand that something as trivial as blinds in the bedroom compromises the socio-political message of the building? And in the case of visionaries, it often means imposing one's own quest into the possibilities of architecture to their families, which have to accept the necessary margin of error in experimentation.
However, designing one's own house is something more than simply conducting a spatial experiment on daily life. "We should make our buildings first, then learn how to live in them.", says Lebbeus Woods and the common mantra of clients that "my house should be a reflection of my personality" here deepens to often very candid, poetic explorations of daily life and the inherent belief that architecture can actually transform people, that rather being simply a construct of comfort and utility it is a being on its own, a series of psychological snapshots of the paths one's mind took while creating and inhabiting it. Perhaps I'm stretching a bit too far here: as you'll see some of the selected designs are pretty much common-sense and would work for the majority of us, as they respond to contemporary trends and aesthetics in a tasteful, yet predictable way. And while Stonehouse could be simply seen as the expression of an egomanic spirit who had seemingly departed from the human concerns for functionality, cost and physical safety, I prefer what Lebbeus Woods has to say for it:
"The Stonehouse belongs to a different world than the one we normally inhabit, and it dares us to find ways to inhabit it, or even to talk about it. Yet here it is, both realized, and real. How real are we, as we stand in confrontation with this difficult work of architecture? Let us be grateful to Günther Domenig for giving us a chance to find out."
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