Century of Progress Architecture

A few weekends ago we went to NW Indiana to a Historic Landmarks event centering around a number of houses involved in the ’33-’34 Chicago Worlds Fair.  The event was aptly dubbed the Century of Progress, and took place in Beverly Shores, Indiana.

The tour consisted of 6 houses, which I’ll list here with any interesting parts about it.

• House of Tomorrow – A three story octagonal home with glass walls on the top two floors.  This vision of the future included an airplane hangar.
• Rostone House – A home that uses a man made stone substitute instead of limestone.
• Florida Tropical House – A very cool pink stucco home with a killer deck as a roof.
• Armco-Ferro House – Composed of steel framing and porcelain encased steel panels.
• Log Cabin – A cypress log cabin that isn’t progressive (IMO) and the most boring of the bunch.  It’s wood.
• Lustron (3 BR model) – Not part of the World’s Fair, it was a bonus tour for Landmarks of a pristine late 40’s prefab home composed of porcelain encased steel.  Very cool and I’ve always wanted an up-close look at one.

With the exception of the Lustron, every home was part of the World’s Fair and is in some stage of a complete restoration.  When I say complete restoration, I mean complete.  Take the Armco-Ferro home – all the steel panels have been removed and are being completely re-created panel by panel.

Cool little things I learned…  A number of the homes were transported to Beverly Shores from Chicago via barge.  These homes were only constructed with the thought of being used for a year.  They are now owned by the National Parks Service and seen over by the Indiana Historic Landmarks Foundation.

The whole thing gave me a lot of things to appreciate and think about.  But now that I’ve had a few days to think about things, I’m struck mostly by the fact that these examples represent what I feel have been important attempts to modernize residential architecture.

The reality is that the vast majority of residential architecture only has improved because of basic material improvements (insulation, drywall, etc) – not necessarily a revolutionary re-thinking of how we live and how homes are constructed.  We mostly still live in wood framed homes with mostly the same components here and there.  I’m well aware of the modern and progressive options out there right now, but developers and communities don’t care about such things in the face of the cheapness and comfort of our old ways.  That’s what would make a difference in actually progressing residential architecture.  Lustron came closer than most, but it didn’t happen.

We took camera’s, but I don’t feel that compelled to post any.  It’s a combination of not being happy with what I took and the fact that the exteriors were in a massive state of rehab (some unrecognizable).  Also, we weren’t allowed to take interior photography despite the homes not being down to the studs (the no interior photography policy of architecture tours really annoys the hell out of me).  There images from other sources that you can find if you’re really interested in this…

If you are interested in any of these things, here are some links

• Beverly Shores Wikipedia Entry
• Basic info on homes and the restoration project
• Basic info on 1933 World’s Fair Homes
• A 2002 NYT Op-Ed piece about the Beverly Shores Preservation Project
• A good blog about the project

Documentaries on Architects

So yes, I’m going to continue blogging… Not because anyone reads this (even though I do appreciate those that do), but because the act of writing this serves as a decent intellectual and personal release even if it goes completely unread. So on with the things that don’t really matter, and thanks to the two friends that happen to have the same name even though they are spelled differently.

I just finished watching a documentary on I.M. Pei, and I’m back into the pondering mode about architecture, public space, and all that in-between. I knew Pei’s name from the Louvre, but my relatively recent immersion into architecture revealed a few other amazing structures I’d experienced that were also works of Pei (IU Art Museum and the National Gallery of Art).

Within the past few years, I’ve seen feature documentaries focusing on the individual works of Louis Kahn, Maya Lin, Frank Gehry, and now I.M. Pei. Let’s split this into the two categories of what I think of their architecture, and what I thought of the documentary.

Pei and Lin are tied for the weakest documentary. The biggest reason for this is that they were both made for TV and mostly an attempt at a rounded view of the architect and their work. Both the content and quality were sub par, but that is also in comparison to the Kahn and Gehry documentaries which are both modern with better production value. The Gehry documentary is a visual powerhouse, but where it stuns visually, it lacks in everything else. The Kahn documentary is the complete package of great visuals, and a great story to boot.

Judging these four as architects is not as easy. Lin has the weakest portfolio due to her age, but her promise is evident. Kahn was lesser known than most of his contemporaries and not as prolific, but many of his few works are extremely masterful. Gehry’s power is his greatest strength, and his biggest weakness in that his works are so wildly imaginative. Pei is the most commercial of the four with arguably the most important pieces.

Lin’s most pivotal piece to date is the Vietnam Memorial, and it is going to be hard to out do in a career, but it is a memorial and not a building. Kahn seems enigmatic and brilliant much ahead of his time, but his lack of a complete career portfolio leaves much to wonder. Gehry can’t do any work without some level of public opposition, but his work can open public minds with wonder. Pei has this highest profile works, and a consistency not shown by any of the other architects.

This isn’t some cage match where I can declare a clear winner, but it does seem that Pei has a distinct advantage. Having been to the Louvre and the National Gallery, I can pay tribute to the amazing work he is capable of. But if you want to see a well rounded documentary, see My Architect (Louis Kahn).

Random Modern Reality

We’re in the market for a new place, and it’s such an interesting position to be in. Architecture appreciation is a hobby of sorts for us. We love to drive around looking at buildings and trying to find what makes them interesting or the polar opposite. I phrase it like that because where there’s one piece of good architecture there are two to three that are not.

So despite the fact that we’re looking at places in a limited budget range, there was the phase of seeing what we could afford in the building vs. buying department. Sure, we could afford some 3,000 square foot CP Morgan house in a suburban county, but being conscious of the effects of suburban reality on society, we made the conscious effort remain more local to the urban core we support and depend on.

Anyway, I looked into modern, pre-fabricated housing (not trailers, though they are quite affordable)… Prefab is attractive to us for three reasons.

1. First of all there’s the design… finding good modern housing is about as rare as hearing G.W. give a speech and not stutter throughout the process
2. Then there’s the factor that buying a prefab house is supposed to be “cost effective”. This makes sense. Building the house in parts within a factory should reduce the costs dramatically.
3. The last reason is the ability to incorporate “green” aspects to the structure more easily than traditional architecture (greatly because it can be implemented in the factory creation of the structure).

So lets get to the point already… The reality is that the term cost effective in terms of what the consumer pays is about $250-$400 per square foot in a new prefab house (this does not include the costs of a lot or the preperation on said lot for the structure to be built on). While this may be cost effective for the top few housing markets (LA, San Francisco, etc), this is an outrageous price for anywhere else.

This came to mind thanks to a story in the LA times (READ IT HERE), and the author reached the same conclusion as I did. Prefab-modern housing will not succeed until it’s accessible to more than the upper class (who can afford custom modern design anyway). I’ll continue to applaud efforts to increase the number of modern houses in the American architecture landscape, but how can It be justified in most of middle America?