Remember when, as a young child, you built your own fort or enclave out of sheets, pillows, and some twigs? You were designing (sort of) without ever realizing it. Sure, you didn’t yet have a trained eye for proportion, volume, shadow, or even color, but you were well on your way. Your parents would eventually notice your constructions and laud you with praise, eager to anoint you the successor to architecture’s greatest masters.

How impoverished, then, are today’s young ones, who, rather than developing their own design talents through the process of making, instead merely learn to consume architecture at a very impressionable age. Self-righteousness aside, we would love to be 5 again so that we could pitch camp in this pint-size version of The Farnsworth House. The miniature modernist classic is just one of several similarly-themed “structures” produced by SmartPlayhouses, which recreate avant-guarde houses at a fraction of the original’s size. Click through to see all of the available models. 

more

This week, the Farnsworth House, one of the masterpieces of midcentury modern architecture, posted photographs of the transparent structure surrounded by floodwaters! Built in 1951 and located outside of Chicago, the Mies van der Rohe-designed building has suffered flooding before, in 2008, which caused significant damage. While the staff does not expect the water to enter the house, all emergency precautions have been taken.

Photos: courtesy of the Farnsworth House

more

Whoever is curating LEGO’s Architecture series has our approval. The legendary toymaker has already pixelized some fantastic, if obvious, buildings, from the Villa Savoye to the Farnsworth House and, of course, Fallingwater. Now, LEGO has announced the next classic to be immortalized in the plastic colored bricks. Frank Lloyd Wright’s tragically demolished Imperial Hotel will be the first of the LEGO “Architect” sets to be released in 2013, setting the bar high for the coming toy year. Continue.

more

Yesterday the New York Times wrote about a growing trend in children’s playthings: it seems that after a long day of coloring, selling rocks, or pursuing every extracurricular activity under the sun, kids also need a space to unwind. Enter the luxury playhouse.

more

UC Berkeley Assistant Professor Ronal Rael discusses new ways to envision the border wall between the US and Mexico. “It would be easy for me to raise a picket sign and as an architect say, ‘Down with this wall!’ I have to accept the wall because it exists, but as a designer I see that something better is possible. Why not do something intelligent, something incredible?…a social infrastructure that connects and improves lives on both sides.” [via UC Berkeley]

Head over to the AIA’s website to count how many ways you can socially connect with them for their National Architecture Week. [via AIA.org]

Designer Jamie Hutchinson of the UK created “Bee Stations”  as a way to reduce the stress on the honey bee population, offering “a comfy place [for bees] to rest and recharge with some sugar water.” [via Co.Design]

Critic Alexandra Lange addresses the domestic implications of Eero Saarinen’s Miller House, which we reported last week will open to the public this spring. Watch a video of the house here. [via Design Observer]

The second in a series of Lego architecture designed by the Danish toy company and architect Adam Reed Tucker is a model-size rendition of the Mies Van Der Rohe Farnsworth House. [via BD Online]

more

Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, which some posit makes domestic bliss impossible – due to its lack of a psychological ‘hearth’ space and private space.

The roots of modernism lie, according to many, in a desire to transcend the ‘ornament’ that characterized traditionally middle- to lower-class aspirations towards the aristocracy (or at least a life of greater net-worth). The dawning self-awareness that excessive ornamentation reflects a desperation for social and financial success may have spurred the drive towards austerity and minimalism in design. Who hasn’t looked at someone wearing a crystal-encrusted Ed Hardy shirt and promised themselves they would never buy anything except MUJI t-shirts, ever again?

But: to what extent does science validate the idea that modernism is evidence of evolution?

more

Today the Philip Johnson Glass House, a National Trust for Historic Preservation site, officially launches Glass House Conversations, a website designed in conjunction with the School of Visual Arts. (Log on this week and you’ll find Alice Rawsthorn, the design critic of the International Herald Tribune, leading a discussion about the future of design.)

What does this kind of conversation have to do with preservation? The answer lies in the spirit of the Glass House itself.

Visiting the Glass House, architect Philip Johnson’s weekend retreat in New Canaan, Connecticut, is an engaging experience. Moving from the cluster of white pines that form a fragrant outdoor foyer, through the pathways that artfully connect the ten structures on the site, and into the neatly arranged interior of the main house, one realizes that this was not a retreat in the strictest sense–Philip Johnson designed the entire property to be viewed and enjoyed by others. In an interview with Charlie Rose that took place close to his ninetieth birthday, Johnson corroborated that sentiment, saying, “I designed the Glass House to make people feel good.”

If this hospitable atmosphere continues to make an impression even though Johnson and his partner David Whitney are gone (they both died in 2005), one can only imagine what the Glass House must have been like in its heyday. Johnson completed the first buildings, the Glass House and its counterpart the Brick House, in 1949, and he met Whitney in 1960. The duo was constantly inviting friends, like Andy Warhol and Frank Stella, and lucky students from Johnson’s classes at Yale (a young Robert A.M. Stern) to drop by. They hosted spectacular events, like a “Country Happening” in 1967, a benefit for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company that featured a live performance by the Velvet Underground and dancing on the lawn. The engaging conversations that transpired in the festive atmosphere of the Glass House led architectural historian Vincent Scully, another pal of Johnson, to dub it “the longest-running salon in America.”

But can a salon that has lost its hosts keep on running?

more

The Farnsworth House is one of the only private residence designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.  Completed in 1951, the house served as a weekend retreat outside Chicago, Illinois.

According to Wikipedia:
This small masterpiece showed the world that exposed industrial steel and glass were materials capable of creating architecture of great emotional impact. The glass pavilion is raised six feet above a floodplain next to the Fox River, surrounded by forest and rural prairies. The highly crafted pristine white structural frame and all-glass walls define a simple rectilinear interior space, letting nature and light envelop the interior space.

A wood-panelled fireplace (also housing mechanical equipment, kitchen, and toilets) is positioned within the open space to suggest living, dining and sleeping spaces without using walls. No partitions touch the surrounding all-glass enclosure. Without solid exterior walls, full-height draperies on a perimeter track allow freedom to provide full or partial privacy when and where desired. The house has been described as sublime, a temple hovering between heaven and earth, a poem, a work of art.

Photographer Paul Clemence sent us a few images from his book on the Farnsworth House.  His images evoke the space in a new light that we hope you appreciate.

more