Editors: Ana Tostões
Guest editors: Louise Noelle, Horacio Torrent
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Modern housing, Post-war housing, Welfare architecture, Mass housing.
Devoted to the theme of single-family houses, given the key role they played in the ideal definition of the Modern Movement architecture, as a symbolic and functional affirmation of the utopian turning of dreams into reality, the aim of this issue is to consider the transformation of daily life, and to address the architectural challenges that arose from the joy contained in what we might call the “architecture of happiness.” As we continue to endure a pandemic that has now lasted for more than a year, docomomo wishes to declare that “till the moment, the best vaccine to prevent contagion was invented by architects: the house”. Thus, in response to the question “How should we live?”, it is intended to debate the house and the home agenda as an important topic at the core of Modern Movement architecture. Nowadays, the growing emphasis on wellbeing goes beyond the seminal ideas that modern houses were “machines à habiter” and is closer to an idealistic vision of a stimulating shell for humans, which is shaped by imagination, experimentation, efficiency, and knowledge.
Published:
2021-04-01
Editorial
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Devoted to the theme of single-family houses, given the key role they played in the ideal definition of the Modern Movement architecture, as a symbolic and functional affirmation of the utopian turning of dreams into reality, the aim of this issue is to consider the transformation of daily life, and to address the architectural challenges that arose from the joy contained in what we might call the “architecture of happiness.” As we continue to endure a pandemic that has now lasted for more than a year, docomomo wishes to declare that “till the moment, the best vaccine to prevent...
Introduction
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According to Alvar Aalto, raising the quality of life did not lie in technical and economic capabilities but in the creative work of architects, whose “houses are built where people can lead happy lives,” and only reachable “by concentrating on human happiness.” This search for paradise, magnificently expressed by the Finnish architect, has guided countless projects in modern architecture. The house, the place of home, the world and container of the everyday individual and family life has been the privileged set of this implicit exploration, where many paradises can be recognised. It is...
Essays
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“Chochikukyo” (1928) is the fifth residence designed by and for the architect Koji Fujii (1888-1938). As a result of his research on environmental engineering at Kyoto University, “Chochikukyo” presents the ideal form of a universal “Japanese house” that suits the climate of Japan as well as the sensitivity and lifestyle of the Japanese people. In 1999, “Chochikukyo” was selected as one of the twenty best docomomo buildings to represent Japanese modernist architecture, and in 2017, it was designated as a National Important Cultural Property which was the first time for an architect’s own...
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Brazilian historiography on modern architecture, replicated by international authors, confirms the importance and the pioneer stance of Gregori Ilitch Warchavchik (1896-1972)/Mina Klabin’s (1896-1969) 1927-1932 architecture in São Paulo, and the 1126 Bahia Street (Luiz da Silva Prado) house, 1930-1931, São Paulo, Brazil, is a remarkable example of their initial set of houses. Its design dialogues with other houses simultaneously designed by Adolf Loos (1870-1933), Le Corbusier (1887-1965), Juan O’Gorman (1905-1982), and the connections among all these modernist pieces and their authors...
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Casa Fullana [Fullana House], built in 1955 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is an exemplary model of Henry Klumb’s (1905-1984) design principles for modern living in the tropics. German architect Henry Klumb conducted a prolific architectural practice in Puerto Rico, producing some of the most iconic examples of tropical modernism in the Caribbean. His work, most notably at the University of Puerto Rico (1946-1966) (UPR) and in landmark projects like the San Martin de Porres Church (1948) in Cataño, constituted a breakthrough in Puerto Rican, Caribbean and Latin American architecture. Anchored...
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In his 56 year professional career, Augusto H. Álvarez (1914-1995) built around thirty apartment buildings and over fifty houses. This article analyzes the emblematic house he built for his family between 1959 and 1961, which has been reinvented over time. It’s a work that faithfully reflects Álvarez’s appropriation and interpretation of the ideas of the Modern Movement, revealing a modulated, diaphanous, ordered and flexible space enclosed by a simple volume. It was an integral project because, aside from the structure, the architect also designed its furnishings and system of natural...
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The Torres Posse House (1957-1958) is a testimony to the particular forms that the modern house took in the context of northern Argentina, and at the same time shows how the conservation and sustainability of modern heritage come in large part from the quality of its original project. Built to enjoy the holidays, it was rationally organized, according to the demands of economy, topography of the site, climate, and orientation. The gallery, the most memorable space, is a typological approach that remains in good condition. The project established a stone box within which to arrange a...
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The only French building by the architect Richard Neutra (1892-1970), Delcourt house, built in Croix near Roubaix, France, is frequently forgotten in publications on his work, and is generally considered to be of little significance in the largely American career of its designer. At the end of the 1960s, Marcel Delcourt (1923-2016), a young Chief Executive Officer at the head of the mail order company Les Trois Suisses, was attracted to the American way of life. As the final work of Richard Neutra, the Delcourt residence is a fragile heritage, the result of complex and fruitful exchanges...
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A risen phoenix examines the issues surrounding the reinstatement of an important post-war house in suburban Perth, Western Australia that was destroyed by fire and examines the preservation of the original architect’s design intent through use and interpretation of the documentary evidence, the physical evidence and an understanding of the personality and design ethos of the original architect by the architect for the reinstatement work.
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For the design of the Manuel Magalhães House (1967-1970), Álvaro Siza revisited the purist rationalist principles of Modern Movement architecture. This project represents a shift in his work after the first Matosinhos’ houses and the Tea House of Leça da Palmeira. The appeal to the vernacular roots and a kind of telluric topos that characterized the works of the 1950s, in this project gave rise to an abstract and minimalist approach applied to a domestic life. Intricate and meticulous in all its details from inside to out, in this house the overall design achieves a perfect harmony, in...
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Designed in 1968, the Casa Albero [Tree house], in Fregene near Rome, by Giuseppe Perugini (1914-1995), Uga de Plaisant (1917-2004) and their son Raynaldo Perugini (1950-), constitutes an exceptional case of architectural experimentation. With multiple references to the aesthetic avant-gardes of the 20th century. It is presented as an example of modular, systematic and prefabricated architecture, in which the architects are, simultaneously, authors and part of the experiment themselves. The project functions as an architectural model in 1:1 scale. The concept embodied in this work offers...
Documentation Issues
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Architecturally, Nairobi was never a backwater. Modern architecture in Nairobi developed in the context of the tropical climate design vocabulary of Otto Königsberger (1908-1999), Maxwel Fry (1899-1987) and Jane Drew (1911-1996), within a racially segregated plan. Ideas and ideals of Modernism came with refugees, migrants and magazines from many cultures and places including South Africa, Europe, the Indian sub-continent and the Americas. Projects by internationally renowned architects and planners such as Herbert Baker (1862-1946), Ernst May (1886-1970) and Amyas Connell (1901-1980) set...
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Between 1963 and 1966 Emilio Duhart (1917-2006) worked on the design of this single-family house in what used to be the outskirts of Santiago. During this period, a series of younger collaborators worked on the project, transforming it continuously. Now, confronted with the task of refurbishing the house, we trace back and try to understand the project development by researching archival material. However, it is the process of physically dismantling damaged fabric – almost everything, besides the concrete structure – that really reveals the main principles behind the whole design...
Heritage in danger
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Early on the morning of November 11, 2020, we woke to news of the “fire that destroyed the Klumb House.” The somber story that detailed the complete erasure of the emblematic structure, under the custody of the administration of the University of Puerto Rico, at the express wish of the architect Henry Klumb, went viral and broke the Internet. The newspaper columns proliferated with a wide range of views on the issue. Leaving the essential question: Why did this happen?
Tributes
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Leonardo Mosso (1926-2020) was able to combine art and architecture. He was a collector and an interpreter of 20th century culture that he shared and passed on to succeeding generations of students and collaborators who attended the Alvar Aalto Institute. For many, he was an unsung Maestro, a generous polymath, who maintained an extraordinary curiosity and child-like enthusiasm throughout his long life.
