Daringly Engineered CCTV Tower Beijing Opens After 10 Years

The Beijing CCTV tower, iconic since its conception in 2002, is officially completed.

CCTV_Iwan Baan

The project 10 years in the making saw its official construction completion marked with a ceremony in Beijing on May 16th, 2012.

The China Central Television Headquarters is a landmark in Beijing, transforming the skyline with its unique form and altering the way skyscrapers are perceived. The CCTV tower’s designers, OMA (Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren) began the daring project 10 years ago and, since then, the tower has been critically acclaimed for the innovative design and engineering challenges overcome during construction.

CCTV_Buro-OS

CCTV_Buro-OS

The Staller House By Richard Neutra

Designed by modernist architect Richard Neutra in 1955, the Staller House sits on a 1.1 acre gated lot in Bel Air, an affluent residential community in the Western hills of Los Angeles, California. Not only is the home located “in the Western hills,” it is literally built “into” the hillside, virtually eliminating any sense of a “backyard,” save for one small seating area.

Thus, all front and rear traditional home functions were relegated to the frontside, where Neutra creatively utilized the rolling terrain on the front plus an architectural wall functioning as the main entrance to segregate the front functions from the traditional rear functions of the home. Hence, the drive and entry are together to the left of the structure, while the pool and deck area exist on the right side. Deftly handled.

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Staller House As She Stands Today

Staller House…Brand Spanking New 1955

Restored by award winning studio Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects in 2001, this 6,674 square foot modern residence has four bedrooms and seven baths, a 4,200-bottle refrigerated wine-tasting room, a guest house, two fireplaces, pool, spa, and parking for twelve — just right for both yesterday’s and today’s entertaining.

Also referred to as the Levinsohn House as it was purchased by movie producer Gary Levinsohn in 1998, this home was listed for sale at $10.9 million in june 2011, and was recently offered at $8.5 million.

Sunnylands Revisited — A Purely Modernist Estate Reopens To The Public

The Annenberg Estate Transforms Into A West Coast Camp David

Followup to posting, “Sunnylands Estate By A. Quincy Jones: Art, Architecture, and Power”

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In the mid-1960s, Walter and Leonore Annenberg (both of whom died in the first decade of the 21st century) hired Los Angeles-based architect A. Quincy Jones (1913-1979) to create a midcentury modern residence in Rancho Mirage – Palm Springs, California, where the Annenbergs lived at least five months every year over four decades.

Jones was known both for designs that integrated houses into the landscape and for “statement roofs.” And that statement roof? An iconic pink pyramid. The color was chosen in accordance with Leonore Annenberg’s wish to match the sunset glow on nearby foothills.

A. Quincy Jones’ signature style is evident at Sunnylands, where he used overhangs to shield the interiors from the direct sun, plus walls of glass to allow the climate’s brightness to fill the rooms. Leonore Annenberg’s deep love of flowers and nature is reflected in the cactus and rose gardens that abut the house and terrace. Vast interior rooms flow into each other with the same open expansiveness as the surrounding landscape.

“Traditionally, great estates have been built in historic styles,” explains Los Angeles architect Frederick Fisher. “So it was a bold move on the part of the Annenbergs to bring in a modernist architect to design Sunnylands, one of the great and arguably the only purely modernist estate in the United States.”

The house itself covers a staggering 25,000 square feet on one level and, during its heyday, kept a staff of 20 busy. Outside, 30 full-time gardeners maintained the golf course, tennis courts, 11 artificial lakes (all stocked for fishing) and vast arrays of flora, most of which required constant tending in the extreme desert heat.

Sunnylands was designed for the comfort of its guests as much as its owners: Walter, a media mogul (he founded TV Guide) and an American ambassador to the UK, and his wife, Leonore, who was head of protocol in the first Reagan administration. Fittingly, the house sits at the corner of Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra drives; both entertainers were frequent visitors, signing the guest book alongside foreign ministers and Supreme Court justices. (Sinatra married his fourth wife, Barbara Marx, in a lavish Sunnylands wedding in 1976.)

Now this storied estate is preparing for a whole new generation of visitors as Sunnylands opened to the public in March 2012 for the first time.

Walter Annenberg died in 2002 and Leonore in 2009, and both are buried on the Sunnylands grounds. In their wills, they stipulated that the house would live on as a place for the influential to gather. Having opened this spring, Sunnylands is an invitation-only retreat center, with 22 rooms in the main house and adjoining cottages — a “Camp David West,” hosting “high-level retreats bringing together United States and world leaders in efforts to advance international peace and increase global understanding.”

When not in use as a conclave of the world’s power-brokers, the house will be open to the public for tours (November through July). And for most of the year (from September to July), a new visitor center, featuring exhibits about the house and well-chosen examples of its furniture and art, will serve as Sunnylands’ public face.

Welcome back to Sunnylands!

Some Of Sunnylands Most Frequent Visitors

Ronald & Nancy Reagan Frequented Sunnylands Numerous Times A Year

Kronish House — Neutra Architectural Modernist Classic Saved From Wrecking Ball

Richard Neutra (1892-1970) was one of the most important architects of the mid-century modern period. Born and educated in Vienna, he moved to the US (California) in 1923, where he introduced his conception of mid-century modern design and philosophy — geometric structures making use of glass and flowing internal layout to create a sense of open space.

Designed by this modern master and completed in 1955, the Kronish House came very close to being demolished last summer. The estate sold in a foreclosure auction in January 2011 for $5.8 million and was placed on the market in April for nearly $14 million. Over the summer, unable to sell the “house,” the owner began demolition process by applying for a permit to cap the sewer line.

The property attained status as a flash point among preservationists. The architect’s aging son, Dion Neutra, launched a campaign raising funds to purchase the property, restore the home, and establish a Neutra Foundation Library. Even the LA city council attempted to intervene and save the landmark, despite a lack of existing legal restrictions.

Kronish House when first built.

Kronish sadly disheveled today.

The Kronish house is the last remaining house in Beverly Hills designed by architect Richard Neutra — one of only three Neutra designs ever built in Beverly Hills and the only one remaining intact (one was demolished, the other completely altered). It spans almost 7,000 square feet on a nearly two-acre lot at 9439 Sunset Boulevard.

The sadly disheveled and endangered house avoided the wrecking ball with a last minute purchase by a buyer who offered up $12.8 million for the property.

Susan Smith, the real-estate agent who helped broker the deal, said that the house was purchased in the name of a trust, and that the buyers had been looking for a property with architectural history.

“It will definitely be identifiable as a Neutra house,” wrote Ms. Smith in an email to concerned interests. “The new owner is going to preserve the house, and this will take about two years,” she added. “It will be a private home.”

Although the new owner isn’t planning on working with Richard Neutra’s son, architect Dion Neutra, “they are keeping the structure of the house,” according to Ms. Smith.

Built for Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Kronish, the home has a formal, pinwheel-shaped design. Three wings radiate from a glass-enclosed garden area visible from several rooms. The house features walls of glass and flat, smooth surfaces. The house featured fine finishes and innovative amenities.

“This is Neutra on a grand masterful scale, and akin to the Josef Von Sternberg House (demolished in 1972) in being more a “villa” with its commanding presence, unusual amenities, and fine finishes that are really only seen at this level of craft in his residential work in Italy and Germany,” says Barbara Lamprecht M. Arch., architectural historian, and restoration consultant. “The Kronish House is an exceptional work of architecture even within the Neutra canon.”

In her definitive book, Richard Neutra: Complete Works (Taschen 2000), Lamprecht quotes Neutra regarding his work on the Kronish House:

In a letter dated 31 January 1955, [Neutra] also shared the basis of his architectural convictions in a poignant paragraph: “Every major project like this takes a good deal of ‘starch’ out of me, my life-strength, but there is always deep satisfaction. … This production would not have been possible if I had been a little more casual about what concerns you, or take it all less to heart than I did. After all and in the end, life is a lonely business for each human being even when there is a crowd around us, and an architect and a client must naturally come close and stay in mutual sympathy while a new and a little happier life can start after all the troubles and noise of building.”

Other Classic Neutra Modernist Designs

Neutra at his own home in California.

North Beach House — A Contemporary Take On Environmentally Responsible Modernism

This low-impact, easy to maintain summer home provides contemporary functionality with minimum distractions from wooded land and open view. The solution places the house among mature fir trees located directly between the beach and an upland meadow — walls of glass look out upon both.

As part of the home’s contemporary functionality, the roof is vegetated, which filters rainwater that in turn is collected and stored for use in irrigation. Potable hot water and hydronic heating are aided by solar collectors on the roof, and PV panels above the vegetable garden provide supplemental electricity.

The home is intended for occupancy from May through October, and systems have been designed to zero out electricity use from the grid over the course of a full year.

Location: Orcas Island, WA
Architects: Heliotrope Architects
Contractor: David Shore
Building area: 2,070 sf

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Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House #21

In January 1945 John Entenza, the editor and publisher of Arts & Architecture magazine, announced the Case Study House Program (CSHP) — a program envisioned as a creative response to the impending building boom expected to follow the housing shortages of the Great Depression and World War II. Entenza encouraged participating architects to use donated materials from industry and manufacturers to create low-cost, modern housing prototypes that might foster a dialogue between architectural professionals and laymen.

The program ran from 1945 to 1964, spanning thirty-six individual designs, most of which were constructed and remain classic modernist examples. The CSH program maintained that “each house must be capable of duplication and in no sense be an individual performance” and that “the overall program will be general enough to be of practical assistance to the average American in search of a home in which he can afford to live.” Notwithstanding, these homes were indeed “one-offs” that were, and are to this day, quite expensive homes. Their impact on design advancement, though, was profound and remains influential.

Pierre Koenig on site inspecting progress of CSH #21

In early 1957 psychologist Walter Bailey and his wife Mary commissioned Pierre Koenig to design a 1,200-1,300 square foot house upon a level site nestled within a Hollywood Hills canyon. The Bailey’s were later described in Arts & Architecture magazine as a “contemporary-minded” couple with no children and an informal lifestyle, representing the ideal program for Koenig to realize steel framing’s potential to achieve a truly open design taking advantage of the vast spans that steel facilitated.

By May 1958 Koenig had completed his construction drawings and started collaboration with factories producing the prefabricated steel. The bulk of construction took place from August to November of the same year, and by January 1959 the house was officially completed.

In February 1959 Case Study House #21 was published in Arts & Architecture and was lauded as “some of the cleanest and most immaculate thinking in the development of the small contemporary house.” As for all CSHP participants, the house was opened to the public for several weeks of viewing.

A year later in 1960, a photographer named Julius Shulman (himself a Case Study client) was invited to photograph the Bailey House. The photographs he took would later become iconic symbols of California Modernism.

In the 1980s Koenig’s original kitchen was demolished and was replaced with a center-island cooking station. The slab-like white-vinyl-tiled floors that Koenig originally specified were replaced with wide-grout ceramic tiles. Years later Koenig would describe his impressions of the altered house by saying, “even though I knew what had been going on in this house it was a great shock to see it. My houses are like children to me.”

In 1997, an admirer of Julius Shulman’s photography, film producer Dan Cracchiolo expressed interest in the Bailey House after seeing some of Shulman’s photographs. He made an offer on the property of $1.5 million. The offer was accepted and Cracchiolo immediately commissioned Pierre Koenig to assist with “resuscitating” the original design. The meticulous restoration lasted for over a year, nearly twice the duration of the original construction.

In July 2006 Julius Shulman (at age 95) was invited to revisit Case Study House #21 to photograph in its modern condition for the catalog of an upcoming auction at Wright 20. On December 3, 2006 the property sold for $3,185,600 to an art collector from Japan. This sale represented the second highest price of a Modern house at auction, just behind Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, which sold for $8 million. Reports of the sale describe it as a “watershed moment” in the public acceptance of Modernism as art, rather than real estate.

CGI 3D Views Of CSH #21

Nemours Mansion And Gardens — A.I.du Pont’s American Versailles

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Alfred I. du Pont (1864 – 1935) was an American industrialist, financier and philanthropist. A member of the wealthy Du Pont family, Alfred du Pont first rose to prominence through his work in his family’s Delaware-based gunpowder manufacturing plant, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (better known as DuPont), in which for many years he served as a director of the board and Vice President of operations.

Alfred married Alicia, his second wife, in 1907 and showered her with gifts. By far the grandest of these was the magnificent house that he built for her between 1909 and 1910 on 300-acres in Wilmington, DE. He hired Carrere and Hastings, a prestigious New York architectural firm, to design the mansion in the late-18th-century French style that Alicia adored.

Alfred named the estate Nemours, after the French town that his great-great-grandfather represented in the French Estates General. The mansion resembles a Château and contains more than one-hundred rooms spread over five floors occupying nearly 47,000 sq ft.

The estate has the most developed and largest “jardin à la française” (French formal garden) style landscape garden in North America. The design is patterned after the gardens of Versailles surrounding the Petit Trianon at the Château de Versailles. Their central axis extends ⅓ of a mile from the mansion facade. The grounds are beautifully landscaped with plantings, fountains, pools, statuary, and a pavilion surrounded by woodlands.

The estate, today, is owned by the Nemours Foundation.

Spanish La Pallissa (Hayloft) Conversion Into Loft Home

Architects: Cubus – David Pou van den Bossche y Estel Ortega
Location: Baix Empordà, Catalonia, Spain

The project was based in the rehabilitation and improvement of the northern part of an old masia (basically, located away from main dwellings, structures for farming and livestock) from the 16th century and the hayloft annex. The masia was partitioned between family members, adapting the north area to create three new apartments designed for use in summer, mainly. The areas to rehabilitate consisted of the “Cort del Nino” (where the old family horse lived) and “la Pallissa” (independent building used as the old hayloft), both on the ground floor.

LA PALLISSA
The structure used as a hayloft was cleared out to become an empty stone box, in which the space was conceived three-dimensionally: in cubic meters, not in square meters, despite and because of its small size. Only a new landscape window was carved out of the original stone walls to open the view from the inside to outside.

The distribution is arranged around a new small core of services that allows the original walls of stone to be completely visible all around. A mezzanine that does not occupy the entire perimeter creates a lofted ceiling in the living room and establishes the private bedroom upstairs, hidden by the services volume. The whole construction is developed through traditional construction systems and materials.

The hayloft is now a modern loft/bungalow, fitting a contemporary lifestyle. Well done.

Mid-Century Modern “Bridge House” By John Johansen

John Johansen designed the Warner House as a Neo-Palladian structure during what he called his “Neo-Classical Period. “Chosen as one of the best contemporary homes of 1958 by Architectural Record, the Warner ( or, Bridge) House was also featured in the New York Times, House & Home, and Architectural Design. Recently, this masterpiece sold for $5,000,000. Designed for Mary Ann and Rawleigh Warner, Jr., work began in August 1955 and completed in June 1956.

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Sited so that the Rippowam River bisects the lofty living room in a way that perfectly aligns with a barrel-vaulted ceiling. The ceiling is gold leaf that has burnished to a bronzy, autumnal tone that reflects the glints and dappling of the water below. On five landscaped acres, the 4,500-square-foot Bridge House has six bedrooms, four full bathrooms and a gorgeous stone pool and terrace.

The house has an H-shaped plan with each pavilion addressing a separate function: the parent’s pavilion contained the master suite; the children’s pavilion contained two bedrooms and a bath; the service pavilion contained the kitchen, storage area, a servant’s bedroom, and a basement playroom; and the guest pavilion contained a guest bedroom, bath, and courtyard. The center part of the house contained the social space: a living room, dining room, and balconies overlooking the river.

The architect John Johansen at 95

It’s An Eichler Renovation

Between 1950 and 1974, Joseph Eichler’s company, Eichler Homes, built over 11,000 homes in Northern and Southern California. They all came to be known as “Eichlers” or “an Eichler.” During this period, Eichler became one of the nation’s most influential builders of modern homes.

Joseph Eichler was a social visionary and commissioned designs primarily for middle-class Americans. One of his stated aims was to construct inclusive and diverse planned communities, ideally featuring integrated parks and community centers. Eichler, unlike most builders at the time, established a non-discrimination policy and offered homes for sale to anyone of any religion or race. In 1958, he resigned from the National Association of Home Builders when they refused to support a non-discrimination policy.

Eichler homes are from a branch of Modernist architecture that has come to be known as “California Modern,” and typically feature glass walls, post-and-beam construction, and open floorplans in a style indebted to Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe.

This Eichler house located in San Rafael, Marin County in San Francisco Bay Area, California, was completely remodeled in 2007 by San Francisco-based architects Lucian Rosciszewski and Marek Slosar. While Eichlers were built to bring modernism to the middle-class, today, this 1944 square foot house is back on the market for a well-above-middle-class $1,198,000.

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