I happen to live in the neighborhood where Robert Venturi built the now-famous Vanna Venturi House for his mother. I occasionally pass by the building on my morning walks. A long driveway leads down the narrow lot to the front facade, which is almost completely hidden by shrubs and trees in the summer but visible during the winter months. Whenever I stop and look, I remember the first time that I was here, in the summer of 1965. This was only a year after the house was built, although I didn’t know that then. Indeed, I had never heard of Venturi. I was in Chestnut Hill to visit a nearby house by Louis Kahn—already celebrated as the architect of the Richards Medical Building. On the way, I passed the Venturi house. It’s chastening to admit that I didn’t give it a second glance. I was still an architecture student, and I had been taught that proper architecture had white walls and flat roofs—like the Kahn house—not taupe-gray walls and what looked suspiciously like a gable roof. Little did I suspect that I was ignoring what Vincent Scully would later call “the biggest small building of the second half of the twentieth century.”
It’s striking how many important works of early modern architecture have been houses. The long list includes such masterpieces as Wright’s quintessential Prairie house, the Robie residence, the Villa Savoye, in which Le Corbusier introduced the chief elements of what would become known as the International Style, Aalto’s masterful Villa Mairea, and Fallingwater, unsurpassed in Wright’s later oeuvre and after more than sixty years still the best-known modern house in America. The prosperous postwar period saw many innovative residences built in the United States. Mies van der Rohe designed the Farnsworth House and Philip Johnson the Glass House, Richard Neutra built the Kaufmann House, and Charles and Ray Eames built the influential Case Study House No. 8. Postmodernism, too, has had domestic landmarks, not only the Vanna Venturi House, but also Charles Moore’s weekend cottage in Orinda, California. Then there’s Richard Meier’s Smith House, Frank Gehry’s own house in Santa Monica, and Peter Eisenman’s House VI.
There have been so many significant houses that it would be easy to compile a convincing history of twentieth-century architecture illustrated solely by residences. There are several explanations for this curious fact. The simplest is that it is easier for a talented young architect to receive a small private commission than a large public one. And if a client is not forthcoming, a tyro with time on his hands can strut his stuff by building his own home, as Johnson, the Eameses, Moore, and Gehry did.
An architect who lacks the opportunity—or the means—to build for himself has another recourse: Mom and Dad. The most famous example of familial patronage is the Vanna Venturi House, but there have been others. One of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret’s first built works was a house for his parents, and after he left Switzerland for Paris and metamorphosed into Le Corbusier, he designed a retirement home for them beside Lake Geneva. The long narrow plan influenced my first house—for my parents—beside Lake Champlain. Richard Meier built his first large house for his parents, although not in the white neo-Corbusian style that would make him famous. Charles Gwathmey was still an architecture student when he built his first house—for his painter father. The striking house and studio in Amagansett, Long Island, not only introduced modern architecture to the Hamptons but also launched Gwathmey on a prolific career as a designer of homes for the rich and famous.
A house, even a small house, is programmatically more challenging than a small store, say, or a small office. It incorporates sufficient spatial and programmatic complexity that it can convincingly serve as a miniature vehicle for a range of ideas. The transparency and structural rationalism of the Farnsworth House, for example, were architectural concepts that Mies would explore for the rest of his career. Moore’s own little barnlike Orinda house consisted of only one room, but it was a persuasive demonstration of how modernism could be fused with traditional domestic and regional motifs, a theme that would reappear on a larger scale in his better-known Sea Ranch project. Finally, a house is always a house. It is a timeless problem against which a neophyte—or, in the case of Fallingwater, a master—can measure himself.
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, architectural ideas developed slowly, and large public buildings such as cathedrals and churches could advance the art. Modernism places a high value on being avant-garde. But if architecture is to be avant-garde, it must be experimental, and if a building is truly experimental, there must be a chance of failure. Most responsible corporate and public clients are by nature conservative; only a private individual—adventurous, or rich—will normally assume such a risk. Thus, as Aalto explained when he was designing the Villa Mairea, “it is possible to use the individual architectural case as a kind of experimental laboratory.”
The motivation of the innovating architect is obvious, but I wonder about the client. What drives a person to experiment with something as personal and lasting as a home? Is it a craving for notoriety? Is it a sign of social climbing or merely thumbing one’s nose at the establishment? Or is it the traditional desire to assume the role of patron of the arts? No doubt, what attracted some clients to figures like Aalto and Wright, and continues to bring clients to some of today’s celebrity architects, was the desire to be associated, if only for a time, with greatness. The line between patron and groupie is a thin one.
Many avant-garde houses are second homes (the Villa Savoye, the Farnsworth House) or are inhabited by only one or two people (the Venturi house, the Glass House). In such circumstances, functional requirements are greatly simplified. There is no need to deal with the clutter and confusion of family households, and the designer is free to pursue aesthetic concerns to the limit. As a consequence, the aesthetic innovations in many of these houses have little to do with their function as dwellings. This may be why houses that have been architectural milestones have not necessarily been influential domestic models for the general public. Indeed, some distinctly bizarre houses have been elevated to the architectural pantheon, which puzzles—and sometimes alienates—the public. What is one to make of Eisenman’s House VI, with its upside-down staircase and unconventional (leaky) rooftop window? There are notable exceptions. The open plan and horizontal lines of the Robie House inspired American home builders for decades. Fallingwater was much too unconventional to be influential, but the house in Palm Springs that Edgar Kaufmann commissioned from Richard Neutra in 1946 became the prototype for several generations of spread-out, open (and heavily air-conditioned) Southern California houses.
Do experimental houses make good homes? Many don’t. The Farnsworth House lacks screen doors and with only one small operable window is oblivious to normal domestic well-being. A single long kitchen counter is unsuitable for serious cooking; there is a guest bathroom, but no guest bedroom if someone wants to sleep over. Because the walls are of primavera wood, it is impossible to hang pictures without defacing the elegant material. I have similar reservations about other experimental houses. I wonder if the Savoye family finally tired of the stark interiors of their home. They surely were fatigued by continually going up and down the ramp and stairs. Didn’t the rigidity of the plan of Rudolf Schindler’s groundbreaking reinforced-concrete Lovell Beach House feel confining? Doesn’t one get tired of picking up after oneself in the pristine but antiseptic interiors of the Smith House?
Vanna Venturi lived the last decade of her life in her home and is said to have loved it. Postmodernism has come in for much criticism, yet its ability to blend styles and integrate a variety of furnishings makes it particularly amenable to the demands of everyday life. Aalto’s Villa Mairea, too, strikes me as comfortable and livable as well as beautiful. So does the Robie House, although I could do with a little more headroom. These last two houses have something else in common. They are both large family homes, and they are both the work of seasoned designers. By the time Aalto came to design the Villa Mairea, he had a busy decade of public work under his belt, including the extraordinary Paimio Sanatorium. Wright was an experienced house designer when he undertook the Robie residence and had also built the Larkin Administration Building and Unity Temple.
Whether or not architectural experimentation produces good homes, I’m not sure that it always produces better architects. What I mean is that avant-garde houses tolerate a degree of personal expression that is out of place in most buildings. Neutra never produced a public building as interesting as his best houses; the Glass House remains Philip Johnson’s best work. I’ve always admired Charles Moore’s houses, but I find his quirky public buildings less compelling. When Richard Meier amplifies and extends the architectural elements that infuse his houses with a retro-modern charm into large buildings, the effect can be deadening, like listening to a Chopin étude that never ends. House experiments do not always translate well into larger civic buildings that are required to speak a different language, a common language that is understood by a large number of people. They are public, not personal, statements. This difference is something that architects such as Wright and Aalto understood instinctively. That is why they were able to design great public buildings as well as great houses, and great houses that were also good homes.