A Visit to Frank Lloyd Wright's Auldbrass

I was invited by Nelson Brackin (President of the Friend's of Kebyar: http://www.kebyar.com/) to attend the Biannual public tour of Auldbrass in Yemassee, South Carolina. Auldbrass is the only Frank Lloyd Wright designed southern plantation nestled on property along the River. From the Beaufort Open Land Trust site (http://www.openlandtrust.com/auldbrass.html):

Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1939, the Auldbrass Plantation buildings, consisting of the main house, kennels, stables, barn and various outbuildings, were constructed during the forties by the late C. Leigh Stevens who called on Wright to design a self-sufficient modern plantation for farming, hunting, and entertaining.

In keeping with his theories of organic architecture, Wright designed Auldbrass to be in harmony with the landscape of which it is a part. Constructed of native cypress boards laid diagonally at 80 degree angles and held by brass screws, the exterior is intended to conform to the lean of indigenous live oak trees, while the abstract forms of ornamental rainspouts suggest hanging clumps of Spanish moss.

In 1987, the plantation was purchased by Joel Silver, a successful film producer and ardent admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright. Mr. Silver has meticulously completed the majority of Wright’s original plan, thus fulfilling Wright’s and Stevens’ dream of making Auldbrass a great 20th century architectural treasure. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

We drove down Friday so we could get an early start for the tour - actually arriving about 30 minutes before the tour started at 10:00 AM - which was beneficial as they allowed those already there to enter early - the initial group was about 25 people (there were 2000 tickets sold for the 2 day tour). The docents for the tour were standing at the gate for the estate, which is surrounded by a wooden fence (angled at 80 degrees to emulate the other use of 80 degrees in the wall angles - this is repeated continuously in Wright style). The walk to the main buildings allowed for little preview of the actual structures, until almost upon them so the "reveal" was heightened. It was a beautiful day, slightly chilly but warming up nicely as the day progressed. The place is truly spectacular.

Rather than talk about the obvious, here's an album of images I took:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14338634@N02/sets/72157603003163021/

Lunch was held at the Old Sheldon Church right around the corner. Seems the ruins were from the first attempt at a Greek style temple in the Americas. Images and info here: http://www.charmingtowns.com/dir/society/historic_sites/sheldon_church.html

In all it was an exciting and delightful trip, which I hope to do again. It's also exciting to see such a well done restoration (kudos Joel Silver!). From the book (which I purchased on Amazon) it appears Mr Silver plans to build the additional structures planned but not completed (with the help of Eric Lloyd Wright).

-- John

DOCOMOMO Home Tour Reception at context

I found a few shots that I took at the DOCOMOMO Home Tour reception (this was the night prior to the actual tour on Saturday) at * context * gallery. Images are of the volunteers, guest speakers and some very interesting furniture on display (all for sale - see http://www.contextgallery.com/ for more details).

-- John

Some Interesting Modern Homes

Check out these Cantilevers:
http://www.mvrdv.nl/_v2/projects/015_wozoco/index.html

Dome House:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/reviews/dome-house-hawthorn/2005/06/21/1119321730611.html

Forest Spiral Building:
http://www.darmstadt.de/en/sights/hundertwasser/index.html

Vertical House:
http://openformarchitecture.wordpress.com/2007/04/09/vertical-house/

Billboard House:

http://www.frontarchitects.pl/PROJEKTY/HOUSES/shauz/sha1.htm

Read the rest of the post "Architecture From Another Planet - 25 Incredible (Real) Abodes"
http://www.intlistings.com/articles/2007/architecture-from-another-planet-25-incredible-real-abodes/

-- John

2007 DOCOMOMO Home Tour - Part 3

The final house on the tour will be of most interest to this group. This house is owned by Jeff Dowd and his wife and is also in the Amberwood sub-division. It's located on the crest of a ridge so the yard slopes both to the front and back, as well as to one side.

The owner knows very little about the original designer of the house and has spent the last few years since his purchase in doing remodels, adding an addition behind the left side (one bedroom was made into an office, the garage on that side closed off for storage, parking moved to the rear part of the addition and additional family room space added to that side). The house has a full basement that is used as an apartment by Jeff's mother (it has a private entrance and driveway on the right side of the yard, below the decking). The master bedroom and master bath have both been reworked by Dowd as well as the rather involved landscaping.

When purchased, the rear wall had been pushed out to incorporate the patio (original fire-pit style grill is still attached and uses the existing chimney for ventilation, though it's unused). An arbor-style extension (extending the existing beams past the rear wall glass-wall) was added to the back to provide some much needed shade to the rear of the house. The front door has been replaced by a really beautiful, hand-carved mahogany double door from Brazil. The over-all effect is a large living expanse open to both front and back with some amazing birch trees obscuring the street from the living room.

Jeff decided to keep and have restored the original wall-mounted oven with slide-out stove. To the right of the sink is an original counter-top Nutone blender unit. The bathroom remodel is stunning, with a large tiled tub and exterior sliding glass to the exterior and over-head skylight. The real beauty of the house is in it's modernistic, very Asian design elements - the owner had viewed the botanical gardens in Portland used these as influences in the deck railing design (top rail is roof-beveled to shed water).

Photo Album here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14338634@N02/sets/72157602234061713/

-- John

DOCOMOMO GA Home Tour 2007 Part 2

This is the second part of three describing the DOCOMOMO Home Tour held on 2007.09.29 in Atlanta, GA. The second house on the tour was also designed by Robert Green and construction was finished in 1964, I believe. The story is that RG had designed the home for a client who then decided not to build. Around the same time, RG was designing homes for the Amberwood development - this was a unique neighborhood with a business model of selling unbuilt lots - the buyer would then either purchase plans and construction from the developer or bring in his/her own architect and building crew. In this case, RG built one custom house (the Nicoll house - more here: http://www.modusmodern.com/robertgreen/nicoll.asp) and had been hired to build the entryway to the neighborhood - the developer saw the original plans Robert had created and hired him to adapt them to the lot it's currently on - the developer's name was Robert Witcher (more images and the plan here: http://www.modusmodern.com/robertgreen/arrowhead.asp).


The Witchers lived in the home with their two small children for 7 years before selling to the current owners (actually the surviving second wife of the second owner). The House featured an 8x8 tiled bath that could be filled with water that the children referred to as their "kiddie pool." Unfortunately I didn't take any images of the room, as it's quite spectacular with a full skylight above the space and light green jade tile, commode and sinks. The house is quite unusual with a main structure making up the "point" of the arrow, a long hall with small alcoves opposing bedrooms, and a "tail" family room that was formerly a carport - RG was hired to transform the carport into the current family room and an external 2 car garage was added - at some point the garage was extended upward and a guest house was built, much to RG's dismay. Two additional structures were also added, a pool house and a workshop - neither of these three structures have more than a passing resemblence to the original structure (the garage has obvious lines in the bottom floor and some details were carried over, but the general lines were all abandoned).

The long hallway reveals many surprises, FLW style, with new rooms, alcoves, shelving and geometric shapes around every corner. The main living room comes to a slightly acute point, with a two sided fireplace in the opposite corner. The front eave of the house actually comes down to chest level making this a remarkable construction indeed.

Photo Album here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14338634@N02/sets/72157602225231786/

Part 3, the Dowd residence, will go up shortly.

-- John

DOCOMOMO GA Home Tour 2007 Part 1

I thought I would provide some running commentary plus some photos from the DOCOMOMO Home Tour yesterday (2007.09.29).

Cindi and I left the house at 9:00 AM but had to run some errands (placing directional signs and ballons around the Amberwood subdivision for the tour) before arriving at the first house. Because we shared responsibilities as docents at the Dowd House (in Amberwood) and were expected to arrive by 1:45 to relieve the first docents, we were limited in time and decided to only view the 3 houses on the tour, regrettably bypassing the condo at Plaza Towers. There were four homes in total on the tour and they were separated by some distance so one would need to factor in some travel time. This year two homes were designed by Wright Fellow Robert Green - the first is the Copeland house near buckhead off of Northside Drive. This first photoset features the images I took in the morning before heading back towards Amberwood (the two remaining homes were both in Amberwood).

As to the Copeland House, there's not much I can say that hasn't already been said. The current homeowners were present and had photos of the original construction and comparison shots of two historical remodels, passed to them from previous owners. The house is simply amazing. The level of detail and use of materials was quite stunning, even the furnishings (I wish I would have taken some images of the Nakashima table) had the effect of flooring me as I crossed rooms. I was running low on disk space so I spent most of my time taking shots of architectural details. I also tried to get shots that didn't contain people, so some of the details are sparce. I hope to aggregate photos taken from others to make a more complete journal of the visit - an hour went by very quickly.

Photo Album here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14338634@N02/sets/72157602207959344

I'll try to get photos of Arrow Head up later tonight or tomorrow.

-- John

Review on "Consider the Ranch" Lecture

I wanted to report a bit on the DOCOMOMO "Consider the Ranch" lecture held on 8/21/07 at DWR in Buckhead. It was attended by 15-20 people (I didn't do a head-count) and was once again a very informative and enthralling presentation. Part 1 (which I missed on the 14th, however the speaker, Richard Cloues from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Historic Preservation Division, did a quick 15-20 minute review) featured the development of the ranch house in the united states - basically its influences and first appearance outside of a typical western farm or ranch setting (thus the name). He made mention of "Chicken House Gothic" which I found enlightening and humorous, and discussed Cliff May as well as Joseph Eichler's influence (the latter on the post and beam construction typical of Eichler's dwellings). There was also mention of Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie home and his influences on ranch design (in particular the prominent fireplace as a design element).

Part 2 focused on the appearance of the ranch house in Georgia. The ubiquitous "red brick ranch" so popular in Georgia, was highlighted several times, but the primary focus was on classifying the actual building of the Ranch into developments, sub-divisions, in-fill and stand-alone construction in context by year and region. Some significant information I'd like to bring attention to:

1. The first Development (defined as a large land tract built from a multi-use, community perspective with schools, churches and some commercial properties within the plan) that contained ranches in Atlanta (and perhaps Georgia) was along Buford Highway in the North Woods area - this was the brain child of Walter Talley, funded by "bankers in Boston." The neighborhood features parks, divided roads, churches, schools and homes built with a similar look and feel (even though the home styles changed as the neighborhood was built-out - the earliest are simple boxy ranch houses - the later mid-century moderns and tri-levels).
2. Walter Talley is significant to me as my own community of Northcrest also had Walter Talley as either a silent or early partner (The original builders appear to have been three gentlemen, Walter Talley, Howard Hardrath and Paul Edwards who laid-in the roads for Northcrest under the name "THE, Inc" (from their last names, get it?). At some point early on, Walter Talley either became a silent partner or bowed out completely - leaving Paul and Howard to continue under the P&H Realty Company name (from their first names - Paul and Howard). P&H Homes, Inc began building Northcrest in the mid to late 50's and Northcrest was probably one of their largest if not their only development.
3. From part 1, it was noted that the split-level actually pre-dates the Ranch - it's commonly thought that it came after as a variation of the design, but Frank Lloyd Wright used the split-level concept going back to the 20's - the ranch wasn't really marketed until the 40's (whether by that name or any other). A ranch can have a basement or partial basement - what distinguishes the ranch style is a single floor of living space (open stairs to a finished basement would put the structure into a split level classification). It's my opinion that the Ranch attained popularity as builders across the US attempted to do a "cheap" version of the FLW prairie home.
4. One very good example of ranch development is along Lenox Road - there are very-built ranches along the road and it can be used as a catalog of different styles.

In any case, for those who attended, the lecture was very informative. For those of you who couldn't attend, my hope is that a transcript will become available at some time, as well as some of the photographs used in the lecture.

-- John