Black Desert house by Marc Atlan In 2008, I had the idea to search for a parcel of land in the high desert near the town of Joshua Tree, California, on which I could create a completely unique and radical hideaway. The contrast between the unspoiled, almost prehistoric landscape of the area and an avant-garde 21st century structure appealed to me. During my hunt for an appropriate plot, I met a...
Classic California Courtyard Hacienda Ojai, California by Jocelyn Gibbs Many houses evoke personal memories for current or former inhabitants. Some great houses, if they are recognized and preserved, become part of our collective memory for cultural and historical reasons. The William Ford house in Ojai, California, designed by Paul Revere Williams in 1929, is remarkable for its client, for its...
The "New California House" by Nicholas Olsberg American architects in the first years of the Twentieth Century were in desperate search for an end to what Joy Wheeler Dow called “the reign of terror” wrought by the grandiose, over-wrought and bombastic taste in building of the Gilded Age, with its deference to the chateaux and palaces of Europe. Calling, like many others, for an “American...
The John A. Smith House La Habra Heights, California by Jocelyn Gibbs Cliff May (1908-1989), the designer and builder famous for popularizing the California ranch house, insisted that he “built just one kind of house, had just one style.” The persistence of his vision of what a house should be and how people should live, came from his pride in his family’s California heritage —he was related...
The John Storer Residence, 1923 By Nicholas Olsberg Current Photographs by Tim Street-Porter “Frank Lloyd Wright . . . creates architecture as a plastic whole and perceives the new spiritual forces working in the inner being of the masses, in the abstract form.” — TH. Wijdeveld 1925 The Storer house is one of four homes, built at almost the same time, in experimental textured concrete block....
Pavilions in Nature Pierluigi Serraino, AIA Current Photographs by Cameron Carothers Behind great architecture there is always a great client. It is a known fact. The past ancient and recent is full of such examples. That kind of patronage is both rare and precious. Its scarcity is self-evident in the blighted built environment of our time. In fact, it takes concerted effort and sustained...
Spain: Solo Houses Rise A New Dialogue Between Architecture and Nature By Crosby...
architectureforsale.com Quarterly feature: Art + Architecture, Las Vegas Marmol Radziner & James Turrell: Arrowhead By Nicholas Olsberg Photographs by Scott Mayoral Arrowhead is a luxury estate with a radical difference. It lies on the rugged edge of a ridge west of Las Vegas, dramatic views of the mountains behind it and a panoramic vista of the ever-changing city before it. Arrowhead stands as...
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Millard House “La Miniatura” Romance Reigns Here By Hunter Drohojowska-Philp Photographs by Scott Mayoral In the 1920s, Frank Lloyd Wright designed four textile block houses in Los Angeles and, according to Henry Russell Hitchcock, the 1923 Millard residence is the best. Hitchcock was the preeminent architectural historian of his day and organized the landmark exhibition...
The Millard House On The Market Inspires a New Artistic Interpretation by Kurt Wahlner Having grown up an architecture buff up in Los Angeles, the Millard House in Pasadena has always been hidden behind a screen of verdant growth and unapproachability. Consulting architecture books doesn’t really reveal the flow of the space, or how the Studio connects. Photographs – for all their beauty – never...