Retro Design Porn
Atomic Ranch - The Magazine About The House Where The Girl Next Door Lived
Somehow, Atomic Ranch, which may be the coolest name for a house magazine ever, has been published quarterly since Spring 2004 without coming to my notice until a week ago when an issue caught my eye at the local Borders.
Devoted to 40s-70’s ranch homes and modernist track houses, Atomic ranch is a design and nostalgia bonanza for those with a taste for what the more uppity rags label Midcentury Modern and Boomers who grew up in or aspired to such dwellings.
DrHGuy qualifies for both categories.
Yes, you read that correctly. DrHGuy’s parents, the folks who built, furnished, and decorated the log house featured in The Parental Home Curios Photo Safari, one wall of which is depicted below, also built, furnished, and decorated - precisely as DrHGuy was entering adolescence - a turquoise ranch home with the pathognomonic sunburst clock on the wall.
The furniture included saucer chairs (for adults), a sectional sofa, and a coffee table, the shape of which was held to resemble either an amoeba or an easel.
The curtains were of a pattern not unlike that displayed below.
Not that my parents didn’t have their limits. There was no car port, no Eames chair, and certainly no Tiki bar.
Nonetheless, we were Atomic Ranch folk - although we were the branch of the family that lived in the Ozarks hills where the Fifties didn’t arrive until the mid-Sixties.
Contents
Atomic Ranch has how-to stories, iterations of the obligatory house restoration saga (i.e., we thought it would be fun, it went 300% over budget, took two years instead of two month, it nearly broke up our marriage, and we love the results), and an occasional enraged editorial about Midcentury Modern gettin’ no respect, but mostly Atomic Ranch is a showcase for pictures of ranch houses, their furnishings, and their associated cultural artifacts.
An article in the most recent issue, for example, displays a batch of the first pocket-sized transistor radios.
Although DrHGuy’s five transistor rust colored Silvertone is not among those pictured, the ones shown evoke that plastic-encasede miracle that linked a twelve year old kid in rural southwestern Missouri with pre-Beatles Rock and Roll as practiced by AM stations in Chicago, Kansas City, Little Rock, and a couple of towns in Texas, the call letters of which have long since been forgotten. What hasn’t been forgotten are the music, the DJs, and the exotic and erotic excitement of the thing.
That kind of iconic content makes scanning Atomic Ranch an endearing memory-fest for those, like DrHGuy, of a certain age as well as an entrée to a visual feast of homes and furnishings that were integral parts of this nation’s most optimistic era - and the most fun you can have in an Eames chair with your clothes on.
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Cyber-Bookmarks From DrHGuy: 26 October 2007
A sporadically promulgated annotated listing of arguably worthwhile, recently published online reading, new or revised websites of potential utility or ostensible interest, and other internet-accessible experiences that, were it not for the casually collected, cavalierly collated, & capriciously collocated components comprising these posts, could easily be overlooked - which would be, in some cases, a shame
Suspended Elegance
Walking On Air: The Joy Of Footbridges By Witold Rybczynski
Slate. 24 October 2007
I’ve long had a thing for footbridges. Indeed, one of the few disappointments in the process of designing Heck of a House was that, regardless of how the house was sited, I couldn’t rationalize a footbridge or two. Consequently, it’s no surprise that I’m taken with Rybczynski’s footbridge slide show with annotations featured in Slate this week. The specimens shown range from spectacularly functional to wonderfully aesthetic with some combining the best of both qualities.
This display of fascinating footbridges can be found at Walking On Air: The Joy Of Footbridges
In The Nude For Travel
Top Places In World To ‘Let It All Hang Out’ By Amy Rosen
CanWest News Service. October 2007.
I suppose I’ve had a thing for naked even before I had a thing for footbridges. In any case, when I ran across this article about the best buff beaches and boats, it seemed worth exploring, but I was convinced to include it in this edition of Cyber-Bookmarks after I read the intriguing, albeit ambiguous declaration that
$400 million of the U.S. economy
OK, I admit I am also enthralled by the vision conjured up with the discovery of “the 12-hectare Mira Vista Resort, a nudist dude ranch in Tucson, Ariz., which is done up like an 1800s Wild West town.” Immediately the picture of DS wearing only spurs comes to mind.
Several resorts in the US are listed as well as a retreat in the Mexican Caribbean, a French coastal resort in a town of 40,000 naturists, and a luxurious nude cruise marketed under the name - get ready - Hidden Jewels of the Caribbean.
This piece on travel au naturel is available at Top Places In World To ‘Let It All Hang Out’
Putting The Fix On The Pix
Altered Graphics From The Heck of a Guy Files
[Click on graphic to view larger image]
Top 15 Manipulated Photographs By jfrater
TheListUniverse.com. 19 October 2007
DrHGuy has, as indicated by the above collage of samples taken from Heck of a Guy Blog, occasionally fine-tuned a photo to remove a distraction or highlight some portion of the image. These amateur-level antics, however, are not in the same league as the big-time manipulations on exhibit in this listing. I’ve included one sample below to give readers a taste of the offering.
This impressive and worrisome photo essay can be viewed at Top 15 Manipulated Photographs
Once You Go Mac You Can Still Go Back To PC
The Complete Guide to Mac/Windows Interoperability By Gina Trapani
Lifehacker.com. 19 October 2007
If, like DrHGuy, you’ve got a crush on a Mac and are considering leaving your PC but can’t afford to lose those PC programs in the property settlement and don’t want to worry about the incompatibility problems between the blended families, now you can set up housekeeping with your beloved Mac and still enjoy a friends with benefits arrangement with your old PC.
Today, Mac OS and Windows can work together on the same network, share files, and use many of the same gizmos. Lifehacker offers a nifty primer about what does and doesn’t work when one dallies spontaneously with Mac and PC.
This timely info can be found at The Complete Guide to Mac/Windows Interoperability
Welcome To Babel: Translating Sacred Poetry
Psalm Springs - How I Translated The Bible’s Most Poetic Book By Robert Alter
Slate. 26 September 2007
Translation of poetry is a puzzle so complex, multifaceted, and difficult that it seems to most of us as mystical as advanced physics calculations. In the case of the Psalms, of course, one adds to that task the burden of dealing with one of the world’s major religious texts that is also replete with historical import. Oh, and also add the fact that the Psalms were composed by “anonymous poets over a period of more than five centuries,” and one quickly realizes that this is not a job for the timid. Yet, the process involved in translating poetry offers a unique insight into the workings of literary thought. I’ve re-read this essay about the translation of these Hebrew poems into contemporary English a half -dozen times in the month since it was published and found it rewarding each time.
This excerpt is typical:
This article, as well as a link to a sound file of the author reading from his translations, is online at Psalm Springs - How I Translated The Bible’s Most Poetic Book
Mr (and Ms) Fix-it
25 Skills Every Man Should Know: Your Ultimate DIY Guide
Popular Mechanics. October 2007
This is in every way a prototypal Popular Mechanics article, full of useful information presented with a moral imperative of self-reliance. Or, as the introduction puts it,
My only criticism is the gender-indicative title. I find none of the tasks listed, from Fillet a Fish to Perform CPR to Protect Your Computer to Patch A Radiator Hose, to be testosterone-specific.
Come to think of it, with the possible exceptions of the items dealing with computers, I suspect1 Mary from View From A Farm House Window can perform each of these items better than I can.
Regardless, this how-to guide can be found at 25 Skills Every Man Should Know: Your Ultimate DIY Guide
Footnotes
- ”Suspect” in this sentence is a face-saving word for “am absolutely certain,” ~back~
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The Mystery Architect Of Metropolitan Home’s Grand Prize House
[Click on graphic to view larger image]
The 2002 Metropolitan Home Grand Prize House of the Year
The above photo illustrates “The Metropolitan Home Grand Prize House of the Year” article from the January 2002 issue of that magazine.
Viewers who have read the recent Heck of a Guy posts, Heck of a House: A Manor In The Jacobsenian Manner and More About Jacobsen, will not be surprised to learn that I originally purchased this issue of the magazine from the newsstand because the pictured Grand Prize House of the Year was so distinctly characteristic of the style of Hugh Jacobsen1 that I was intuitively certain that it was designed by or, like my own home, directly influenced by that architect.
The Pristine White Barn That Inspired The Grand Prize House
As it turned out, the article contained no reference to Jacobsen. Instead, the inspiration for the design was described as an epiphany:
After a year’s focused research into different architectural styles, the couple [the owners] stumbled upon a solution serendipitously, during a country drive. “We spotted a pristine white barn alone in a field,” recalls Tony. “It had no shrubs, no adornments, no distractions. That was it.”
Hmmmm. Ol’ Tony sees a barn and creates an original home design.
Remarkable.
Even more remarkable, the owners were able to spend a year preforming “focused research on different architectural styles,” yet somehow keep their final concept pure, uncontaminated by the work of at least one architect who designed a batch of houses that look a lot like theirs.
To build our home, Heck of a House, in the same style, Julie, Builder-Buddy,2 and I had to steal adapt Jacobsen’s concepts. I feel so dirty.
The Plot Thickens
To recapitulate, the six page article in this well-known magazine proclaiming this place the “Grand Prize House of the Year” presented it as an original design (inspired by a pristine barn) by the owners, Anne and Tony Vanderwarker, and a Virginia architect, Jeff Dreyfus, although, even to a amateur like me, the resemblance to Jacobsen’s work was unmistakable and immediately recognizable with a single glance at the photo of the house.
Still, my autodidactic architectural studies have admittedly been sparse, spotty, and sporadic. To assure that my suspicions weren’t the result of exposure to too many conspiracy theories, I emailed the article to the normally calm, cool, and controlled Builder-Buddy, who became apoplectic, sending the publishers a message studded with terms such as “absolute travesty,” “thinly veiled copy,” and “stealing his [Jacobsen's] design.”
The essence of the magazine’s reply consisted of the statement, “We erred in not crediting Mr. Jacobsen, which happened when a paragraph of text was mistakenly omitted from the story and no one noticed,” and a promise to print an apology. They also noted that Builder-Buddy’s “absolute travesty” note was “not the first” they received.
While it was. as I noted at the time, difficult to see how “after a year’s focused research into different architectural styles, the couple [the owners] stumbled upon a solution serendipitously” fits with “a paragraph of text [crediting Jacobsen] was mistakenly omitted from the story and no one noticed,” the magazine had ‘fessed up, and my interest diminished below the threshold that would have prompted me to expend a few bucks for the purchase of the next month’s issue of Metropolitan Home just to check the promised apology.
But Wait, There’s More
This episode came to mind as the topic of a Jacobsen-related post after I wrote the earlier blog entries referencing the architect. Because I could find little on the Internet directly from Metropolitan Home dealing with this matter,3 I extended my search and consequently discovered this pertinent article by Patricia Rogers, originally published in The Washington Post (February 10, 2002) and reprinted in The Milwaukee Journal:
Magazine Errs In Citing Source Of Home’s DesignA Virginia home infused with the purist vision of Washington architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen is prominently featured in Metropolitan Home this month. And prominently missing is any mention of Jacobsen. The house, the 2002 grand prize winner of Met Home’s annual house design contest for homeowners, grew from plans by Jacobsen originally published in 1998 as part of Life magazine’s Dream House series. Virginia architect Jeff Dreyfus, who gets the credit in the magazine for the design, along with homeowners Anne and Tony Vanderwarker, says his clients ordered the plans from Life but asked his firm to modify them. “It’s obviously that (Life) house, but we customized it. We moved rooms around, added a garage with an artist’s studio above and researched a lot of new materials.” Despite significant modifications, the house, with its signature Jacobsen-style pavilions, dormers and towering chimney, still bears an unmistakable resemblance to the Life house. A philosophical Jacobsen says all 85 houses built so far from the plans have been altered significantly. Nevertheless, “having them say ‘influenced by’ or ’school of Hugh Newell Jacobsen’ would have been nice.” Met Home Editor Donna Warner says she recognized a Jacobsen influence, but the Life connection “never dawned on any of us. Though the architect of record made many changes, we should have said it looked derivative. It was a terrible oversight on our part — a sad mistake.” The magazine will publish a correction noting Jacobsen’s contribution.
Yep, a paragraph of text was mistakenly omitted from the story and no one noticed in the email message to the complainers in northern Illinois became [The editor] recognized a Jacobsen influence, but the Life connection “never dawned on any of us. … It was a terrible oversight on our part — a sad mistake” when the Washington Post interviewed the Metropolitan Home Editor. I suppose that hypothetically one can use the rhetorical equivalent of non-Euclidean geometry to reconcile those statements, but it looks suspiciously as though the proofreader’s error has been revealed to be an editorial mistake.
And yep, the folks taking the credit for the 2002 Metropolitan Home Grand Prize House of the Year were not only inspired by a pristine barn but also had the benefit of the considerably more detailed plans4 for the 1998 Life Dream House designed by Hugh Jacobsen, a residence which was apparently so obscure that the editorial staff of Metropolitan Home didn’t notice the resemblance.
[Top: 1998 Life Dream House; Middle: 2002 Metropolitan Home Grand Prize House;
Bottom: Suggested variations on 1998 Life Dream House]
The Moral Of The Story
Well, there must be at least one. Check your sources? Acknowledge the contribution of others - or at least don’t borrow uncredited ideas from a well known architect with an incredibly distinctive style? Don’t shift a few lines around on store-bought house plans and call it your own creation? Don’t whine when you’re caught? …
How about
Footnotes
- Hugh Jacobsen is an outstanding architect whose residential work I much admire. I heartily recommend that those unfamiliar with him check out his web site, Hugh Newell Jacobsen , Architect and my own post about his influence on the design of my own home. ~back~
- ”Builder-Buddy,” I have belatedly discovered, is a fairly frequently used appellation; consequently, I should make clear that unless otherwise noted, the use of “Builder-Buddy” in this blog exclusively refers to my home builder and buddy, who is not, to my knowledge, associated with other “Builder-Buddy” named entities, including but not limited to corporate divisions, accounting software, construction tools, and icons ~back~
- The illustration and quotes from Metropolitan Home used in this post are from my own files. ~back~
- The plans for the Life Dream House were, as architect Jeff Dreyfus points out in his own defense, adapted: “It’s obviously that (Life) house, but we customized it. We moved rooms around, added a garage with an artist’s studio above and researched a lot of new materials.” Does this sound to anyone else like an college freshman defending a plagiarized essay by claiming he re-arranged the order of the paragraphs? ~back~
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More About Jacobsen
Readers, at least those who paid attention to Heck of a House: A Manor In The Jacobsenian Manner, will not be surprised to learn that the Fletcher Residence, pictured above, was designed by Hugh Jacobsen.1 I confess to displaying this graphic primarily because it seems to me to be just the right image for a post written on a sunny July Sunday morning in mid-America.
More About Jacobsen’s Style
I’ve received a couple of emails asking for more information on Jacobsen’s ideas on building. In case there are others interested but too shy or lazy to write, I’m listing links to two brief articles that deal with his designs. In a later post, I’ll describe Jacobsen’s perspective on the geometry of the interiors of his residences.
Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Architect: A Retrospective is a single web page with an interesting exposition on the effect of Jacobsen’s designs on the visual impression of the scale of these “grand yet intimately scaled pavilions.”
A Conversation with Hugh Newell Jacobsen is also a single page, consisting of an interview with Jacobsen that includes his use of an Ammonite and Quaker building tradition and Jacobsen’s response to a question about what he learned from studying with Louis Kahn at Yale:
Part of Lou’s wonderful philosophy was that buildings should make the site look better, not the best thing that ever happened to that piece of ground. The order of the street is far more important than the exercise of the architect’s prerogative.
The latter piece also opens with one of my favorite Jacobsen quotes:
Footnotes
- Readers of Heck of a House: A Manor In The Jacobsenian Manner, in fact, have seen the Fletcher Residence before; it appears on the cover of one of the books pictured in the earlier post, “Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Works from 1993-2006.” ~back~
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The Contribution of Da Boyz To The Heck of a House Design
Corrections To Credits For Heck of a House Design
In Heck of a House: A Manor In The Jacobsenian Manner, I listed Builder-Buddy,1 Julie, and me as the primary designers of Heck of a House. I am remiss in not crediting the Mesomorph and the Prodigal for their efforts.
At the outset of planning the house, Julie and I explained that we would work out a design for our new home before starting construction, adding that if they had any ideas, they should let us know.
Although we thought they might express preferences about where their rooms would be located, how big they should be, etc., they chose instead to focus on the area of home security. Despite the imagination displayed in numerous detailed sketches, we were, unfortunately, unable to incorporate their contributions into the actual residence, primarily because Builder-Buddy was unable to find room in the budget to purchase the guard dinosaurs and saber-toothed tigers. And then there was the problem of obtaining approval from the local authorities for the moat. Julie also had philosophical as well as aesthetic issues about placing the machine gun-equipped pillboxes and minefield in a defensive perimeter around the house - even if we posted warning signs.
Of course, if we are ever, as Da Boyz warned we might be, overrun by battalions of Nazi soldiers, we will, no doubt, regret having chosen to forgo those protections.
Footnotes
- ”Builder-Buddy,” I have belatedly discovered, is a fairly frequently used appellation; consequently, I should make clear that unless otherwise noted, the use of “Builder-Buddy” in this blog exclusively refers to my home builder and buddy, who is not, to my knowledge, associated with other “Builder-Buddy” named entities, including but not limited to corporate divisions, accounting software, construction tools, and icons ~back~
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Heck of a House: A Manor In The Jacobsenian Manner
Part I: DrHGuy and Julie Build Their Dream House
Heck of a House Portrait1
With A Little Help From Builder-Buddy2 and Hugh (in absentia)
Because of a trusted friend’s enthusiastic endorsement of him, I was already favorably predisposed toward the builder Julie3 and I were meeting over lunch to discuss our plans for the new home and decide whether to hire him for that job.
That vetting was effectively completed within moments after the introductions and obligatory small talk, at which time we discovered that the two articles I had brought from the hundreds we had ripped from house magazines4 as exemplars of the kind of place we preferred and the pages he had marked in the book he carried to the restaurant to give us an idea of the kind of place he preferred all featured designs that were not only compatible but similar. Of course, this was unsurprising since all of the houses we had selected were by the same architect - Hugh Jacobsen.
Hiring Jacobsen himself, by the way, was never a consideration; he builds homes for the beautiful people - the beautiful, incredibly rich people.5 We could either have Jacobsen design a house or we could build a house; we could not, however, do both.
Hugh Newell Jacobsen6
A severely dyslexic child and self-described “terrible student,” who grew up in a “Coca-Cola Colonial” in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Jacobsen was admitted, with the help of a family friend, to Yale’s school of architecture, where he studied under Louis Kahn and discovered in architecture a world in which “everything finally made sense.” After graduation in 1955, he apprenticed with Philip Johnson, setting up his own office in Georgetown three years later.
While Jacobsen is acknowledged to be “one of the few American Architects capable of sensitive restorations” and has won awards and enviable institutional commissions, including the restoration of two Smithsonian museums, The United States Embassy in Moscow the American embassy in Paris, additions to the U.S. Capitol, as well as work at the University Of Cairo, Egypt and American University, Athens, Greece,7 his appeal to us was his accomplishments in his preferred area of focus - residential design.
This focus and Jacobsens’s popularity among nonprofessionals may have exacted a price in lost prestige. By my reading, his home design work is often acknowledged by critics and academics by left-handed compliments. This excerpt from his biography at Great Buildings Online is characteristic:
His designs are carefully attuned to their practical requirements.
Jacobsen is more a client’s than an architect’s architect.8
People look good in my buildings
While I am enthralled by the pithiness of the Jacobsen quote9 I’ve commandeered as a heading for this section, the context offered by the preceding sentence is enlightening: “My detailing is deliberately sparse and linear in order to enhance the spaces within and without. People look good in my buildings.”
The same design strategy can be elaborated in a more academic manner:
On the other hand, the model I’ve chosen to illustrate Jacobsen’s style is less impressive but does have the advantage of widespread familiarity. My suggestion is to think of Jacobsen’s central motif as the shapes used in Monopoly houses and hotels. Consider these familiar icons.
Then, compare them to this sketch of a Jacobsen house.
[Click on graphic to view larger image]
Now, take another look at the portrait of our home atop this post.
The Jacobsen Look
For the record, neither Builder-Buddy, Julie, nor I, the primary designers of Heck of a House,11 consciously copied any specific Jacobsen-originated design. The profile of the house as well as the lack of ornamentation, however, is clearly inspired by Jacobsen’s architecture.
At the time we designed the house, it was fashionable to build within the vernacular of a region, a trend with practical as well as aesthetic appeal. There are reasons, for example, that lots of Cape Cod homes were built in New England and adobe homes were constructed in the Southwest.
Few residential styles (and none of them striking) are identified, however, with the Midwest.
Perhaps because Julie and I both grew up on farms, the simple lines of a barn, a shape echoed in Jacobsen’s designs (as well as those Monopoly hotels) seemed distinctive and fitting.
It also fit the description I had jokingly adopted for our dream house conversations; “our house,” I would portentously intone, “must befit our lives of quiet ostentation.”
Coming Attractions
Future Heck of a House posts will focus on interior design, the surrounding landscape, my thoughts on what has and hasn’t worked as planned, and the house with and without Julie.
Because there will be only a bit more about Jacobsen in these posts, I suggest those interested in his work check out his web site at http://www.hughjacobsen.com and the three books, all available at Amazon and other bookstores, filled to overflowing with photographs of his work (in order of publication): “Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Architect” (Book I), “Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Recent Work” (Book II), and “Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Works from 1993-2006.”
I especially recommend the web site devoted to the 1998 Life Dream House designed by Jacobsen which contains much detail about the house itself and its architect.
And finally, I’ll leave you with this look at four more Jacobsen-designed residences:
[Click on graphic to view larger image]
Footnotes
- The graphic atop this post is a scan of a picture that was given me by the invariably thoughtful Lady Lawanda (who consulted with The Prodigal, earning him an assist on the play). I’ve designated it a “portrait” because it seems to have been composed by applying digital effects to an aerial photo to soften some of the hard edges and give it something of the appearance of an oil painting. The result is a photographically accurate representation of the house with a touch of romanticized glow, not unlike shooting love scenes with Vaseline smeared on the camera lens. [Click on graphic to view larger image - recommended] ~back~
- ”Builder-Buddy,” I have belatedly discovered, is a fairly frequently used appellation; consequently, I should make clear that unless otherwise noted, the use of “Builder-Buddy” in this blog exclusively refers to my home builder and buddy, who is not, to my knowledge, associated with other “Builder-Buddy” named entities, including but not limited to corporate divisions, accounting software, construction tools, and icons ~back~
- Julie Showalter was my much-beloved, fiercely smart, extraordinarily sexy wife and prize-winning writer, who died in 1999 from cancer diagnosed the week of our wedding nearly 20 years earlier. There are many other posts about her and her writing in this blog. For information, see Julie Showalter FAQ ~back~
- This was before one could find a plethora of house plans, as well as shoes, dishwashers, cereal, and dates, on the internet. ~back~
- One of his sons, according to the article about his 1998 Life Dream House, took to calling him a “Jackie-tect” after he designed Mrs. Onassis’s house at Martha’s Vineyard. ~back~
- Except as noted, the factual data in this section is from the article about his 1998 Life Dream House ~back~
- Hugh Jacobsen Web Site ~back~
- Emphasis mine ~back~
- The quotation is from the Design Philosophy portion of the Hugh Jacobsen web site ~back~
- Muriel Emmanuel. Contemporary Architects. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980. pp 391-392. ~back~
- Julie, Builder-Buddy, and I had many conversations (in every combination and permutation possible), exchanged many drawings, revised “final” sketches, and then revised the revisions. Builder-Buddy put the ideas together, adding in such extras as plumbing and electricity. Only after that process was competed did we hire an architect “to make it legal.” ~back~
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There Is A Season
The Heck of a House Conservatory In Summer
Conservatory, Heck of a House
We are currently in meltdown with temperatures warm enough to transform the mass of snow we had accumulated into the classic mixture of slush and mud that serves as Chicago’s harbinger of Spring. I’ve posted this photo of the Heck Of A House Conservatory, taken during a warmer, devoutly longed-for season of the year, solely as a reminder that such scenes will soon be upon us.