Modern Snapshot: Breuer’s IBM Building in Boca

With it snowing here in DC today, I thought a little Breuer in Boca would be nice to look at as we yearn for spring to actually start. Marcel Breuer and Robert Gatje designed IBM’s North American Research and Development facility in Boca Raton, where IBM developed the first personal computer. Built between 1968 and 1972, the Brutalist complex is based on their design of IBM’s research center located in LaGaude, France. Today, it is known as the Boca Raton Innovation Campus. It is a heavy design for the flat topography of Florida, but the myriad of windows and being raised on pilotis allows light to come in and provides a lighter feel as air flows underneath the buildings. The raised structure also serves as covered parking areas, which are important during the summer months.

Take Action Now: Help Save Breuer’s API Building in Reston

The Fairfax Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing tomorrow (July 26) at 4:30 pm to determine the fate of the American Press Institute (API) building in Reston by modern master Marcel Breuer and Hamilton P. Smith. Last month, the Fairfax County Planning Commission recommended that a developer’s plan for the site be denied. Take Action Now to help efforts promoting its preservation. Here is a good piece by local advocates on why the building should be saved. The petition has nearly 1,600 signatures as I write this. Add yours now.
The API closed up shop and joined with the Newspaper Association of America, which is based in Arlington. The move left API’s 1972-1978 brutalist headquarters vacant, sitting on 4.6 park-like acres in the Northern Virginia suburbs. The 42,334 square foot office building is located at 11690 Sunrise Valley Dr. A developer wants to build townhouses on the spot amid the Metro expansion to Reston.

Breuer-Designed House Highlight of MoCo Modern Tour

I am posting a few photos for those of you who missed the Montgomery Modern Bus Tour this past Saturday. The tour was organized by the Montgomery County Planning Department’s Historic Preservation office in partnership with the American Institute of Architects Potomac Valley Chapter. As part of Docomomo’s Tour Day 2013, the tour focused on mid-century resources in Friendship Heights and the western side of Bethesda. You can view the excellent tour booklet with more information and pictures of the sites explored.

We started off at the GEICO headquarters in Friendship Heights. The 26-acre campus was designed by architect Victor Kling and first built in 1959. The taller office tower was added in 1964. GEICO has approved plans to demolish the whole complex and build new office space and housing, although there is no set date for such work to begin.

Love the huge saucer fountain out front.
The tour also included visits to two Keyes, Lethbridge & Condon neighborhoods: Potomac Overlook and Carderock Springs, one of Montgomery County’s four National Register of Historic Places-designated modern neighborhoods. In Carderock Springs, we saw three models, including one of the rare flat-roof Atrium homes pictured below, and toured the community club house.

Participants also toured the 1965 River Road Unitarian Church by Francis Donald Lethbridge and had lunch compliments of KONST, a kitchen and interior design firm based in Bethesda.

The highlight was a private tour of the 1958 Seymour Krieger House by Marcel Breuer, with landscaping by Dan Kiley. The house, which was Read More >

The Architecture of Harold Esten, FAIA

When I recently sat down with architect Harold Esten, I asked him why he thought mid-century modern architecture was experiencing a renaissance. He said the architecture is “good basic design” that “wears well.” Esten, who designed the 1966 house in Mohican Hills (above) that I am listing and holding open from 2 to 4 pm this Sunday, is now in his 80s and has had the honor of being named a fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Less than two percent of architects are bestowed with the distinction.
Esten worked in Charles Goodman’s shop for a few years before launching his own firm. In 1949, Esten and his wife Alice spent some time in California. On the weekends, they would spend one day at the beach and the other driving around to see the wave of modern architecture sprouting up. “I looked at a lot of modern homes at a very critical time in modern architecture,” Esten told me. He said he met the likes of Charles Eames and Richard Nuetra, who wanted to recruit him but said, “I can’t pay you.” Esten’s reply: “I can’t work for nothing.”
In addition to my listing, here some shots of three other Esten-designed homes. We’re glad Esten settled back on the East Coast and spent his career here in D.C.

This steel-frame house is on Crail Drive in Bethesda.
It is one of the many MCM homes on the street.
Read More >

Can an ‘Eyesore’ Be Significant?

Marcel Breuer’s HUD Building
(GSA photo)

Some local modern buildings from the mid-century period were trashed in the Washington Post today. The piece, “An Eyeful of Washington Eyesores,” was based on submissions by readers who nominated what they thought are the “ugliest buildings or landmarks in the D.C. area.” Marcel Breuer’s HUD building in Southwest, Georgetown’s Lauinger Library by John Carl Warnecke and that funky blue 1963 building in Ballston just off 66, known officially as the Blue Goose, which is owned by Marymount University, made the list.
I used to live just down Glebe Road from the Blue Goose. I like the building and smile whenever I drive past. It sits there, proud of its various shades of mid-century blue and celebrating its uniqueness from the new cookie-cutter buildings that have popped up along Fairfax Drive during the past decade.While some people might not like Breuer’s HUD Building, the D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board approved the landmark designation of the 1968 Expressionist-style building in June. (Victor Lundy’s U.S. Tax Court was designated as well.)
“Under the Brutalist approach, architects embraced economy in construction, energy efficiency, and an enthusiastic use of exposed concrete, a material which had formerly been largely used for structural purposes only, not as a finish or decorative treatment,” the Review Board wrote in its designation of Breuer’s work. “Breuer took these ideals and, with the HUD Building, used elements of the Brutalist style in a highly Expressionist manner. The sweeping, curved form has Read More >

Dwell Does D.C. and Baltimore

There’s an interesting piece about D.C. in the latest Dwell. Highlighted in its Detour column, Washington is described as “not all political wonks and Masonic conspiracies: It’s also a highly walkable city, its diagonal avenues wide open to modern design.” That’s great, but the piece, which is mainly an interview with Martin Moeller, senior vice president and curator at the National Building Museum, barely delves into the mid-century modern and modern architecture of the city. There’s only passing reference to the Hirshhorn Museum by Gordon Bunshaft, Richard Neutra Brown House, I.M. Pei’s Slayton House (on the market now for $3.45 million; it was originally listed at $4.25 million) and National Gallery East Wing. How can Dwell do a piece like this and not even mention Southwest?
The same issue has another piece of local interest. The Washington Post’s Phillip Kennicott features Marcel Breuer’s Hooper House II near Baltimore. The flat-roof home made of massive fieldstone walls and glass is only one of four residences designed by the architect in Maryland, including one located in Bethesda. More on that later.

Last Week of Marcel Breuer at National Building Museum

This is the last week to see the National Building Museum’s exhibit Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture. The exhbit features 12 models of Breuer’s architecutre and images of the the homes, churches and other types of spaces he designed, including the Whitney Museum of American Art. The show also includes 50 pieces of vintage Breuer-designed chairs and other furniture. Listen to Barry Bergdoll, curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, and architect I.M. Pei, discuss Breuer’s impact on modern design.

Southwest D.C.: A Haven of Modernism

As Southwest D.C. goes through another period of urban renewal with the revitalization of the Waterside Mall (the new area will be called the Waterfront) and the new baseball stadium, the area continues to represent one of the region’s largest concentration of mid-century modern dwellings, which were built during the first urban renewal of the 1950s and ’60s. The Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA), created by Congress in 1945, considered two proposals for the area, according to a history by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“The first, proposed by city planner Elbert Peets, called for rehabilitation of buildings and some new construction, with little long-term displacement of current residents and businesses. The second, by two of Washington’s leading modernist architects Chloethiel Woodard Smith and Louis Justement, called for demolishing the old neighborhood completely in favor of creating a modernist Utopia following the most avant-garde socially responsible architectural ideas and ideals.
“Rebuilding in a variety of architectural typologies from high-rise apartment buildings to row houses, all in extensive landscape settings would, they argued, provide better conditions for some of the former residents, but primarily would attract higher income professionals back from the suburbs. In the end, the RLA, with the approval of the District of Columbia Commissioners and the newly-reorganized National Capital Planning Commission, favored a plan based on the Smith-Justement model. Decried by many for decades as socially irresponsible because the neighborhood’s cohesion was broken and historically important buildings were lost, Southwest’s extensive Modernist landscape was again appreciated at the beginning Read More >

Breuer, Saarinen and More at the National Building Musuem

The National Building Museum will be holding major retrospectives on two of the most influential modern designers and architects of the 20th century: Marcel Breuer and Eero Saarinen. The exhibit on Breuer starts Nov. 3, while the show on Saarinen begins May 3, 2008. The museum will also hold a major exhibit examining the World’s Fairs of the 1930s. The effort, which is scheduled for the summer of 2009, will “convey how six distinct fairs were constructed to represent ideas about the future through a shared modernist aesthetic.” I’m glad I work only a few blocks away.