American Masterworks: The Twentieth-Century House - Hardcover

Kenneth Frampton is Ware Professor of Architecture at Columbia University.

Frampton, professor of architecture at Columbia University, has teamed up with designer David Larkin to produce a fresh, knowledgeable, and visually exciting survey of the modern house in America--the modern house, that is, as a work of art. The 34 featured houses, presented in superb color photographs, truly are gems: cool, angular, pristine, and aristocratic. One of Frampton's criteria for selection stipulated that each house "possess a certain level of complexity and poetic depth." And indeed these houses do, although their complexity becomes all but invisible as we move forward in time. Frampton begins with the Greene and Greene Gamble House, built in Pasadena in 1908, a beautifully realized synthesis of Japanese aesthetics and the American arts and crafts movement. The Japanese influence is prevalent throughout the book, while the warmth of the craft movement quickly fades. The houses become increasingly grid oriented and more open to natural light and the surrounding landscape, so it's no surprise that most are found in California. The masters include Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson (the famous Glass House), Craig Ellwood, Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph, Michael Graves, and Frank Gehry. Donna Seaman