Monthly Archive for July, 2010

From Joan Dejean at The New York Times…

What exactly is a living room? Is it a formal room for special occasions, or a casual space for everyday life? The meaning has been unclear ever since the late 17th century, when architects first considered what “living” in the home meant.

In 1691, in the first edition of what was to become a hugely influential architectural manual, “Lessons of Architecture,” Charles Augustin d’Aviler drew a distinction between formal display spaces and a new kind of room, spaces that were “less grand.” D’Aviler used an unusual phrase to describe these new rooms: “le plus habité”  — literally the most lived in. This marked the first time that an architect discussed the notion of living rooms, rooms intended for everyday life.

Before this, anyone who could afford an architect-designed residence wanted it to serve as proof of status and wealth; almost all rooms were display spaces. But once d’Aviler opened the door, French architects began making rooms for specific activities of daily life integral to the design of the home: initially the bedroom, then dressing rooms and bathrooms. These “less grand” rooms were the original living rooms. More…

From Matt Tyrnauer at Vanity Fair…

Lever House, the first all-glass International Style office building in New York City, passes its half-century mark this year. The 24-story green glass building, which has been partially hidden by scaffolding for the past three years, has undergone a $60 million refurbishment—including a top-to-bottom restoration of its curtain wall, which, being the first of its kind, was technologically primitive and thus had decayed badly over the decades, to the point where it was literally starting to disintegrate. As one of the most acclaimed buildings of the 20th century, Lever House has often been called the Platonic building of the 1950s, a sea-foam-tinted gem which brought to a new level of refinement the Le Corbusier–Mies van der Rohe style of lightweight glass-and-steel construction. Its meticulous restoration is a cause to celebrate.

In 1952, the last year of Harry S. Truman’s administration, when only three percent of the American public traveled by plane and only 34 percent had TV sets, Lever House looked as if it had dropped from the sky onto Park Avenue across from the Racquet and Tennis Club and the grand old Montana apartments. Its elegant glass-and-stainless-steel slabs—a horizontal one set over columns on an open ground floor, and a vertical one perched as if floating above it—were quite unlike anything New Yorkers had ever seen. By day the structure shimmered in the sunlight and reflected the brick and limestone buildings around it. By night it lit up like a taut rectangular lantern—a vision of the future on a block between 53rd and 54th Streets. For weeks after Lever House opened its doors in April, curious citizens lined up to enter its airy lobby for a closer look. The architecture critic Lewis Mumford noted that the public was acting as if the new soap-company headquarters were “the eighth wonder of the world.” More…