Architecture

Beautiful pictures of Alvar Aalto’s 1936 house by Mark Robinson. Romantic Functionalism indeed.

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While the severe beauty of some modernist buildings seems to finally be getting the recognition it deserves (Marina City), many other Brutalist works seem to have used up all of their luck in fighting criticism from both the public and (some) experts (Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center, Morris A. Mechanic Theatre in Baltimore). The recent Rhode Island trip reminded me of another Brutalist wonder that seems to be sitting out its slow and ungraceful demise—Marcel Breuer’s 1970 Pirelli Tire Building.

Today known for the name given by a later owner, the building that marks the entrance to New Haven was originally built by the Armstrong Rubber Company—a family-owned tire company that started to fear it was becoming too dependent on orders from its primary client, Sears and Roebuck. Seeking to strengthen its identity the company’s leaders approached the mayor of New Haven about purchasing a plot of land right off the highway in  New Haven’s Long Wharf neighborhood. The mayor, eager to increase the presence of New Haven and have the building become a symbol of the city, requested the work of a noted architect and—having previously worked with Johnson, Saarinen, and Kahn, among others—recommended Marcel Breuer for the job.

The Armstrong Rubber Company called for a relatively simple plan. The company needed two or three floors of administrative offices, which they wanted separated from their research and development laboratories in order to minimize the noise of testing tires. The mayor, on the other hand, worried this would make the building imperceptible from the road and demanded a skyscraper be built instead. Breuer offered a compromise by building a two story base that housed the laboratory and suspending the offices over a two floor gap. The goal was for the offices to expand and fill the in-between slot in the future, although that became unlikely as the company asked Breuer to reduce the number of office floors from five to four instead.

And although the main form, at once hefty and gravity defying, as well as the freestanding sign that once accompanied it are undoubtedly stunners, Pirelli’s most distinct feature remains the narrow side of the building, boasting one of the most striking examples of Breuer’s use of molded pre-cast concrete panels (what he referred to as crystallic forms) which give it a highly sculptural presence while providing protection from the sun.

After changing owners several times and finally being abandoned in 1999, the land Pirelli occupies was acquired by Ikea in 2002. After much criticism from the public and media the company reneged on its original plan to demolish the building, but knocked down the extension of the originally L-shaped building to build a large parking lot, at the same time draping the main form in advertising. Not much has changed since then but, as several journalists have noted, the neglect has likely had an significant impact on the structure and the interiors of the building, leaving its future resurgence highly unlikely.

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Although today relatively obscured by the fame of his peers, Arne Jacobsen and Hans Wegner, Finn Juhl remains a central name in the story of Danish modernism. His chairs still impress with their sculptural, expressive forms (his Pelican chairs, which critics dubbed “tired walruses” when they first came out, look avant-garde even today) and the meticulous craftsmanship required to produce them. Finn Juhl and His House (Hatje Cantz), a new book by Per H. Hansen, reevaluates Juhl’s famous design—as well as the best exhibition space of the designer’s work, his own home in Ordrup, just outside of Copenhagen. Remarking that “When I build a house, I don’t like someone else to come in and spoil it,” Juhl made sure to design every detail of his home, and he adjusted the details until his death in 1989.

Although Juhl was educated as an architect, he designed only a few houses. He built his own home in 1941, with the inheritance received after his father’s death. He approached the design of his home primarily as a furniture and interior designer, starting from articulating the interiors and reserving the development of the exteriors for the very end. His idea was that furniture created the room, and the room created the facade.

The 2,200-square-foot home is made up of two buildings connected by a low entrance hall. As one of the early examples of open plan houses, the spaces flow into one another organically, and all the rooms open up to the surrounding garden through large windows and doors, making the outside a direct extension of the interior.

Juhl kept the the inside of the house in a constant state of flux. The furniture and the layout changed throughout the years as Juhl developed new designs and incorporated them into the interiors. In the dining room, for instance, Juhl originally employed Windsor chairs, only to replace them with his own designs sometime in the 1940s and finally settle on his Egyptian chairs in 1949. While he mostly utilized furniture he designed with cabinetmaker Niels Vodder, some pieces he designed specifically for the space, like the famous Poet sofa of 1942. “One cannot create happiness with beautiful objects, but one can spoil quite a lot of happiness with bad ones,” said Juhl, as he kept developing his designs, keeping in his home only the ones he was fully satisfied with.

Juhl’s guiding thought was to foster an interaction between furniture, art, color, and light. Perhaps the best example of his approach can be found in the living room where, above a white Poet chair, hangs Vilhelm Lundstrom’s painting of Juhl’s wife, around a white brick hearth that extends into the room like a rug. The room becomes a medley of light and texture.

Now, as the house has become a part of Ordrupgaard museum, visitors get to experience the effects of this midcentury marvel for themselves.

Full article: Dwell.