Aluminaire House | |
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General information | |
Status | Awaiting restoration |
Architectural style | International |
Location | Palm Springs, California, U.S. |
Completed | 1931 |
Technical details | |
Floor count | 3 |
Design and construction | |
Architect(s) |
The Aluminaire House was designed as a case study by architects A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey in April, 1931. The three-story house, made of donated materials and built in ten days, was the first all-metal house in the United States. It was shown in the Grand Central Palace exhibition hall on Lexington Avenue in New York City as part of the Architectural and Allied Arts Exhibition. In 1932 the house was exhibited again, this time at the Architectural League of New York show sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). The MOMA show was titled The International Style - Architecture Since 1922, which became the basis of a book by Philip Johnson and Henry Russell Hitchcock, The International Style, a manifesto for the International Style of architecture. [1]
After the early exhibitions, the house was sold to architect Wallace K. Harrison for $1,000 (equivalent to $21,449in 2022), who disassembled it and moved it to his Long Island estate, where it became the core of an extensive complex. By 1940 the so-called "Tin House" was once again disassembled and moved to another portion of the property, where it became a guest house. [2] [3]
The property was subdivided by new buyers in the 1980s who planned to demolish the Aluminaire House. An attempt to designate the house as a landmark [4] failed, but the owners agreed to donate the house to the New York Institute of Technology, which reassembled the house on the school's Central Islip campus. [3] [5] [1] The house was transferred to the Aluminaire House Foundation after the Central Islip Campus was closed, disassembled and put into storage. A 2013 proposal to reassemble the house on a site in Sunnyside Gardens, Queens, as part of a housing development met with opposition from Sunnyside Gardens residents, who expressed concern that the house's design did not fit with the neighborhood's traditional brick housing. [6] In 2015, it was announced that the Aluminaire House would be moved to Palm Springs, California, home of other works by Frey. [7] In early 2018, the house had been placed in a container and shipped to Palm Springs. Plans call for it to be rebuilt in a park opposite the Palm Springs Art Museum, pending a $475,000 fund raising effort for its restoration. [8] Assembly of the house at the museum was planned for 2021 but actually began in July of 2023 on a parking lot just south of the museum and with a budget of $2.6 million. [9] [10] Because of its desert location, the museum added air conditioning and weatherproofing. [10] A grand opening is scheduled for March 23, 2024. [11] [10]
The 1,200-square-foot (110 m2) house is roughly cubic in shape, resting on six columns, with five rooms. Exterior walls consist of corrugated metal sheathing backed by waterproof paper over a structure of two-inch steel angles. The interior finish is thin insulation board covered with fabric. [12]
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. The institution was conceived in 1929 by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss, and Mary Quinn Sullivan. Initially located in the Heckscher Building on Fifth Avenue, it opened just days after the Wall Street Crash. The museum, America's first devoted exclusively to modern art, was led by A. Conger Goodyear as president and Abby Rockefeller as treasurer, with Alfred H. Barr Jr. as its first director. Under Barr's leadership, the museum's collection rapidly expanded, beginning with an inaugural exhibition of works by European modernists. Despite financial challenges, including opposition from John D. Rockefeller Jr., the museum moved to several temporary locations in its early years, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. eventually donated the land for its permanent site.
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Albert Frey was a Swiss-born architect who established a style of modernist architecture centered on Palm Springs, California, United States, that came to be known as "desert modernism".
Emerson Stewart Williams, FAIA was a prolific Palm Springs, California-based architect whose distinctive modernist buildings, in the Mid-century modern style, significantly shaped the Coachella Valley's architectural landscape and legacy.
Mid-century modern (MCM) is a movement in interior design, product design, graphic design, architecture and urban development that was popular in the United States and Europe from roughly 1945 to 1969, during the United States's post–World War II period. The term was used descriptively as early as the mid-1950s and was defined as a design movement by Cara Greenberg in her 1984 book Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s. It is now recognized by scholars and museums worldwide as a significant design movement. The MCM design aesthetic is modern in style and construction, aligned with the Modernist movement of the period. It is typically characterized by clean, simple lines and honest use of materials, and it generally does not include decorative embellishments.
Jean Prouvé was a French metal worker, self-taught architect and designer. Le Corbusier designated Prouvé a constructeur, blending architecture and engineering. Prouvé's main achievement was transferring manufacturing technology from industry to architecture, without losing aesthetic qualities. His design skills were not limited to one discipline. During his career Jean Prouvé was involved in architectural design, industrial design, structural design and furniture design.
April Greiman is an American designer widely recognized as one of the first designers to embrace computer technology as a design tool. Greiman is also credited, along with early collaborator Jayme Odgers, with helping to import the European New Wave design style to the US during the late 70s and early 80s." According to design historian Steven Heller, “April Greiman was a bridge between the modern and postmodern, the analog and the digital.” “She is a pivotal proponent of the ‘new typography’ and new wave that defined late twentieth-century graphic design.” Her art combines her Swiss design training with West Coast postmodernism.
Raimund Johann Abraham was an Austrian architect.
The Palm Springs Art Museum is a visual and performing arts institution with several locations in the Coachella Valley, in Riverside County, California, United States, founded in 1938. PSAM has been focused on design and contemporary art since 2004. PSAM houses an art museum and an Architecture and Design Center in Palm Springs, California, along with the Faye Sarkowsky Sculpture Garden at a satellite location in Palm Desert.
Julius Shulman was an American architectural photographer best known for his photograph "Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, 1960. Pierre Koenig, Architect." The house is also known as the Stahl House. Shulman's photography spread the aesthetic of California's Mid-century modern architecture around the world. Through his many books, exhibits and personal appearances his work ushered in a new appreciation for the movement beginning in the 1990s.
Arturo Vittori, is an Italian artist, architect, and industrial designer. He is co-founder and director of the architecture and design team Architecture and Vision.
Andreas Vogler is a Swiss architect, designer and artist. He is founder and director of the architecture and design firm, Andreas Vogler Studio.
Architecture and Vision (AV) is an international multidisciplinary design agency that was formed in 2003 by Arturo Vittori in partnership with Andreas Volger. AV works in architecture, design, and art.
John Porter Clark (1905–1991) was an American architect. He worked with Albert Frey on several projects in Palm Springs, California, and was part of the Van Pelt and Lind firm. He has been referred to as a "mid-century modernist", and credited as one of the pioneers of "Desert Modernism", by using local rock, concrete blocks, metal and glass. His own house, the John Porter Clark House (1939) in Palm Springs, has been described as being in the international style and as one of the earliest examples of residential modern architecture in Southern California.
Wallace K. Harrison Estate is a historic estate located at West Hills in Suffolk County, New York, the home of architect Wallace K. Harrison of the New York firm Harrison & Abramovitz. The estate home is a rambling, one story flat roofed concrete main house with a two-story circular living room near the center. It was built in 1929 in the International style. Also on the estate are a garage, two guest cottages, a studio, and a circular swimming pool. The property was purchased by Harrison and his wife in the early 1930s. Harrison bought a prefabricated house for $1000, the Aluminaire House, designed by A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey for the Architectural League Show of 1931 in New York. He also embarked on the main house, which was initially built as a wing to what was called the "Tin House." As the complex grew the Tin House was relocated and became a guest cottage.
Donald Allen Wexler was an influential Mid-Century modern architect whose work is predominantly in the Palm Springs, California, area. He is known for having pioneered the use of steel in residential design.
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