Paul Rudolph Walker House

[peterm]

https://www.curbed.com/2015/11/5/990360 ... othy-rohan

A facsimile:

https://youtu.be/WDwMKl7OcEw

The original house is coming on the market soon.

[SDR]

Something not immediately clear is that the openings without flaps are the only glazed openings in the house.

Here's a digital model; the closing shots demonstrate clearly the advantage that a digital model can have over a photograph: the clear articulation of all
elements, including those that would be concealed in shade -- a realistic depiction of the building in its setting that nevertheless idealizes the form and
content of the work ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tsS2xEy6zw

S

[Craig]

The facsimile is currently installed here in Palm Springs for those of you in Southern California. It is a delight to experience:

https://psmodcom.org/walker-guest-house-replica/

[SDR]

Compare to the traveling Usonian Automatic facsimile of 30 years ago. This little post-and-beam treat seems ideally suited to replication and transportation.

The masonry UA design had to be made of "cardboard" for purposes of portability and thus couldn't be a true replica, whereas the Rudolph replica could presumably
be "planted" permanently, sooner or later, and have a full life of use -- at least as a garden folly if not as a guest or vacation house ? It might even be made available
as a kit house, sold perhaps through museum gift shops . . .

Not comparing Wright unfavorably to Rudolph; just pointing out architectural differences that affect feasibility and authenticity where portable replication is concerned.

S

[Matt2]

Seattle architect Paul Thiry created a similar design. His was for a proposed weekend cabin that could be essentially sealed up when not in use.

[peterm]

Artist Sol Lewitt twenty years later:

https://goo.gl/images/gMMRNB

[SDR]

Heh. Good one. I like the way Rudolph has handled his posts, sandwiching a third member at house level between two others which travel to the ground.
The assembly is carried out in the most straightforward and least complex manner imaginable; the only question remaining being "What are the fastenings
at the intersections ?" I see a few of what might be bolt heads; perhaps it's just nails.

A series of isometrics of all typical connections would be nice to see.

S

[Craig]

Then there's Peter Blake's "pinwheel" house which has moveable panel walls on the horizontal:

http://blog.dwr.com/2015/07/27/fun-in-t ... eel-house/

[SDR]

That house appeared long ago, in a book I can't now locate, and in the June 1955 issue of Arts + Architecture:





There is more than one version of this design on paper, apparently; this plan seems to belong to the images that Craig posted:





The built version -- upper and lower levels ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[SDR]

We have a (very) small handful of threads devoted to Paul Rudolph, here; this is the most recent and perhaps the least contentious. I don't know if the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation has been mentioned. Here is their latest newsletter. I am not a member but must have had them add my name to their mailing list a while back. Others could do likewise, if interested . . .

https://www.paulrudolphheritagefoundation.org

S

[Roderick Grant]

"Contentious"?

I crossed paths with Rudolph at a Greene & Greene exhibit at the Met in 1972. I think he was cruising me.

[Matt2]

Was Rudolph the first to pair columns like that, or was that a known technique going back much further?

[SDR]

A fair question. Rudolph was at Harvard in the 'forties, earning his masters there in '47. The paired columns, typically sandwiching an horizontal structural element, a bit of constructivism that I'd expect to find elsewhere in work by the Harvard Five---for a while, anyway, before their clients could afford, and desired, a more permanent sort of building. I doubt you'll find it in Philip Johnson, for instance, nor any but the earliest and most primitive of Richard Meier's work ?

I'm looking at a 1956 Neutra, the Serulnic house in Los Angeles, where a pair of beams head the window wall and capture a single outrigger post. Does that count ?

S

[Matt2]

The architect I'm researching, Seattle's Paul Kirk, used sandwiched columns frequently, starting in the late 1940s. He would typically use a big center element (4x4 of 4x6), then put thinner side piece on either side that were a bit wider so they created a shadow line and resembled an I or H metal beam. I wonder if he was inspired by Mies. Then, as you say, the middle section could be removed for a horizontal element.

[SDR]

Right---a more "permanent" choice ? I was able to easily find only one example, a 1965 house on Martha's Vinyard by Hugh Newell Jacobsen. This is a somewhat differently proportioned section than we usually see. Essentially it's a way to articulate a simple square-section post, with the added advantage of facilitating the structure you describe.