Considering the number of architectural books in print, I was surprised that there seems to be a dearth of titles about architects' homes. Fortunately, Bradbury's book, looking at two hundred around the world, now gives a reader plenty to read and look at.
Predictably, when architects design their own homes, free from the constraints of clients and money permitting, they create some amazing structures. Looking through the book, I noticed lots of common elements. The houses are usually on their own plot away from neighbours or anyone else, with plenty of glass to allow the outside in, stone floors, with the occasional rug, bare concrete, obviously outside but also for interior walls.
Unique shapes are a strong consideration. Bellemo and Macloud's cocoon House in Victoria, Australia is just like an airship; Eduardo Longo has a ball house in Sao Paulo, Brazil. John Denton, again in Australia, designed his home as two long rectangular tubes, one on top of the other and at right angles. Garcia-Abril and Debora Mesa live in a house inspired by reinforced structural joists made from concrete and steel and resting on each other at different angles. Charles Deaton's Sculptured House in Golden, Colorado, is justly famous. Organic forms inspired the interior walls in Juan Orrego's house in Santiago, Chile and also Javier Senosiain's Casa Organicanic in Mexico City (I wonder if Saarinen's 1962 TWA Terminal in New York gave him some ideas?). Thomas Gluck and family live in the Catskills, New York, in Tower House, very much like a horizontal brick shape resting on a vertical brick shape and surrounded by a forest.
I was interested in the staircases in the houses with two or more floors. A variety of solutions show up in the photos. Andre Bloc's Meudon, France house has a very attractive curving metal beam with the individual steps fixed to it, no handrails or supporting uprights. Herb Green's Prairie House has stairs that look like an angled ladder. Spirals are an obvious choice where space is limited, as in the Miller-Lovegrove house in Kazimierz Dolny, Poland, which cleverly has a spiral with the steps and decorative sides cut out of one piece of material. The Ridge Residence in LA has individual, chunky blocks of wood embedded in a wall with no other supports. Arne Korsmo's 1955 Oslo house had a metal staircase that retracted to the second floor. Several homes have interior painted concrete stairs with no handrails.
The back pages have a visual timeline of the houses from 1948 to 2025, this is followed by a five-page, very comprehensive Index. With four hundred photos (nearly all in colour) and a simple, elegant design, Architects' Houses is a celebration of unique buildings that some of the world's best architects live in with their families.
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