Category Archives: Design

Joseph Eichler: Living an Idealist’s Dream [Financial Times]

Financial Times, February 17 2007

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The homes of Joseph Eichler, who built more than 10,000 homes in northern California, still epitomise the modern ideal. This is California living as we imagine it. And for those in the San Francisco Bay area it has become attainable. By Tracey Taylor

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The house is a low-slung mid-century modern beauty, set at the foot of rolling golden hills. Sunlight streams through swathes of plate glass. A few choice pieces of classic Eames and Herman Miller furniture adorn the open-plan living spaces. Outside, a large wooden deck and landscaped garden give on to a glittering, kidney-shaped pool that invites thoughts of cocktails at sundown.This is California living as we imagine it. It’s suburbs with style. And for those in the San Francisco Bay area who have rediscovered the homes of Joseph Eichler, it has become attainable.

Eichler was an idealistic and somewhat idiosyncratic developer who, in the 1950s and 1960s, built more than 10,000 houses in northern California. One might compare these with the homes designed by well-known architects, such as Richard Neutra or Pierre Koenig, also in the same area and now much coveted. But, unlike these, an Eichler home is still relatively affordable.

Tim Brown, chief executive of design company Ideo, moved to the US from the UK in 2000 and knew immediately that he wanted to buy an Eichler house. “It was hard to get excited about anything else,” he explains. “I’m always looking for authenticity. In England we had a Georgian house and here we have a house that is a natural fit with its environment.”

His family rented “the perfect Eichler in the perfect neighbourhood” in Palo Alto, before finding one to buy and restore a block away.

Noriko Takiguchi, a writer, rents an Eichler in the Greenmeadows neighbourhood of Palo Alto. She says the clean lines and lack of decoration remind her of Japanese homes. “I like the fact that the house favours simplicity,” she says. She also appreciates the skylights, which “keep the light very stable”, and the open spaces that can be partitioned to suit her needs. Takiguchi is looking for a house to buy with her partner, journalist Dan Gillmor, but says the task is proving difficult. “It’s very hard to look for a house after living in an Eichler. Everything else looks so ordinary.”

If these houses seem progressive today, they were even more so when Eichler built them. Influenced by the European modernist movement and the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, his vision was to provide affordable, elegant modern design, if not for the masses then certainly for the burgeoning middle class, after the second world war. Over a period of more than 20 years, he created dozens of residential sub-divisions. He used a basic tract housing template and an assembly-line approach to construction to keep costs low. But he also employed gifted architects, such as A. Quincy Jones and Anshen & Allen, and respected landscapers, including Thomas Church and Kathryn Stedman, to ensure high aesthetic standards.

The result was a significant departure from the traditional suburban houses of the time and ran counter to the way most developers made a profit. “Eichler’s insight was that the tradition established in the 1920s with the school of California modernism could be opened up to people other than the [wealthy] patrons who hired architects to design one-off homes,” says Paul Adamson, co-author with Marty Arbunich of Eichler: Modernism Rebuilds the American Dream.

The single-storey, flat-roofed houses came in a variety of off-the-shelf models but shared certain fundamental characteristics. They were centred on the idea of indoor-outdoor living to take advantage of the benign Californian climate and blur the line between home and garden. There are flexible open-plan living areas, floor-to-ceiling walls of glass, skylights, sliding glass doors and built-in furnishings. Some of the more spacious models are built around a central, glass-walled atrium echoing the inner courtyards of Mediterranean homes.

The extreme aesthetic didn’t immediately appeal to the day’s homebuyers. But Eichler anticipated this and created a pioneering marketing scheme that went beyond advertising homes and promoted, instead, the entire lifestyle. Stylish photography by Ernie Braun formed the backbone of press campaigns and brochures that showed children happily playing with toy trains and roller-skating in the airy, open-plan spaces, and glamorous couples hosting dinner parties on their back decks, the women clad in chic, figure-hugging 1950s frocks.

There was also a socially conscious element to Eichler’s community building. Inspired, it is said, by a photograph of two schoolboys, one African-American, one Asian, walking home from school arm in arm, he practised a policy of non-discrimination at a time when many builders in the US were still drawing racial lines. Eichler’s views were in tune with the emerging post-war culture of the Bay area. Soldiers who had served alongside recruits from a variety of ethnic backgrounds were returning with a different world view, many of them with federal loans to spend on starter homes.

Not everyone shared Eichler’s utopian vision and there are tales of families baulking at the idea of living in racially integrated neighbourhoods. But “Eichler had a strong personality,” says Carolyn Lenert, a real estate agent with years of experience buying and selling Eichler homes, who also lives in one herself. “Supposedly he told people he would buy back their house if they didn’t like their neighbours.”

Lenert says today’s Eichler homebuyers come in many guises. Families are attracted to the neighbourhoods because they often boast good schools and have been designed as functional communities. Brown lives in an area actually called Community Center and includes at its heart a leisure complex with swimming pool, children’s theatre and zoo. “It’s like a village. My two daughters walk to school. And the quality of life is great,” he says. Conversely the single-storey houses also appeal to an older generation who want to scale down and live on one level.

In 1953 an Eichler home would have gone on the market for between $14,000 and $20,000 – “a little pricier than the average home at the time but still affordable, and [with] the architectural attributes of much more expensive homes,” Adamson says.

Today’s prices depend on location, size and the condition of the house. Lenert recently sold a three-bedroom model in San Rafael’s Terra Linda neighbourhood for $280,000. Brown bought his four-bedroom home for $1m and spent a good deal refurbishing it. The Bay area has a notoriously inflated property market and the closer the commuting distance to San Francisco or Silicon Valley, the higher the cost will be.

Margaret Chester and her partner bought a 1964 atrium-model Eichler in Concord, about 30 miles east of San Francisco, a year ago for $680,000. She says they were immediately smitten. “When we walked through the front door, we were both taken aback. The atrium floor was covered with Travertine tile. We could see through the atrium and living room to the back garden. It was love at first sight.”

The couple, who both work full time, relish getting home at the end of the day. “We gravitate to the back yard if for nothing more than to stick our feet in the pool and enjoy a cold beer,” says Chester. “We didn’t know that mid-century modern was a big deal until we had moved in. The style of the house makes us feel balanced. It’s just a good fit for us.”

Creative types such as designers and architects were drawn to Eichler homes when they were first built and continue to be a core group of buyers. Brown estimates at least 10 of his staff at Ideo live in Eichler homes. Larry Cheng is one of them. He says he chose his Palo Alto house “because it is beautiful and extraordinary”. He particularly loves seeing the reflection of the home’s roof beams in the window at night and “the illusion that my house is outside”. “It’s such a different answer to the question: ‘what should a house be?’,” he says.

The homes are not without their problems, however. Age and the fact that they were built on a budget mean that restoration and maintenance can be expensive. Lenert also points to the fact that they are not fire resistant. “Once the glass breaks, the camp fire is fed,” she says. “I don’t suggest Eichlers to people who enjoy a candle lifestyle.”

Built in an era of cheap energy, the homes have minimal insulation and their flat roofs and trademark radiant heating systems often need overhauls. “You should see the expression on people’s faces when I tell them what work is required to get their house in shape,” says architect Joe DeCredico, who has refurbished many Eichlers. He says costs can run as high as $800,000, as much as would be needed to build from scratch.

Yet such drawbacks have not deterred for the many aficionados who meet online at the Eichler Network’s Chatterbox Lounge (www.eichlernetwork.com) to exchange tips on knowledgeable tradesmen and where to find parts for the homes’ original Thermador ovens.

Marty Arbunich, who co-founded the network in 1993, says the level of interest for Eichler homes is climbing every year. “In part this has been brought on by the dotcom and real-estate boom in California,” he says. But he also thinks the homes fulfil a nostalgic craving for “better and simpler times”.

California Dreams: Norah and Norman Stone [Financial Times]

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Financial Times, May 27th 2006

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Six of the eight bedrooms in Norah and Norman Stone’s mansion have been given over to art. But the San Francisco power couple assure me that the encroaching collection has required no real sacrifice on their part and no significant alterations to their beautiful Arthur Brown-designed house.

“I was actually pleased to have the housekeeper move out and be replaced by Jason Rhoades and Matthew Barney,” says Norah, referring to the top floor where they now keep several pieces by the two artists.

A tour of Stones’ home, which has views from Presidio Heights over the city and the bay, reveals just how inventive they have been when it comes to sharing their living space with their art. What is particularly striking is the juxtaposition of the many uncompromisingly modern pieces with the more traditional, elegant surroundings, originally created by the renowned interior designer Frances Elkins.

In the entrance hall, against a background of sumptuous antique Chinese wallpaper, hangs “La Poupée” (1938) by Hans Bellmer. One of Joseph Beuys’ ”vitrine” works, housed in a rectangular glass case on legs, stands nearby. “You don’t see many of those in people’s hallways,” quips Norman. Tucked into a closet – the Stones admit they struggled to find the right place – is a sound piece by Stephen Vitiello that includes recordings made in the World Trade Center in 1999.

In the relatively small, formal dining room two giant wall pieces by Jeff Koons, “Balloon Dog” (1996) and “Cheeky” (2000) face off against a large Andy Warhol self-portrait, “Fright Wig” (1986). Strolling through the living room you spot a familiar image of the Mona Lisa complete with moustache and goatee – Marcel Duchamp’s “L.H.O.O.Q.” (1940).

The Stones like to contextualise their collection by including pieces by a previous generation of avant-garde artists that influenced many of the younger names in their collection. Thus, on an upper floor, Robert Gober’s “Pair of Urinals” (1987) echoes Duchamp’s succès de scandale, “Fontaine” (1917).

Norman, who is president of his family’s foundation, explains the rationale behind their acquisitions: “The wisest thing to do is to know your end-game,” he says. “We collect museum-quality pieces so that in the end they will go to museums.” (The Stones have ties to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney and the Tate Modern, among others.) “Our mission is to act differently.”

Some of the work is highly provocative. But, says Norman, who is a psychologist by training, and who works regularly as a psychological counsellor with young people at a local community centre: “Our art addresses upsetting issues and I don’t feel good about them but they exist and should not be shirked.”

As one explores the house, it’s clear that every possible nook and cranny has been exploited as space to show art. In a labyrinthine series of rooms in the basement one happens across Keith Tyson’s 2002 Turner Prize-winning “Bubble Chambers”. Also below ground-level, a long whitewashed room acts as a minimalist gallery with works by Donald Judd and Richard Serra as well as one of Andy Warhol’s Rorschach paintings.

Even the garage, which houses his ‘n’ hers Porsches, has been put to use. When Norman decided to buy “Electric Earth”, a video piece by Doug Aitken, he realised the five screens and 1,200 ft of space it required would pose something of a challenge. The solution was a linear version of the piece, created by the artist, with just one screen which drops down for viewing once the cars have been relegated to the street.

Maintenance issues inevitably arise with such an eclectic collection. A Jeff Koons work, “Two Ball Total Equilibrium Tank” (1985), which consists of two Spalding basketballs in a tank of distilled water, requires a regular water change. Unfortunately the person who had been performing this task for the Stones – and was familiar with the 13-page manual explaining the necessary procedure – recently left town. Norman shrugs this off as a minor inconvenience. “We’ll find someone else,” he says.

In any case, the couple have bigger issues on their mind. At their Napa Valley estate, where they also manage a vineyard, they are drilling below ground into the limestone to create a 5,000 sq ft cave of exhibition space. Also in the planning stages is a James Turrell skyspace which is being built into the swimming pool. Norah says when it is completed LED lighting will allow you to change the colour of the sky.

The Stones insist they always find solutions when they want to install a new work of art. Still, the “art cave” is perhaps an admission that their city home has finally reached full capacity.

A Frame and 240 Volts: Living with "Difficult" Art [Financial Times]

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Financial Times, May 27, 2006

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From sharks to video installations, some
work is harder to own than others.
Tracey Taylor finds out how to
display “difficult” art

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Four years ago a story about a melting human blood sculpture surfaced in the media. The slightly sniggering undertone was hard to miss. It was reported that a work owned by Charles Saatchi – a cast of a head made of nine pints of frozen, congealed blood – had been accidentally destroyed when the freezer in which it was being stored was disconnected by builders refitting the art collector’s kitchen.

The rumour was denied by Saatchi who, one could argue, had the last laugh last year, when he sold the piece – “Self” by Marc Quinn – for $1.5m, a tidy return on the $13,000 investment he had reputedly made to acquire it in 1991.

Still, the melting story raises a serious question about the challenges of displaying contemporary art, much of which does not come conveniently framed or in sizes appropriate to the average domestic interior. Even Jay Jopling, the dealer who sold Saatchi the Quinn piece – and who is presumably unfazed by works involving pickled sharks (Damien Hirst) and rumpled beds (Tracey Emin) – acknowledged that “Self” requires “a bit of commitment on the part of the collector”.

Sometimes just the effort required to accommodate a piece – because it is unwieldy or just plain enormous (say a Louise Bourgeois bronze spider or a work by French conceptual artist Daniel Buren whose signature painted stripes might take over several walls) testifies to the purchaser’s devotion.

As an international art consultant based in Brussels, Oliver Toegemann has seen his fair share of art works that require commitment. His company Slegten & Toegemann has helped many private clients integrate unconventional pieces into their homes by reinforcing floors for heavy items or removing balustrades and railings to facilitate installation.

Toegemann also knows about bringing controversial subjects out of the gallery and into the domestic realm. “With contemporary art, the feeling quite often is the more provocative the better. Take Jeff Koons’ pornographic series ‘Made in Heaven’, or Christian Boltanski’s installations with their images of Holocaust victims. These are aesthetically difficult, yet they are iconic pieces that find their way into collectors’ homes,” he says.

Anyone who hangs them in a living room or foyer must be brazen enough to withstand criticism and even expressions of disgust. This advice comes from personal experience. Toegemann himself lives with “The Healing of St Thomas” by Anish Kapoor, which consists of a deep cut in a wall filled with red pigment. “It looks like an open wound and we get many comments [since it] has a very strong presence,” he says.

He also owns a piece by Carl Andre, the American artist best known for his controversial “pile of bricks” work, “Equivalent VIII”, owned by the Tate Modern. Toegemann’s Andre piece “Valver” is made up of a number of thin, flat metal tiles, which he initially chose to display on the floor in front an ornate marble fireplace. “The piece always provokes the same reaction – ‘This is art?’ – and then nobody dares to step on it, although Andre’s whole idea was to liberate sculpture from its pedestal and to encourage people to walk on it.”

If someone did damage the work by stepping on it, there would be no gnashing of teeth. The work comes with a signed artist’s certificate, Toegemann explains, and, as long as replacement tiles are made according to the specifications on it, the art work remains authentic.

The idea that an artist’s input is not always necessary to the work raises interesting issues when it comes to the ownership and display of works. Lawrence Weiner, a sculptor whose medium is language, first settled on the idea that the original construction of a piece was not critical to its existence in 1968 after one of his outdoor installations was damaged. He concluded that a work such as his “A Stake Set”, which in one variation might be those three words spelled out in capital letters on a wall, could equally well be read in a book or even uttered aloud.

Other art works that might pose challenges – but at the very least will make for stimulating dinner conversation – are those made from perishable materials. German artist Dieter Roth relished working with materials such as rabbit excrement, salami and chocolate. He liked to make time visible by allowing organic objects to decompose. Similarly one can literally watch an artwork vanish with a canvas created with disappearing paint by the American Richard Prince.

Richard and Pamela Kramlich understand well the demands contemporary art can make on owners. The San Francisco couple, beneficiaries of Silicon Valley’s gold-rush years, have what is widely agreed to be the world’s pre-eminent private collection of new-media and electronic art. The pieces by artists such as Matthew Barney, Bruce Nauman, Doug Aitken and Bill Viola they’ve collected since the early 1990s all require varying amounts of technological equipment – DVD monitors, computers, projectors, as well as intricate webs of electronic cables.

The Kramlichs have chosen to live with this jabbering, noisy, visually stimulating, sometimes jarring ensemble in what their curator, Christopher Eamon, describes as their “1929 Tudor neo-neo-Gothic” home in the desirable neighbourhood of Presidio Heights. As Eamon describes it, a guest at the Kramlich residence might wake up to a partial projection of Rheinhard Mucha’s “Auto-Reverse” on the wall behind his bed. Sitting in one of the living areas, he might find Gilbert and George chattering away in their “Portrait of the Artists as Young Men” on a television next to the sofa.

One of the first works the Kramlichs acquired, and one that set the tone for future acquisitions, is Dara Birnbaum’s “Tiananmen Square: Break-In Transmission (1990)”, which examines the role of the media in the Chinese student uprising and which the artist installed herself in the couple’s grand stairwell. Physically, the piece consists of a cascade of four laser displayers, four sets of directional speakers, four monitors and one large monitor.

The Kramlichs have said they enjoy sharing home with what amounts to around 12 installations and 30 media works, depending on what is out on loan to museums at any one time. It’s rather remarkable considering the fact that even some new-media artists admit they can’t spend prolonged time with their difficult-to-ignore art. As Birnbaum told Wired magazine in 1999: “I’d go crazy if I lived with my own work all the time.”

Apart from the difficulty of going about one’s daily business surrounded by such serious distractions, the Kramlichs must also address issues particular to electronic art. There is the impermanence of the technology, for instance, which raises questions about future value. And there is the fact that, unlike a painting or sculpture, their art can be “switched off”.

For some, the solution to accommodating challenging art is to reject the very notion and come up with a new idea altogether. Tired of what he saw as the trend to treat art as a commodity in the mid 1980s, Steven Oliver, a prominent West Coast businessman and board chair at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, decided to commission artists to create site- specific sculptures at his ranch in Alexander Valley, California. He now has a series of exceptional, outsize pieces by artists including Richard Serra, Nauman, Martin Puryear and Ann Hamilton spread out over the wild, open landscape. Not for him the worries of integration, disintegration or valuation. As he says: “This is art in its process form – I can’t sell it. I can’t give it away. I can only enjoy the experience of its creation and existence.”

Artist Deborah Oropallo's Home [Financial Times]

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Financial Times, May 27, 2006

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There’s nothing understated
about the home this California
artist shares with her children
and architect husband,
says Tracey Taylor

When artist Deborah Oropallo used to drive past the austere building she now calls home, she saw in her mind’s eye a huge, inviting studio with maybe a bed at the back, but nothing more.

Sixteen years later, the 4,000 sq ft former machine shop in a light- industrial area of West Berkeley, California, is not only a workspace but also a family residence accommodating Oropallo, her architect husband Michael Goldin and their two children, Leo and Gina.

With its vast spaces, eclectic art works and outsize fixtures, it is hardly a typical living space. But closer scrutiny reveals that much thought has been given to the routines and rituals of daily life. And it is not a home masquerading as an exhibition space. Every painting, every photograph has been created by friends or relatives and each one tells a story. Memory and family play a significant role in Oropallo’s work and it’s no surprise that the same themes echo through her house.

I visit on an overcast day in April. Built in the 1960s, the grey building is distinctive for wraparound glass-brick windows that follow its curved contours. It is one of many former factories and warehouses in this part of Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco. Walk one block west and you reach the choppy waters. Hugging it are the tracks on which giant Pacific Union freight trains make their ponderous way upstate emitting their characteristic mournful whistle.

Step into the house and the first thing you see is the tail wing of a “Shooting Star” T33 aeroplane hung on the hallway’s back wall. Attached to it are dog tags that belonged to Oropallo’s father who was a pilot in the second world war. Through a doorway to the right is a long study, which leads into the artist’s beautiful, light-filled studio. The rest of the house is living space: a huge, open-plan kitchen and eating area, a bathroom, and bedrooms, two of which, on an upper mezzanine, make use of the building’s 15ft ceilings.

Oropallo points to the advantage of starting with a great big box. “One of the beauties of having a space like this is that it is easy to create new rooms or add elements on a whim,” she says. Thus, after several years of her using the shop only for work, when she and Goldin realised the house where they had been living was too small for their growing family, they simply went to the studio, got out sledgehammer and broke through a dividing wall.

Form followed function. They carved out a slender gap in the wall between their bedroom and the children’s sleeping area on the upstairs level so they could reach them easily at night when they were younger. Similarly, a tall window was inserted between the kitchen and Oropallo’s studio so that the children could see her at work while staying protected from the toxic fumes of her paints.

Many of the images in Oropallo’s work, which is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in New York, use doll furniture and miniature toys as their starting point; she says they prompt her to contemplate her own childhood. Thus, she paid careful attention to her own children’s bedrooms. “I thought, this is going to be their memory,” she says.

For each, she chose a work of art. Leo’s, a large image of a cowboy by Jason Byers, wasn’t an immediate hit; the children found the stark, imposing figure towering over them frightening so it was put away. But a trip to the rodeo piqued their interest in the wild west and it was reinstalled.

Much of the furniture in the house – including storage units, gym lockers and shelves – have been sourced from commercial catalogues and many are fitted with wheels and casters. “I like the versatility of being able to use something to store paints and then put it in a bedroom when it’s needed there,” Oropallo says. Some pieces, such as the sleek desk in the study and the large tables in the studio are designed by Goldin and manufactured by his furniture design company Swerve.

Other areas of the house have his stamp on them, too. “Michael . . . had worked as a cook and [his] family has always been passionate about cooking . . . [so] when he moved in . . . [he] asked me where the pastry counter was,” Oropallo says. “I told him I never made pastries. I just don’t cook. He said we had to have one – and a freezer for all the home-made stocks and Bolognese sauces he would make.”

So the kitchen became Goldin’s domain. You only have to look at the scale of the space and its components to understand why Oropallo teases him for having a “size disorder”. The double catering range, bought at a culinary institute, is so vast they had to move Leo’s bedroom into another part of the house to make room for it. A pair of vintage laundry sinks equipped with medical-style, foot-pedal-operated taps (a nod to Goldin’s father, a retired doctor) abuts a hulking, poured-concrete countertop. A massive baking table reminds Oropallo of her father’s second career as a baker, while a robust butcher’s block was found at a French kitchen antiques dealer in San Francisco.

The dining table, which easily and often sits 12, was also Goldin’s idea. “For him life is an enormous table with people coming and staying, and sharing food,” Oropallo says. The light fixture over the table is by Amsterdam’s Droog Design. On the wall behind it is “Yellow Liner”, a Richard Misrach photograph of the Bonneville salt flats in Utah. Across the room are pair of photographs by Goldin’s mother Joann, one featuring a decapitated chicken’s head.

It is not just Oropallo’s home that has undergone change with the arrival of children. Her art has evolved. After 20 years of painting she began, six years ago, to focus on photography-based pieces. A current exhibition of her work at the Boise Art Museum in Idaho (which runs until June 18) includes enlarged computer montages of manipulated images – including figurines, glossy leaves and pillows – mounted on to canvas and coated with layers of matte acrylic. “Painting involves long stretches of time, whereas with my current art I can work in increments – such as when the children are at school or asleep,” she explains. She also admits to hitting something of a wall with painting and thinks the new medium has opened up new possibilities and a fresh perspective.

The next progression may be into a new home. Oropallo and Goldin are planning to build it on a plot of land across the road, adjacent to his architectural practice and design studio. And this one will be designed for the next stage in the family’s life, with space for parents and teenagers to keep their distance, for instance, and an autonomous apartment to welcome relatives. Goldin, a keen hunter, also wants a walk-in refrigerator so he can hang the meat he brings home from their ranch in Mendocino. And he is even designing a customised living space for the the family’s pet birds, two cockatoos and a parakeet – a long interior room with an integrated drain and hose, a tree and enough space for them to take flight.