If it seems to you that Modern architecture is having a moment, you\u2019re not imagining things. In certain parts of town \u2014 particularly in those places covered by San Diego Uptown News \u2014 just about every new or dubiously improved building, from a Downtown skyscraper to a Talmadge ranch house, is Modern with a capital M. Or at least aspires to be.<\/p>\n
The idea of the Modern house still holds a fascination for the newest generation of homebuyers, the millennials, even if they aren\u2019t sure of the difference between the Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s organic architecture and Joseph Eichler\u2019s post and beam tract house.<\/p>\n To get a sense of the difference, and a full appreciation of the popularity of Modern architecture today, you need look no further than the Modern Architecture + Design Society\u2019s fifth annual San Diego Modern Home Tour on Saturday, Oct. 14. Three of the six houses on the local tour are located in Uptown or Mid-Cities.<\/p>\n Participating architects and designers are:<\/p>\n More than 13,000 people are expected to participate in the society\u2019s 11-city tour, which has included San Diego for the past four years.<\/p>\n \u201cSan Diego is one of our core cities,\u201d said Ken Shallcross, a partner in the for-profit company based in Austin, Texas that partners with nonprofits in the cities that are part of the tour.<\/p>\n \u201cOne year we did 30 different tours in random cities,\u201d he said. That proved to be a bit much, so they scaled back. \u201cWe kind of found our 10 to 12 places where there is an active community that loves these houses. Even if they don\u2019t own one, they wish they did.\u201d<\/p>\n Houses on the local tour range from a remodeled 1920s bungalow in Normal Heights to a recently completed condo in a Downtown high-rise. There\u2019s a Minimal Traditional in Mission Hills that has been given the Modern treatment and an infill project in Bankers Hill that boldly asks the question, \u201cCan a modern-day Modern structure live cheek and jowl with a 100-year-old that self-identifies as a Victorian Painted Lady? The answer may well be in the eye of the beholder.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re not into Modern, you may not be won over by this tour. But then again, you just might, if you\u2019d like to believe the Craftsman spirit can live on in the organic Modern architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and his acolytes. One of Wright\u2019s pupils, Sim Bruce Richards, designed a beach house in 1980 in Del Mar that is included on the tour and is up for sale.<\/p>\n \u201cThe owner passed away a few years ago,\u201d Shallcross said. \u201cHe is the only person who has ever lived there. He was the guy it was built for. This is the first time anyone from the general public has been inside.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s tons of glass and tons of wood. When you step inside, the fact that this is basically the beginning of the open-floor concept really hits you. This 1980 house is kind of the grandfather of what you\u2019ll see on the rest of the tour.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really, really neat. We\u2019ve been doing this for 10 years, hosted over a hundred tours. Hundreds of houses. Tens of thousands of visitors. We have a whole lot of houses under our belt. When this came on board, my partner, who\u2019s the founder of the company, said, \u2018This is, hands down, the house I\u2019m most excited about on the tour. Because of how beautiful it is, how significant is, and how impressive it is.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n I think that means you should go.<\/p>\n Modern \u2014 as a style and as a concept \u2014 is hardly new. Back in the day, Craftsman was <\/em>modern. When people bought a new Craftsman or a Prairie-style house, they said they were buying a modern house. Many of the adjectives we apply to today\u2019s \u201cModern\u201d house were applied to the Craftsman bungalow \u2014 light, bright, open, informal. The Craftsman was \u201cbuilt for how people live today.\u201d Back when today was 1909.<\/p>\n Architectural historians consider the Prairie and Craftsman houses \u201cEarly Modern\u201d (which sounds better than \u201cOld Modern\u201d). In \u201cA Field Guide to American Houses,\u201d historian, preservationist and author Virginia Savage McAlester distinguishes between revival houses, such as the popular Spanish Eclectic styles of the 1920s, and Modern houses like the Prairie, which was an \u201centirely new kind of house.\u201d<\/p>\n The Prairie was developed at the turn of the 20th century in the Midwest by Frank Lloyd Wright and his contemporaries. Wright influenced many architects and designers, both by reputation and by force of personality. His Taliesin Fellowship, located in Spring Green, Wisconsin and Scottsdale, Arizona, opened in 1932. Many Taliesin students went on to architectural careers, including World War II veterans, who were able to study there under the G.I. Bill.<\/p>\n Most of the concepts we now think of as \u201cModern\u201d \u2014 including the very concept of the \u201copen concept\u201d \u2014 were developed by Wright and his contemporaries. Advances in engineering, construction technology and materials made it possible to eliminate most interior walls in a house, opening up a new world of possibilities \u2014 both for the designers and for their clients. With adequate support, the living room and the dining room could be blended into one inter-connected space, with only an \u201cimplied separation\u201d between them: columns, half-walls, bookcases or steps. In this new version of the house, music rooms, libraries, dens and offices were open to the formal rooms of the house. Only the kitchen and the service porch were closed off, a remnant of the old days on the farm when unseemly things took place there, like dirty dishes left stacked in the sink while the cow was getting milked.<\/p>\n The Craftsman and Prairie style faded from popularity during the 1920s, the victim of a sort of national romance with the world of make-believe, influenced by the movies, city life and the delusion that you could convince the authorities that you had quit drinking when, in fact, you were drinking more than ever.<\/p>\n But what really put a stop to these early Modern houses was the Great Depression, and more specifically, government regulation of the banking and building industries. The Federal Housing Administration guidelines for builders eliminated all craftsmanship and detail from American residential architecture. A house with a built-in china cabinet and bookcase could never be built in the 1930s, because it could never get approved for a loan, no matter if the homebuyer wanted it or could afford it. A new type of house emerged, the Minimal Traditional. But the Modern impulse remained alive, bubbling below the surface.<\/p>\n When the residential building industry started up anew following World War II, it was with a new mandate \u2014 keep it simple \u2014 and a new set of building blocks \u2014 drywall instead of plaster, aluminum sliding glass doors instead of wooden French doors, and tongue-and-groove cedar siding instead of redwood shingles.<\/p>\n The people who designed those houses had changed as well. The U.S. government trained and employed hundreds of thousands of architects during the war, teaching them to build quickly and cheaply and by the book. Through the G.I. Bill, the government produced a new crop of homebuyers as well, young men and women who had learned the value of teamwork and getting along to get along. In the military, they\u2019d learned to follow the rules, buckle down and get \u2018er done. In college, they\u2019d learned that technology was the future and making things by hand was the past. These modern men and women moved in mass from the bungalow neighborhoods where they\u2019d grown up to the mass-produced depersonalized and thoroughly modern suburbs, built to a plan devised by the FHA.<\/p>\n The Mid Century Modern house, with its flowing floor plan and floor-to-ceiling glass walls was made possible by two innovations: The post and beam construction technique, which made a house without interior walls possible, and the television, which provided an impetus for tearing down those interior walls. Television wasn\u2019t like the home entertainment of old. You couldn\u2019t put it down like a book, or pick up the needle and stop it from playing like a record player. You had to be there, present, in line of sight and within earshot. Which is tough to do when you\u2019re behind a closed door in the kitchen, wrestling with a pot roast. In the workplace, women were beginning to demand a seat at the table \u2014 at home, they just wanted to see the television.<\/p>\n Although they were built by the thousands in Southern California, the post-and-beam Mid Century Modern house never really caught on, not like the California Ranch of the 1950s or the New Traditional Mediterranean of the 1980s, which borrowed its open floor plan and sliding back door.<\/p>\n So check out the six excellent examples of the Modern architectural style on the San Diego Modern Home Tour, which will be on Saturday, Oct. 14, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For tickets, visit bit.ly\/2yVwFNO<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Modern](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/web-MAIN-Front-Street.jpg\")
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A brief history of Modern<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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