From Texas to Tel Aviv, the World’s Best Architecture is Now Available for Digital Tours
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Since many of us were more restricted to our quarters than usual in the past pandemic year, the domestic sphere has acquired a new meaning. While increased awareness of our own living room may not be the kind of enlightenment we sought during this time of forced contemplation, hope is at hand. The home tour – that particularly North American ritual in which archophiles go on excursions every year to look longingly into other people’s living rooms – has become global and increasingly virtual. Now you have access to wonderful light-flooded post-and-beam interiors with Eames Chairs and Jacobsen Love Seats at the click of a mouse.
Forward-looking art museums such as the Canadian West Vancouver Art Museum – a treasure trove of vulnerable mid-century modernism, for which the popular institution is actively committed – make their house tours completely virtual. In a one-hour film, you can now experience highlights such as the Paul Merrick House from 1972, a breathtaking exercise in organic architecture on 16 different levels. As a canvas for changing shadow and light patterns, its indoor-outdoor aesthetic blurs boundaries as if through the mirror glass. From the same perspective, Arthur Erickson’s Eppich House 1 from 1972 shows the post-and-beam architecture of the west coast in concrete, a material that he once called “the marble of our time”. Erickson’s own home – a converted garage – and his stunning Japanese-inspired garden are open for personal tours and will soon be available via livestream tours.
The eaves house in West Vancouver.
Further south, in California, the official tour of the Palm Springs Art Museum Architecture and Design Center, which includes the Albert Frey House II, nestled in the San Jacinto Mountains and overlooks the city and Coachella Valley, is given by Julius Shulman – Expert Michael Stern Modern Tour. The museum tour is a mix of virtual and real and features a seven-minute video of the Frey House that is the next best thing to be there. For intrepid travelers, personal, socially distant tours for the fully vaccinated also offer William Cody’s Glass House, the elegant 1967 residence with floor-to-ceiling glass walls, and Frederick Loewe (the composer of musicals like My Fair Lady and Camelot), which is a small hut which developed into a modernist masterpiece in the middle of the century.
Meanwhile, the Modern Architecture and Design Society, an Austin and NYC-based company founded by architectural photographer James Leasure in 2010, presents homes in the United States both virtually and in real life. Virtual events are a mix of pre-filmed / photographed content and live interaction via an interactive 360 model that guides global viewers through the houses and allows them to ask questions of the architects. Tours focus on both mid-century modernism and more contemporary designs.
There seems to be a lot of buzz for the home tour down under, with a range of virtual and actual events available in different states and territories depending on the lockdown level. Although the 1950’s Rose Seidler home of the Sydney Living Museum will remain closed until further notice and their tour of iconic homes has been postponed indefinitely due to no virtual options available at the moment, historian Stuart Symons’ Modernist Adelaide has upcoming walking tours of them important mid-century houses with extensive video footage of both on its side.
In Melbourne, DIY tours of the stylish Beaumaris neighborhood are recommended, as are visits to Robin Boyd’s house on Walsh Street. Fortunately for the mouse clickers in their living rooms, there are the 2020 Virtual Open Houses, which showcase the very best of Australian contemporary new builds, additions, expansions and heritage restorations.
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