CF3 Coffee Chat - Adam / Goetz Residence

The October CF3 Coffee Chat took us to the other side of the Ohio River to Dayton Kentucky. Perched high on the hillside, the Adam / Goetz residence was built in 2000 by the current owners. Most of the Mid Century Modern homes CF3 tours typically have renovations, additions or other more modern time modifications, this was our first tour of a way newer ground up custom modern home. To the left the backyard has a small lap pool ripe for this photogenic moment.

Approaching the house, there's a lot of concrete, we know I'm game immediately. To get to the front door one must ascend either the concrete steps or ramp to the first level from the driveway similar to the Woodie Garber home in Glendale.

This is the main approach to the house. The plan is symmetrically balanced with the horizontal rooflines echoed with the cantilevering balconies. The house has a great view of the Ohio River Valley.

The house offers many photogenic moments which I took full advantage of prior to CF3 members arriving.

The structure of the house is a combination of concrete, steel and wood. Large I-Beams cantilever from the structure to carry the balconies. The cable railing is hardly noticable lending transparency to accent the cantilevered planes.

Inside, the house opens up immediately with full height glass and open floor plan. The house is undoubtedly influenced by Mary's House designed by the late David Niland with heavy symmetry & planar forms.

The main living space is central to the four corners of the house. Custom concrete countertops abound all the built-ins nooks around the house. A nice comparison shot of Mary's House can be found here.

The large galley kitchen heads the main living space off the entry with openings open the backsplash and cabinets. The white stays true down to the cabinetry.

More photogenic moments.

The formal front of the stark white house contrasts heavily against the natural hillside offering visual purity of the built object.

CF3 Coffee Chat - Friedman Residence Tour

With summer in full sweltering session, CF3's August coffee chat took us to Amberley Village, a local suburb of Cincinnati loaded with great Mid Century Moderns. The Friedman Residence is a very modest house cared for with meticulous maintenance by its current owners. The home is also slated to be featured in an upcoming issue of Atomic Ranch magazine.

The house has a typical low pitched roof from street side, yet the roof partially zig zags to butterfly along the back of the house. Similar to our house, one walks into the compressed area only to have a nice release of space of the main living and dining areas. The large expanse of glass across the back of the house emphasizes the open space.

Inside the living space, it's obvious why Atomic Ranch is featuring the house, the original details are immaculate. A large brick fireplace anchors the large open area complemented by a recessed bullet light and Nelson Pear lamps beyond. The layout of the furniture is precise and cohesive, providing a very functional and open space.

A photo of the aforementioned fireplace up close. The roman brick wall and hearth are accented with different masonry patterns and limestone banding to create an asymmetrical composition. A built-in planter has been converted to a bench on one side and a Frank Lloyd Wright designed Sprite on the other.

A couple of super sweet freestanding Danish lights are at one end of the living / dining area. Newer cork floors keep it crisp.

I wish I had taken some photos of the original bathrooms, but I did grab a couple of the ultra 50's kitchen, almost perfectly in tact. The upper cabinets are outwardly profile with linear frosted glass doors are backlit. Underneath, Boomerang Formica counters are edged in stainless and cap base metal cabinets complete with the recessed door profile. It's not often to see these cabinets, let alone in such a great intact setup.

These cabinets deck out the entire kitchen. In this photo you can barely see the Nutone exhaust fan on the ceiling at the top of the photo, at the bottom a glimpse of the retro stove. Be sure to look for some more photos of the house in an upcoming issue of Atomic Ranch magazine.

CF3 Coffee Chat - Bud Goetz

CF3's latest coffee chat (soon to adopt Atomic Crash Party format) took us to Middletown, a swank 50's suburb on the outskirts Cincinnati. This Bud Goetz designed house is smack dab in the middle of a typical suburban neighborhood and is surrounded by typical pitched roof houses that help this beauty stand out even more. The house is currently for sale and it was a unique opportunity to see it empty of loose furnishings ready for a family to settle in. Check out the listing for the house here.

Now for the good stuff, its obvious from the first couple photos, this is a low profile ranch modern with one roofline. From the street the house indicates its very private nature with the brick wall extending across the front to become a screen wall for the entry coutyard. The brick on this house was reused from a local building demolished back when this house was built. The patterned opening in the brick adds a nice element to the very simple facade.

The color scheme is also very simple, most of the house is the red brick with matched red on the roofline gravel stop, with a dark gray brown on the wood exterior. Set back far from the street, the house seems a lot simpler than it actually is offering very little view into the inside. Sometimes I find MCM's to be blatantly transparent, or rather the living in a fishbowl effect. Others are private oasis' with screens and compositions that lean toward privacy. With the private route, the challenge becomes how to obtain lots of natural light and maintain an integration with nature.

To get to the front door you descend a couple of steps into the entry courtyard, in many ways the courtyard is the heart of this house. The house layout itself wraps around this courtyard with many access points directly into this outdoor space. Overhead an open grid wood trellis extends the roofline to give the courtyard some sense of enclosure. Lush landscaping and a former water feature are centerpieces. Here the house envelope has glass on all sides of the courtyard.

Inside the intricate nature of the design becomes more evident. Built-ins throughout remind me of a Wrightian influence. The interior pallette is simple wood and white walls. I really enjoyed the way the white ceilings intersect with the exposed beam structure in places as can be seen to the right. Flooring ranges from wood parquet floors in the bedroom and this really cool tile flooring in a neat geometric pattern. Someone at the chat mentioned you could still obtain this tile, link please?

The house features built-ins in almost every room & space. Each bedroom has its own built in closet and desk, an example of a desk on the right.

The bathrooms in the house are still original. Here the double inset sinks can be seen. I always get a kick over an original MCM bathroom still remaining, most of the time these are lost through the decades or renovation and style mishaps, yep I'm talking to you 1980's.

Close up shot of the aforementioned tile flooring.

Out back the houses transparency shows up unobsured as floor to ceiling windows line the living space and dining areas. The rear patio is subtractively inset into the volume of the house featuring the inside tile floors extending onto the patio slab.

Around the corner from this house was another modern design by Architect Bud Goetz. We found this on our way to the chat and couldn't resist some drive by photography.

Another Bud Goetz around the corner on another street. Very similar to the house featured in this post. I was tempted to knock on the door and talk to the owners but thrift stores were calling my name. Perhaps we should set up a little 3 house circuit tour down the road. A special thanks to Susan Jackson of Susan Jackson Interiors for hosting the chat.

Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy Conference CF3 Kick Off Event

Spring is here, and so begins the CF3 event season. This Saturday, April 17th, CF3 members and fellow Cincinnati Wrightists will tour Frank Lloyd Wright's Boswell Residence in Indian Hill. The Boswell house is one of three in Cincinnati and one of Wright's largest completed houses. I have not seen the house in person, so we are looking very forward to the occassion, although we're still looking for a babysitter. An audio slideshow of the house can be found here, narrated by CF3 board member Chuck Lohre. Some other eye candy on the right starts with some exterior shots of the entry.

CF3 Coffee Chat - Niland Residence

I was privledged to attend the latest CF3 coffee chat this past week, a special soiree affair at the David Niland designed 'Mary's House'. A little preface before we begin. Niland was a University of Cincinnati Architecture professor at DAAP for many many years eventually acheiving emeritus stuatus. Have graduated from this program in 2002, I was a student of Niland's during my thesis for Architecture. Although it's called 'Mary's House', professor Niland and his very gacious wife reside here together.

Now on to the house, which is tucked away off a gravel road enclave of super private lots about 2 miles from the Ohio River. Approaching on foot one is greeted with the view in the first photo. A super white modernist architectural sculpture. A deceiving symmetrical compostion on approach gives way to a playful play of geometric depth that isn't perceived on intial approach.

Complete with white pumpkin, the entire skin of the house is completely white. I have to mention a funny story, in that I actually never went in the front door, instead I walked around the outside to the back area lost in amazement. Nonetheless you can see in the second photo the front door is framed by a typical Niland portal entry.

Coming around to the rear of the house in the third photo, a large subtractive terrace is recessed into the volume of the house. The rear composition is punctuated with another portal element connected to a curvlinear and open deck attached to the main rectilinear form. Still on the third photo the master bedroom with huge full height windows can be seen in the foreground. The same full height window proportions run vigourously around the periphery of the exterior

Inside a symmetrical ying yang floor plan is anchored to a large and open central living space. Stacks of magazines and books line the walls and front entry. Although we were there in the early evening, the sun peeked out occasionally and allowed us to see the quality of light the house offers. The fourth photo shows the central fireplace flanked by backlit cabinet banks. The collection of glass offers hints of color. The curvlinear hearth and reveal another running Niland detail.

The collection of furniture in the house is fantastic. Nelson, Eames, Saarinen, Aalto, there is something from many of the staple MCM furniture designers throughout. Turning around the living space in the fifth photo you can see the view back out to the rear terrace with our host beyond. Professor Niland coached the beverage station to assure meeting all the guests. I have to admit, he's a much nicer guy when not under his architectural critical thumb as a student.

During the course of the couple hours I browsed around the house among fellow CF3'ers, I heard a couple times "it's amazing to see Cincinnati has this caliber of modern house." There is no surface or element not completely though out and purposely placed. The white planes hover and screen a connected volume that serparates space but never disconnects it to the whole. The utilities in the house are all concealed, light switches and outlets are tough to find, often concealed. All the heat vents run flush with the floor. Cincinnati does have some nice moderns indeed.

The sixth photo is of a model of the home that sits on the living room floor, it's enormous. The lack of roof in the model offers a good view of the floor plan and spatial relationships of the design. It's funny I can't really say there are 'rooms' in the house. No space is completely enclosed. You can see the ying and yang arrangement of the spare bedroom and office. The chimney stack a steeple of modernism.

The seventh photo shows one of the enormous modern paintings in the large collection that gives the house a museum feel. Many pieces of brightly colored abstract geometric artwork fill the white house. This is my style of art and completely caused uncontrolled drooling. From glass to sculpture to paint on canvas, they have an impressive, if not the best I've seen in person, collection of artwork.

The final photo is a sample of a hallway that had pieces of colorful modernism lining the walls, not yet mounted. There are not that many built works of Niland, the completed ones carry an enriched sense of complexity and architectural wonder. We have a Niland project here in our neighborhood of Paddock Hills that I will have to try and feature in a future post. Speaking of our neighborhood, we've made more curb appeal progress, look for posts coming soon.

CF3 Coffee Chat - Hermes Residence

Cincinnati is a unique city. The many hills and enclaves make it a difficult city to navigate at times, yet provide many varying terrain neighborhoods with individual character. The west side of the city is my old stomping grounds, having grown up for awhile in Western Hills. The west side is notorious for confusing, up and down roads that give way to some really private sites, with mostly local traffic.

The Hermes Residence is no exception in its discreet location and intimate integration into the site. The house has been owned for 15 years by the current owners, relatives of local Cincinnati Mid Century Modern architect Rudy Hermes. A long winding driveway climbs the hill to find the Hermes Residence perched at the end of the deep lot. The house consists of a series of flat roof boxes that follow the profile of the site and step away from each other as they descend the hill.

The mature landscape gives little sense of the overall composition on first approach. From the bottom of the site, one enters the house at the end of the line of boxes between two parallel garages. The garage on the left is a very appropriate newer addition to the house by the current owners. The newer roof overhangs the adjacent garage volume that adds a more complex composition to the front entry.

Built in planters and stepped slabs of concrete lead you to the front door complete with center mounted doorknob and glass globe light above. Inside the intersection of the various rectilinear volumes provides a great datum to all the extended spaces. Original materials abound with diagonal terrazzo floors, exposed brick from the exterior, pecky cypress wood, and various other materials.

The most interesting feature in the central space is the integrated koi pond lined with white Bisazza iridescent tile and surrounded by a built in planter. My daughter thought this was the coolest thing ever, a life size aquarium. Above, a set of skylights aligns with the pond. Beyond, a fire engine red painted wall backdrops a pair of black leather Marcel Breuer designed Wassily chairs. Another cool feature in the space is the curvilinear sunken built-in bar complete with curved doors.

To one side of the central space the large eat-in kitchen is decked out with all high end stainless appliances within the original custom wood cabinetry. Cork flooring surrounds the large island that runs the length of the room. The east side of the kitchen is bound by a large expanse of windows. With a built in wine cooler and trash compactor, the kitchen is indicative of the level of luxury noted throughout the house.

A double sided fireplace with integral wood storage splits the formal dining area from the living space. Like many other MCM houses, the fireplace chimney block extends as a mass outside to the large patio. The living area has exposed wood beam ceilings and newer built-in cabinetry. A MCM mobile overhangs an Eames lounge chair and ottoman.

Steps from the central space ascend to the bedroom wing. Interestingly, the master bedroom is closet to the public area of the house and is open to overlook the entertainment space in the entry area. The master bathroom features a curved wall with original grey rectangle mosaic tile. The other bedrooms fill out the rest of the house and each have their own bathroom. The house in total is 3 bedrooms and 3-1/2 bathrooms.

Heading back outside, it's obvious the homeowners have groomed every bit of the peripheral landscape and hardscape. An extensive art collection can be found integrated into the landscape throughout the property. Around the bedroom wing, a gravel bed bound by metal landscape edging is functional, clean and maintenance free. Connecting one side of the house is a large patio that steps down to landscaped terraces. An open wood lattice screen wall partitions a small patio off the kitchen.

The Hermes residence is an outstanding example of MCM residential design. A true party house, the open connection to all the public (and even private) areas would allot a great party. Although the architect is currently unknown, the design of the house echoes that of the western case study style. Seeing a MCM home that has been well maintenanced and cared for is a true delight.