A Visit to a Modern House
Jun. 10th, 2011 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kathygnome Last weekend, the Cape Cod Modern House Trust had an open house for the Kugel-Gips house, which is a beautiful modern house located out in the National Seashore. I was feeling really sluggish and Janna was ready to wander off without me, but I really wanted to see it and I'm glad I went.
Simply put, the house is stunning.
The house has been decorated with mid-century modernist furniture (Janna pointed it out and I have a sneaking suspicion it's authentic and more valuable than our car) and we were able to do a full tour of both levels. There's a video of the head of the modern house trust and there's some additional information on how close we came to losing places like this. Apparently the only reason the seashore didn't tear it down was the national park service has been starved for funds and couldn't afford to!
Much of it is what you'd expect from modern design. It's integrated into the landscape, has a very open floorplan, and a lot of interesting angles.
The "lifestyle" that the house interior implies is what struck me the most. You can see some of it in the video above. The kitchen is small, but has a lot of usable space and is open to both a small office/study with a built in desk and windows overlooking the pond and to a large living room/dining room which opens onto the deck and again has floor to ceiling windows and a view of the pond. The bedrooms are small. There's just a bit more space than the bed takes up and the closets have curtains rather than doors to keep their footprint as small as possible. The stairwells are tiny and would in no way be allowed by building codes today, but it's not important as you aren't spending quality time going up and down them. The idea is almost as if the two bedrooms in the basement are storage space when you store your people when they're not in use. It's clear they are meant to house a bed and not be some kind of leisure space in general. And there's a few little nooks.
And there are all these little touches. The living room is separated from the entry by a floating wall with a built in fireplace, which gives you the illusion of a complete wall, particularly as your eye is drawn to the fireplace, but also allows you to see, for example, who is at the door and with the climate on cape, also allows clear air flow to keep everything cool.
It was a really nice way to spend an afternoon, but it did leave me pining for a similar home. There are some prefabs that are honestly not all that ludicrously expensive, but still above what we'd like to spend if we did build.
Simply put, the house is stunning.
The house has been decorated with mid-century modernist furniture (Janna pointed it out and I have a sneaking suspicion it's authentic and more valuable than our car) and we were able to do a full tour of both levels. There's a video of the head of the modern house trust and there's some additional information on how close we came to losing places like this. Apparently the only reason the seashore didn't tear it down was the national park service has been starved for funds and couldn't afford to!
Much of it is what you'd expect from modern design. It's integrated into the landscape, has a very open floorplan, and a lot of interesting angles.
The "lifestyle" that the house interior implies is what struck me the most. You can see some of it in the video above. The kitchen is small, but has a lot of usable space and is open to both a small office/study with a built in desk and windows overlooking the pond and to a large living room/dining room which opens onto the deck and again has floor to ceiling windows and a view of the pond. The bedrooms are small. There's just a bit more space than the bed takes up and the closets have curtains rather than doors to keep their footprint as small as possible. The stairwells are tiny and would in no way be allowed by building codes today, but it's not important as you aren't spending quality time going up and down them. The idea is almost as if the two bedrooms in the basement are storage space when you store your people when they're not in use. It's clear they are meant to house a bed and not be some kind of leisure space in general. And there's a few little nooks.
And there are all these little touches. The living room is separated from the entry by a floating wall with a built in fireplace, which gives you the illusion of a complete wall, particularly as your eye is drawn to the fireplace, but also allows you to see, for example, who is at the door and with the climate on cape, also allows clear air flow to keep everything cool.
It was a really nice way to spend an afternoon, but it did leave me pining for a similar home. There are some prefabs that are honestly not all that ludicrously expensive, but still above what we'd like to spend if we did build.
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Date: 2011-06-10 08:30 pm (UTC)~kit~
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Date: 2011-06-10 08:42 pm (UTC)It's killing me that I can't find a floor plan for the house.
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Date: 2011-06-11 06:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-01 10:00 pm (UTC)And then I shied away from everything social about the internets for years, but I've recently begun blogging again and I figured I should go back and friend cool people I was too lame to friend before. Wow, this sounds silly. But yeah, I was going to go ahead and friend you.