From USA Today's Life section Cover Story, May 16, 2001
1950s get a round of applause
Modernist architecture gains renewed appreciation

By Marco R. della Cava
USA TODAY

GOLDEN, Colo. -- John Huggins peers through the floor-to-ceiling windows and apologizes for the veil of spring snow and fog. ''From here, you can see Denver about 25 miles off to the east, and to the west the Continental Divide,'' he says. ''It's really a shame.''

But his apology rings a bit hollow. He knows full well that the real jaw-slackening vista is behind him -- inside the Sculptured House, the 1965 modernist opus of architect Charles Deaton.

Huggins, 42, is an Internet millionaire who has played Henry Higgins to this glass-and-concrete Eliza Doolittle, buying the neglected 15-acre property two years ago for $1.3 million and spending nearly twice that restoring and enhancing the dwelling. But this is no tale of a quirky rich man at play. In fact, it is but one of various glory-to-neglect-to-glory stories being played out across the nation.

Architecturally, we're hitting the rewind button. First, the Rat Pack, swing dancing and cocktail-hour cool recaptured our imaginations. Now, with the dawn of the new millennium, midcentury architecture has found new admirers in an age group that grew up with The Jetsons, Apollo launches and bold, arching visions of what the home of the future might look like.

Few midcentury landmarks better capture that spirit than this clamshell-shaped pod perched atop 8,000-foot Genesee Mountain. Its birth was greeted by features in national magazines and a segment on the Today show. When Woody Allen sought out a house to depict life in 2173, Deaton's masterpiece took center stage in the 1973 film Sleeper, its cylindrical elevator doubling as the giggly Orgasmatron.

And then began the backward slide. Architect Charles Deaton ran out of money. The house became a refuge for wolves that used it as a den, and partying teens who smashed out its windows.

When Huggins started restoring the house, snow filled the living room. But he never questioned the costly resurrection: He knows that he has a collectible. Once maligned as stark and austere, modernist designs are being re-evaluated and restored. Just one look at the undulating buildings-as-sculpture designed by today's hottest architect, Frank Gehry (Seattle's Experience Music Project, Spain's Guggenheim in Bilbao), and the debt that 21st century radicalism owes to post-World War II futurism is apparent.

''People have fallen in love with the simplicity of this style that was born in the '50s, the fact that you can see the structure clearly, that you can see what sort of materials are being used,'' says Clifford Pearson, senior editor at Architectural Record magazine. ''It's a very honest style that goes with the new century and a reaction to these cold and massive McMansions that have become popular of late.''

Indeed, while today's opulent planned-community homes might lure some wealthy buyers, those who seek exclusivity and a touch of history are understandably drawn to masterworks of the past.

''To have a midcentury modernist house is really a way to be part of that movement,'' says Pierluigi Serraino, author of Modernism Rediscovered, a new book on the phenomenon. ''It says you're validating that style, and you're continuing it.''

Coast-to-coast enthusiasm
The validation is coming from diverse quarters. At New York's JFK airport, plans to alter the futuristic TWA building, built in 1962 by Eero Saarinen, are causing preservationists to leap to the defense of the landmark.

Out on Long Island, design maven Martha Stewart paid $3.2 million to stroll back to the early '60s; she is restoring a home built by Gordon Bunshaft, one of New York's leading midcentury commercial architects.

In Los Angeles, art book publishers Benedikt and Angelika Taschen bought a circular property a few years ago called the Chemosphere, aka the Flying Saucer House, which hovers elegantly above the San Fernando Valley. The couple spent hundreds of thousands to accurately rebuild the 1962 John Lautner house.

At L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art, an exhibit dedicated to the work of architect R.M. Schindler is going on through June 3, then heads to the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

''Minimalism is in, streamlined is hot, and Schindler and his contemporaries, like Richard Neutra, were the root of this look,'' says MOCA assistant curator Michael Darling. It helps, he adds, that Hollywood executives now feel that collecting such homes is a mark of hipness.

Growing up in Silicon Valley in a mass-market '50s home designed by Joseph Eichler, Allen Clapp knew that as an adult, only an Eichler would do.

Now he and wife Jill Pries -- leaders of the rock band the Orange Peels -- not only live in an Eichler in Sunnyvale, their passion for the home prompted them to praise it in the liner notes of their album So Far, including a photo (the house gives way to a small pond), a tribute to Eichler homes (''they came to embody the casual, sophisticated mystique of California living'') and a reference to a relevant Web site (www.eichlernetwork.com). ''There's a link between our music and midcentury modernism, from the linear song structure to the geometric arpeggios,'' Clapp says.

In fact, some ''95% of those who in the '50s toured new Eichler homes, radical with their prolific use of glass to bring the outside indoors, felt this new lifestyle was not for them,'' says Marty Arbunich, director of the Eichler Network, a resource for owners of some 11,000 Eicher homes. ''For many, that shape was just too radical.''

A dream reborn
If boldness was required of Eichler owners, a passion for the surreal was vital to anyone sharing Deaton's vision of domestic bliss. ''I believe people look better and feel better among curves, that curvilinear designs make people feel less confined,'' he told an interviewer in 1964. ''In other words, curved buildings provide a natural setting for curved people.''

Part of the genius of the Sculptured House -- all curves, arches and bisected spheres -- is that you don't fall over the instant you walk inside. Although one corner of the master bedroom does rise gently, following the exterior clamshell contours, the house otherwise retains a solidity that makes it livable.

Huggins' own appreciation of his multimillion-dollar project is rooted in something less tangible than a steel tube. He sees in this home's rebirth a rededication to old ideals. ''This place is a visible symbol of the spirit of progress, of the notion that you can have a better life if you try. Much of modern architecture shares this sense of being bold and unconventional. It's a challenge to make the future better.''

Architect Antonopoulos nods intently. ''Modernism,'' he says, ''is optimism. I believe people look better and feel better among curves, that curvilinear designs make people feel less confined. In other words, curved buildings provide a natural setting for curved people.''