A Few of Our Favorite Things

From time to time, The Modernist Angle will share with you a few of our favorite products, materials, innovations, etc. that are tailor-made for modernist residential design. Full disclosure: We are not being paid, sponsored by, or receiving anything in exchange for sharing these products.

If you’re planning to build a new modernist house or renovate and remodel an existing one, you may want to add these to your files. And we welcome you to share your favorites with us -- from tried-and-true items to brand-new discoveries -- in the Comments section below.

Klearwall® Windows & Doors

Hardwood-framed, triple-glazed, passive house-certified windows and doors by Klearwall® are as energy-efficient as it gets (with a U-value of .14) and beautiful t’boot. For this modern Net Positive house with thick concrete walls (above and below), architect Arielle Condoret Schechter, AIA, of Chapel Hill, NC, specified Klearwall® windows and doors throughout. Above, she custom-designed a wall-sized composition on the southern elevation to include a door and an operable section that supports cross ventilation. Below, a Klearwall® window and exterior door complement horizontal wood paneling in the master bedroom. 

All Klearwall® Passive House windows and doors are certified by the Passive House Institute in Germany. They’re also manufactured in Germany in a Net Zero facility.

Sinker Cypress

Another  modern, Net Zero house designed by Arielle Condoret Schechter.

           

About 100 years ago when virgin cypress forests were being harvested, some of the larger logs became submerged. If they couldn’t be recovered from the bottoms of lakes and rivers, they remained there.

Over recent years, lumber companies have been retrieving those old logs and the lumber they mill out of them is called Sinker Cypress – an odd name for a gorgeous wood that reveals deep, rich colors ranging from a golden honey hue to dark olive green. 

Used for exterior soffits, siding, and accent walls, Sinker Cypress looks stunning paired with natural stone, fiber cement siding (as on the house above), and Corten® steel, among other materials. Inside, it’s a visually soft, elegant choice for wood paneling (left) and ceiling decking. (It is not suitable for structural use.)

Sinker Cypress works beautifully with modern home designs, especially the clear “Select” grade. Since no trees are felled to create it, Sinker Cypress is an obvious eco-friendly choice.

Extremeconcrete®

Extremeconcrete® is an award-winning, sustainable, high-performance concrete that recycles waste materials, such as post-consumer glass, shredded plastic, and silicon byproducts. Extremeconcrete® surfaces can be molded into any shape and finished in a variety of textures and colors, like the choices above. Extremeconcrete® tiles and surfaces are NSF Certified, LEED^® contributing architectural products.

Stay tuned for the next installment of “A Few of Our Favorite Things.”

Now it’s your turn. Want to share a few of your favorite things below?

Giving Credit Where It's Due -- To Corbu

Villa Savoye

 If you’re reading this blog, you’re obviously interested in modern houses. Perhaps you live in one -- or aspire to.

Why? What do you love about modern houses? Is it the walls of glass that provide panoramic views and welcome natural light? The open floor plans and crisp, clean lines? What about outdoor spaces that are as much a part of the house as the indoor spaces?

As a modern house enthusiast, you love all of the above. But do you know why those attributes are available for us to enjoy in the first place? (If you do, kudos!)

In the spirit of giving credit where it’s due, there is one name every fan of modern houses should know. In fact, we should celebrate his birthday every year!

Le Corbusier

He was born October 6, 1887, in Le Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Eventually, he would become a French citizen. His real name was Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Griss, but he preferred the pseudonym he adopted when he moved to Paris in 1917: Le Corbusier. Simply “Corbu” to the initiated.

Le Corbusier believed that science and the technologies that brought about industrialization could, and should, be utilized to produce “modern age architecture” of internationally accepted principles. In 1923, he published Vers une Architecture (Toward a New Architecture), in which he declared, quite radically, that “a house is a machine for living in.” 

In keeping with that concept, he believed every aspect of architecture should serve a purpose or function. Non-functional decorations (or ornamentation, in architect-speak) had no place in or on modern age architecture. As Corbu said, “The plan is pure, exactly made for the needs of the house.”

Among other inspired structures he produced to turn architecture on its head, Corbu designed the stunning and now-iconic Villa Savoye (pictured above) on the outskirts of Paris -- an elegant white box made of reinforced concrete that’s poised atop a grid of slender pylons in the midst of a large green lawn surrounded by trees.

A Mecca for architects and architectural students, Villa Savoye exemplifies every one of Corbu’s “five points of new architecture” that he declared in writing in 1927. Immediately, Corbu’s “five points” became the foundational principles of the Modern architectural vocabulary. They still are, as you’ll recognize below:

1.     Pilotis – A grid of reinforced concrete columns that bears the structural load, replacing the typical supporting walls and creating a new aesthetic. Among other results, Pilotis allows a house or building to be raised up on reinforced concrete pylons, which creates free circulation on the ground level for a variety of uses.

2.     “The free design of the ground plan,” aka the open floor plan - Structurally, heavy-duty beams and structural columns carry the weight of the floor or roof above, not walls. Aesthetically, open plans provide a sense of spaciousness and reflect a more casual living style, eschewing the need for “formal” spaces.

3.     Independent façade- This means that the exterior walls of a house or building are not structural, load-bearing walls. Columns in the interior support the house or building so the façade can be much lighter and more open, or made entirely of glass. And the glazing, or glass, isn’t encumbered by lintels or other structure around it.

4.     Horizontal “ribbon” windows – Another revolutionary concept at the time, horizontal windows eliminated vertical sash windows in favor of providing natural light inside evenly across a space.

5.     Roof gardens – Because Corbu replaced traditional sloping roofs with flat ones, he used this space to compensate for the portion of the land the house consumes. Note that Corbu’s idea predates sustainable design and green roofs by decades.

So just to remind you:  Corbu’s birthday is October 6th…

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In a future post, we’ll connect Le Corbusier and the Modern Movement in Europe with the visionary architect on this side of the ocean who turned the movement into “an American opportunity.”