BeigeJournal

The Smart House, by James Grayson Trulove. Ten unusual houses, beautifully photographed. “Smart” refers to smart technology (computerized systems), smart materials, and smart design. The houses are all of the style that probably has a precise technical name but which we civilians would refer to as very modern, with lots of glass and steel. Many are on very steep slopes, leading to such unusual arrangements as entrances (even garages) on the top floor. Not the sort of thing you see in central Illinois.

As is usual in architecture books and magazines they have the very opposite of the lived-in look, virtually empty save for a bit of modernistic (probably uncomfortable, but really cool looking) furniture. There are some books here and there (not as many as I and most of my friends have), and the photos tease with the titles just not quite readable on the spines. Probably they are readable with a good loupe on the original chromes.

I always enjoy these sorts of books. I like seeing something different being built. Given the low tolerance for architectural creativity of even the mildest sort in the USA, just finding a place where it is possible to get permission to build anything unique enough to appear in a book must be the hardest part. (The situation in Germany I don’t know about.) Nothing so beautiful that it will end up photographed for publication can be permitted in the neighborhood, lest it reduce your property values. Indeed, it might, if perspective buyers of your generic condo unit saw something different to compare it to.

Some of these houses are rather extreme in their embrace of the bare modern style, which may limit the ideas most of us can draw from them. I’m not sure I’d want to actually live in some of them, and of course if I did they’d be full of junk. Still a fun book to look through.