Occasionally short on space, A frames are forever rooted in boundless ingenuity.

Anyone who’s seen The Sweet Hereafter is likely to remember two things. Firstly, how heart-achingly depressed they felt afterwards. Secondly, that amazing A-frame house Wanda and Hartley Otto lived in. If not for all the snow and tragedy you, like me, might have thought “Hey, I could live there.”

Mountainous and beachy places are the most likely locales for A-frames, partly because of the low cost of constructing one – often as a second home – and from an eco-angle, their high ceilings provide excellent ventilation and allow plenty of natural light into the home. The characteristically steep sloping roof fares particularly well in extreme winter climates.

From Sagaponack to the Pyranees, here are seven famous – or almost famous – A-frames we think we could live in too.

The Reese House
Sagaponack, NY

Credited as being the house that capitalized the American A-frame housing boom from the mid-1950’s to the 1970’s, it was designed by the legendary architect Andrew Gellar in 1955.

Gassho-zukuri Houses
Shirakawa-gō and Gokayama

In Japan, the A-frame structure is referred to as “Prayer-hands construction.” The most famous cluster of gassho-zukuri houses can be seen in the UN World Heritage villages of Shirakawa-gō and Gokayama.

Al Purdy’s House
Ameliasburgh, ON

Known as one of Canada’s most important poets, Purdy’s pretty A-frame on Roblin Lake was constructed out of second-hand lumber and became the most famous writer’s house in the country.

The Weeks House
Louisville, Tennessee

Designed and constructed in 1950 by his father Felder Weeks, Paul the son and his wife Jeannine enlisted architect Brian Pittman to renovate it as a summer house. It was gutted to its original structure and two years later resulted in a thoughtful renovation and guest house expansion.

The Vanna Venturi House
Philadelphia, PA

This house, designed by architect Robert Venturi for his mother, is recognized as being one of the first prominent works of the postmodern architecture movement. It was constructed between 1962 -1964. It’s not very big, only about 30 feet tall, but architectural historian Vincent Scully called it “The biggest small building of the second half of the twentieth century.”

House at The Pyrenees
Aran Valley, Spain

This sexy house was commissioned by a father and son team who wanted to transform a dry stone house into a modern second residence in the Spanish Pyrenees. Built atop a vernacular dry stone house, architects Cadaval & Sola-Morales melded new design with old to create a sustainable home in this most extreme climate.

The Allandale House
Somewhere in the forest

This unusual A-frame was designed by William O’Brien Jr. who describes it as a “cabin of curiosities,” housing wines, rare books, stuffed birds and an elk mount. Another score for taxidermy chic.

A-frames can be short on space, but they are highly adaptable structures that allow for boundless creative collaboration between architects, designers and the residents themselves. Really, the roof’s the limit.

Images: Archifile, A|N Blog, Japan-i, Derek Shapton, Architectural Record; Chestnut Hill Historical Society, Cadaval & Sola-Morales, William O’Brien Jr.

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Architects have clients and clients set the creative parameters for a project. But when an architect is his own client, all rules and artistic limitations disappear and the result is the ultimate self portrait.

Home is where the heart of an architect can fully and completely be expressed. We take a look into the hearts of six of the most renowned modern architects of our time – the homes built and inhabited by Aalto, Eames, Gehry, Neutra, Niemeyer and Lloyd Wright.

Alvar Aalto – The Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto built his home (above and below) in Helsinki in 1936. It is now a museum and open to the public. If you don’t recognize Aalto by his name or his buildings, you might know his furniture or glassware designs.

Charles and Ray Eames – Case Study #8 (above and below) was built in 1949 and is located in Pacific Palisades, California. In 1948, the Eames’ were commissioned to design and build an inexpensive and efficient home as part of the Case Study Housing program. Case Study #8 is considered one of the first “pre-fab” buildings and is open to public tours through the Eames Foundation.

Frank O. Gehry – Do you know the Guggenheim in Bilbao or the Disney Music Hall in Los Angeles? Yes, Gehry is that guy. In 1978, he built his Santa Monica, California home (above and below) in all its barbed wire, corrugated steel and asymmetrical glory. It caused quite a stir with the neighbors who were not accustomed to Gehry’s avant-garde sensibility.

Richard Neutra – In 1963 a fire destroyed Richard Neutra’s Silverlake, California home (image above) that he designed and built in 1932. The Austrian-born architect’s redesign, the VDL Research House II (image below), is a close interpretation of the first, with its bands of vertical glass windows and alternating horizontal planes of steel and white stucco.

Oscar Niemeyer – The Brazilian architect built his Casa Das Canoas (image above and below) in 1953 in Rio de Janeiro. Niemeyer is known for his revolutionary use of reinforced concrete and the curvaceous, sculptural quality of his buildings. His own home is no exception.

Frank Lloyd Wright – The American architect built his first home in Oak Park, Illinois (image above) in 1889, where he and his family lived while he developed his practice and the “Prairie Style” of architecture. But Lloyd Wright’s favorite residence was his masterpiece, Taliesin West (top image and image below), built in 1937 in Scottsdale, Arizona. It seems to sprout from the desert and is typical of the organic style architecture that the architect promoted in his later years.

Images: Alvar Aalto Foundation, DesignCrave, ArchDaily, Archined, Design You Trust, TheCoolist, Reference Library, Wikipedia, Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

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Another historic gem from the Modernist era is threatened with demolition.

The Lassiter House, built by A.G. Odell in 1952, is the oldest known Modernist residence in Charlotte, North Carolina. The original owners, who worked with the architect on the design, put the house on the market last year but it hasn’t sold.

On February 24, 2011, a National Alert was issued on the house by North Carolina’s non-profit organization for modernist residential architecture, Triangle Modernist Houses (TMH). If it doesn’t sell by June, this house is history.

A rare example of modernist design in the South, where a more traditional aesthetic in housing design has prevailed, the Lassiter House was featured in the September 1956 issue of Better Homes & Gardens. Its open floor plan, single story, steel beams, flat roof, slab foundation, wood siding, extensive use of glass walls and doors are what give this house its modernist mystique.

I could tell you that the land it sits on happens to be worth more than the house itself, but unfortunately this makes most people’s mouths water. It’s exactly what they want to hear as they bring in bulldozers and envision building their brand new McMansion.

Replacing the old and classic with something new is not only not conscious or sustainable, but in the case of historic architecture it’s simply sacrilege. Despite this, or possibly because of it, it will take a special buyer to save this special house. Preserving and restoring a classic piece of mid-century modern design requires a significant commitment – of money, resources and values. I sincerely hope someone steps up before June.

For more information, the Lassiter House is listed with Modern Charlotte Realty for $785,000.

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We talk about it a lot here at EcoSalon. Conscious choices. Mindful decisions. The easiest way to make a difference and effect change in the world is to live consciously and mindfully. To try to be aware of what we buy, how (or if) we drive, where we shop, what we eat.

If we’re present in the moment we usually choose better. It’s that simple.

Why am I taking you around and through this rigmarole of spiritual stuff when I should be talking about design? Just stay with me.

I believe people have stopped paying attention. It’s far easier to answer the cell phone or check the GPS or update the Facebook status or plan what to eat for dinner. Living in the now requires discipline.

Living in the now forces us to look around, to respect the past and honor the future. And yes, this definitely is relevant to design.

If you have, in fact, been paying attention, you will know that endless rows of tract homes and giant McMansions have been popping up all over the country over the past decade or two. In order to make room for more of them, many valuable and historically and architecturally significant homes are being demolished.

Tragic, and tragically unsustainable.

People want bigger and newer, at the expense of beautiful and perfectly livable. It’s too much to fathom.

With each historic home that is torn down and replaced by a new McMansion, neighborhoods lose more of their character as well as their affordability. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has found that “more than 500 communities in 40 states are experiencing significant numbers of teardowns, and that number is climbing fast.”

Richard Moe, former president of the National Trust, said:

“From 19th-century Victorian to 1920s bungalows, the architecture of America’s historic neighborhoods reflects the character of our communities. Teardowns radically change the fabric of a community. Without proper safeguards, historic neighborhoods will lose the identities that drew residents to put down roots in the first place.”

But neighborhoods are fighting back in an attempt to increase public awareness.

The town of New Canaan, Connecticut began its quest back in 2007 when a home designed by Modernist architect Paul Rudolph (image above) was destroyed after a judge decided “he could find nothing to support the contention that the house had special significance.”

Huh? This conclusion concerned a group of local conservationists so much that they launched the Modern Homes Survey “to provide a more complete study of Modern residences in New Canaan and serve as a national model for surveys of other mid-century houses in the United States.”

The survey found that this conservative New England town happens to be home to 91 Modernist homes built between 1946 and 1979, including of course, the Philip Johnson Glass House (image above) which is already a National Trust Historic Site.

Recently 18 of the New Canaan Modernist residences were added to the State and/or National Register of Historic Places, the nationally recognized list of places in the United States worthy of preservation. Considered a serious success, the hope is that other states will follow suit and research the history of their own buildings.

Alicia Leuba, Director of Programs for the Northeast Office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, says of the accomplishment:

“With its unique and substantial collection of Modern homes now nationally recognized as historically significant, Connecticut is blazing a path for other states to follow.”

Although knowledge of the value and beauty of Modernist architecture is spreading, the demolitions continue. The only other antidote to this type of tragedy is public awareness.

Are you paying attention?

Images: Don Hankins, Mod Remod

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