Aluminaire House

The Aluminaire House was designed as a case study by architects A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey in April, 1931. The three-story house, made of donated materials and built in ten days, was the first all-metal house in the United States. It was shown in the Grand Central Palace exhibition hall on Lexington Avenue in New York City as part of the Architectural and Allied Arts Exhibition. In 1932 the house was exhibited again, this time at the Architectural League of New York show sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). The MOMA show was titled The International Style - Architecture Since 1922, which became the basis of a book by Philip Johnson and Henry Russell Hitchcock, The International Style, a manifesto for the International Style of architecture.[1]

Aluminaire House
General information
StatusAwaiting restoration
Architectural styleInternational
LocationPalm Springs, California, U.S.
Completed1931
Technical details
Floor count3
Design and construction
Architect

History

After the early exhibitions, the house was sold to architect Wallace K. Harrison for $1,000 (equivalent to $18,739 in 2019), who disassembled it and moved it to his Long Island estate, where it became the core of an extensive complex. By 1940 the so-called "Tin House" was once again disassembled and moved to another portion of the property, where it became a guest house.[2][3]

The property was subdivided by new buyers in the 1980s who planned to demolish the Aluminaire House. An attempt to designate the house as a landmark[4] failed, but the owners agreed to donate the house to the New York Institute of Technology, which reassembled the house on the school's Central Islip campus.[3][5][1] The house was transferred to the Aluminaire House Foundation after the Central Islip Campus was closed, disassembled and put into storage. A 2013 proposal to reassemble the house on a site in Sunnyside Gardens, Queens, as part of a housing development met with opposition from Sunnyside Gardens residents, who expressed concern that the house's design did not fit with the neighborhood's traditional brick housing.[6] In 2015, it was announced that the Aluminaire House would be moved to Palm Springs, California, home of other works by Frey.[7] As of early 2018, the house had been placed in a container and shipped to Palm Springs. Plans call for it to be rebuilt in a park opposite the Palm Springs Art Museum, pending a $475,000 fund raising effort for its restoration.[8]

Description

The 1,200-square-foot (110 m2) house is roughly cubic in shape, resting on six columns, with five rooms. Exterior walls consist of corrugated metal sheathing backed by waterproof paper over a structure of two-inch steel angles. The interior finish is thin insulation board covered with fabric.[9]

See also

References
  1. Sumer, Rose. "Modern Artifact: The Story of Aluminaire House". New York Institute of Technology. Retrieved 26 June 2013.
  2. Saslow, Linda (July 10, 1988). "Metal House Becomes Case Study". New York Times.
  3. Fortunato, Claudia S. (April 19, 2011). "The Aluminaire House". Half Hollow Hills Patch. Retrieved 26 November 2011.
  4. Goldberger, Paul (March 8, 1987). "Icon of Modern Architecture Poised for Extinction". New York Times. Retrieved 26 June 2013.
  5. Gutis, Philip S. (February 7, 1987). "It's Ugly, and So is the Fight to Save It". New York Times. Retrieved 26 November 2011.
  6. Trapasso, Claire (June 20, 2013). "Sunnyside Gardens residents oppose relocation of futuristic 'Aluminaire House' to their landmarked brick district". New York Daily News.
  7. Descant, Skip (February 17, 2015). "Aluminaire House coming to Palm Springs". The Desert Sun.
  8. Cheng, Scarlet (February 13, 2018). "Albert Frey's 1931 Aluminaire House waits for a permanent home in Palm Springs". Los Angeles Times.
  9. Cunningham, Allen, ed. (1998). Modern Movement Heritage. E & FN SPON. pp. 137–138. ISBN 0-419-23230-3.
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