Midcentury Houses Today traces the evolving afterlife of seventeen landmark houses in New Canaan, Connecticut — works by Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, Eliot Noyes, John Black Lee, and Edward Durell Stone — examining how these canonical structures are being preserved and adapted for contemporary life.
About This Book
New Canaan, Connecticut became one of the most concentrated testing grounds for midcentury modernism in America, and this expanded edition of the 2014 publication returns to that legacy with new urgency. The question it poses is not merely historical: how do buildings of such formal rigour and material specificity — flat roofs, glass walls, open plans — accommodate the demands of life today? Seventeen houses are examined in depth, each with archival and new photography, plans, and timelines that map the dialogue between original intent and contemporary intervention. At its core, the book treats adaptive reuse as a sustainable architectural strategy, giving material weight to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's provocation: the greenest building is the one already built.
Key Features
- 256 pages of archival and new photography, floor plans, and renovation timelines across seventeen midcentury houses
- Authors: Michael Biondo, Jeffrey R. Matz, Lorenzo Ottaviani, Cristina A. Ross
- Notable case studies include houses by Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, Eliot Noyes, John Black Lee, and Edward Durell Stone in New Canaan, Connecticut
- Published by The Monacelli Press, 2014
What You'll Discover
- How seventeen specific midcentury houses in New Canaan have been adapted by contemporary architects while retaining the clean, minimalist language of their original construction
- The architectural and material strategies used to reconcile modernist spatial ideals with the functional realities of present-day domestic life
- The case for preservation and adaptive reuse as a credible, measurable form of sustainable practice — not a compromise, but a design position
- A comparative visual record pairing original archival documentation with new photography, revealing how each house has aged, changed, and endured
About the Author
[Details available upon request]
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 256
- Dimensions: 26.7 x 26.7 x 2.7 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781580936101
- Publisher: The Monacelli Press
- Publication Date: 2014
Perfect For: Architects and historians with an interest in midcentury modernism, practitioners working in heritage adaptation and sustainable renovation, and collectors drawn to the canonical residential work of Breuer, Johnson, and their New Canaan contemporaries.