Extending and Preserving the Modern American Dwelling

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Extending and Preserving the Modern American Dwelling

Day Three Morning Sessions
Extending and Preserving the Modern American Dwelling

Session 1
A Conservation Management Plan for the Eames House

Session 2


Session 3

A Conservation Management Plan for the Eames House

The Eames House, an internationally renowned and highly influential work of Modern architecture, was designed by Ray and Charles Eames under Arts and Architecture magazine’s Case Study House program. It is now one of the most intact and internationally recognized of the Case Study homes. However, it is far more than a great work of architecture. It is filled with Charles and Ray’s belongings and sits in a distinctive landscape, and these three interconnected elements—the building complex, the collections, and the landscape—are all integral to its significance. As the house and its site have evolved over the years, the Eames Foundation, which owns and manages it, has found itself at a crossroads: How to conserve the site in ways that protect all aspects of its heritage significance, while also recognizing the need for reasonable change? To assist in the sensitive management and conservation of the site, the Getty Conservation Institute developed the Eames House Conservation Management Plan (CMP), which takes a holistic approach by analyzing the entire site and all of its elements and components, both tangible and intangible. This presentation will take participants through the conservation planning process and will explain the components of the Eames House CMP. It will demonstrate that this CMP provides a model for the application of this methodology to other modern sites.

Gail Ostergren

Gail Ostergren is a research specialist with Getty Conservation Institute’s Buildings and Sites department, where she works with a number of projects including the Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative, the Eames House Conservation Project, and the Los Angeles African American Historic Places Project. Gail earned her PhD in history at UCLA. She serves on the historic preservation commission in West Hollywood, CA, and is a founding board member of the °®¶¹app/Southern California chapter. She is one of the authors of the Eames House Conservation Management Plan.

Unloved and Out of Sight: The Post War Manufactured House

Today, one out of every five new single-family housing units purchased in the United States is a manufactured house yet for most Americans, mobile homes and parks connote negative stereotypes associated with transient living and low-income occupants. With a history contrary to this perception and improved standards of construction since the 1970s, manufactured homes offer an affordable alternative to conventional site-built homes, especially for senior citizens on a fixed income.  The same impetus for affordable housing that drove the post war suburbanization of America, incentivized trailer manufacturers to develop new competitive designs for manufactured housing during the 1950s and 60s.  Centered in the Midwest and capitalizing on the existing network of manufacturers supplying the automotive industry, manufacturers of ‘mobile homes’ proliferated, launching the American industry and the golden age of mobile home design as represented by hundreds of models with a wide range of styles and cost.  

Frank Matero

Frank G. Matero is Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. He is Director and founder of the Center for Architectural Conservation, a member of the Graduate Group in the Department of Art History, and Research Associate of the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He is founder and editor-in-chief of Change Over Time, the international journal on conservation and the built environment published by Penn Press.  His teaching and research are focused on historic building technology and the conservation of building materials, with an emphasis on masonry and earthen construction, the conservation of archaeological sites, and issues related to preservation and appropriate technology for traditional societies and places.

 

Sustainable Rehabilitation of Homes Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright

The built environment accounts for nearly half of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, and in recent years architects and engineers have become committed to reducing these emissions. Energy efficiency, green building materials and sustainable technologies have increasingly become the standard in new construction, yet sustainable-based retrofits of historic buildings has lagged far behind. Despite the acknowledgement that combating climate change is the singular most important issue in building design and construction, sustainable rehabilitation of historic properties have been hampered by a number of factors, including buyer’s aversion to old floor plans, increased construction costs, current fashion trends, and a reluctance on the part of governmental preservation agencies to accept sustainable construction in preservation projects. Governmental restoration guidelines sometimes prevent the use of green materials, and adherence to “historical authenticity” sometimes eliminates the use of sustainable construction techniques. There is also a prevailing sentiment that historic properties should be preserved in accordance with the way they were first built, and that even the most sensitive sustainable improvements somehow compromises the original building. For many, the greater the historic significance of a building, the more likely that curators feel it should be given a “free pass” in meeting energy conservation standards. This discussion will explore the various sustainability and preservation issues that have arisen during the restoration and rehabilitation of over 20 homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright over a 30 year period.

John Eifler, FAIA, LEED AP

John Eifler is the president of the architectural firm of Eifler & Associates. He received a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee in 1979 and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Valparaiso University in 1973. Mr. Eifler began practicing architecture in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, where he worked from 1979 to 1989. While employed at SOM, he was project architect for the restoration of the Charnley House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan in 1892. John Eifler established his office in 1990. His firm has been responsible for the restoration of a number of buildings designed by noteworthy architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, George Maher, Walter Burley Griffin, Schmidt Garden & Martin, Tallmadge & Watson, Pond and Pond and E.E. Roberts.