Description:
The Un-Private House exhibition is only the second significant exploration of residential architecture lodged by the Museum of Modern Art, and the first one was way back in 1934. This book is well timed and should prove fascinating to any and all who are interested in considering the infinity of ways in which we might live. This writer's favorite object of contemplation from the book is located in Tokyo and is called the "Curtain Wall House." It stands three stories tall, all with mostly open floor plans on a corner lot. An enormous curtain of fabric hangs along the two sides of the house that face the corner of the lot. In order to close the house in and make it private, one must draw the curtain around the multistory space. When the curtain is open, all the workings of the home are revealed. This is an extreme dwelling with an apparent simplicity that confounds its real meaning. The Un-Private House is the catalog for a show of the same name at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Terence Riley, chief curator of architecture and design at the museum, put the show together and provides all of the text for the book. He suggests that for centuries one of the highest functions of the single-family home has been seclusion from the public realm. Here Riley has compiled a fabulous collection of cutting-edge solutions to this condition. --Loren E. Baldwin
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