New Book features Paul Rudolph's Bass Residence

Ok - so now you know what to get your favorite #1 Paul Rudolph Fan for the Holidays. As reported by Gaile Robinson in the Star Telegram:



Great Houses of Texas
by Lisa Germany, photos by Grant Mudford (Abrams, $50, hardcover, 256 pages)
Among this book's selection of 25 of the most remarkable homes in Texas, Anne Bass' house in Fort Worth is the standout. Now maybe that's just regional chauvinism, but architect Paul Rudolph's cantilevered white planes that are stacked in a twirling pinwheel look as contemporary now as they did when the house was designed in 1970. This book offers a rare peek inside this exquisite home, where museum-size paintings by Morris Louis, Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly grace the public areas.

The Bass Residence is known as the finest example of Paul Rudolph's residential work, and this book should grace the coffee tables of Rudolph fans everywhere!

Blueprints reveal rare surviving structure in Florida

“We live in a Twitchell-Rudolph home. We discovered this fact when we found the deteriorated blueprints in the shed. Whether we own it or it owns us, we have yet to decide. The house has many of the features you mentioned: clerestory and large picture windows, wide overhangs and no load-bearing internal walls. Bringing it back to livable conditions has been a labor of love or lunacy ... depending on one’s point of view. The house never lets one forget where you live. It is always filled with light and the green of the trees.”

So wrote Maggie Stevens, owner of what may be the only surviving house in Fort Myers designed by the internationally respected architecture team of Ralph Twitchell and Paul Rudolph.

The Paul Rudolph Foundation has reached out to Joyce Owens, who wrote a wonderful article in the Fort Myers News-Press this past Saturday about the house in Fort Myers and the new owners who discovered the set of plans.

Joyce is currently in Singapore where she plans to visit the Colonnade and the Concourse. When she returns to the United States at the end of July we will share other stories she has written about Paul Rudolph and the Sarasota School of Architecture.

For pictures of the house in Fort Myers, you can see them here.

Paul Rudolph Exhibit in Osprey Florida

As a strange coincidence, especially in light of the recent Sarasota school board's decision to tear down Paul Rudolph's Riverview High School, an exhibition of Paul Rudolph's work in the area is being displayed at a local museum in Osprey, Florida.

Paul Rudolph: Florida Houses & The Sarasota School of Architecture will be on display at Historic Spanish Point from May 14 to September 30, 2008.

"This exhibition explores the mid 1940s work of award-winning and world renowned architect Paul Rudolph {1918-1997}. After attaining his Master of Architecture degree from Harvard, Rudolph formed an association with Ralph Twitchell. Their partnership inspired the creation of unique structures in Sarasota County. Known as the Sarasota School of Architecture, this is a distinctive regional style which blends the natural landscape with innovative construction methods and materials.

The interrelationship between the production of Rudolph’s Florida houses and the surrounding landscape, as well as their links to concurrent architectural styles are among the topics interpreted through this exhibition. Models and drawings as well as period photos of finished structures by Ezra Stoller are the main focus of the exhibition. This comprehensive exhibit compliments the publication, Paul Rudolph: The Florida Houses by Christopher Domin and Joseph King."

The Historic Spanish Point Visitors Center Exhibit Gallery is open free to the public Monday-Saturday 9am to 5pm and Sunday 12pm to 5pm and is located at 337 N. Tamiami Trail, Osprey, FL 941-966-5214.

The museum is dedicated to "collecting, preserving and interpreting the objects and traditions significant to our region's past." The Paul Rudolph Foundation applauds their efforts!

You can visit the museum's website here.