John Johansen, the last of the Harvard Five architects, and his wife, Ati Gropius Johansen, sold their truly idiosyncratic Plastic Tent house in New York's Dutchess County and moved, about a year and a half ago, to Cape Cod.
I learned this this morning when I opened my
New York Times and saw, on the bottom of page 1, "A Modernist Find: A search turned up a striking pyramid-shaped weekend retreat. Page D1" (When I started in the newspaper business, the short notice on page 1 that told you about a story on another page was called a "reefer," which always got a laugh from the pot smokers on the staff.) The Times writes:
The Plastic Tent, one of the so-called Symbolic Houses Mr. Johansen designed between the late 1950s and the 1970s, represented a departure from the modernism practiced by his colleagues. Drawing on the work of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, he incorporated elements symbolizing the various stages of life – cave-like rooms, bridges, towers, trees – into these houses, taking his work in a new direction.
The Johansens, in their dotage, found that they were too isolated in rural Dutchess and sold it to two guys from Manhattan (it was listed at $365,000). The Times story and a slide show are
here. – ta
Photos: Randy Harris for The New York Times
