Eva Hagberg

Mobile Home? (Metropolis)

In 1987 philanthropists Mike and Penny Winton decided that they needed a guesthouse to complement their Philip Johnson-designed home in Orono, Minnesota. In 2007 owner-developer Kirt Woodhouse decided that the University of St. Thomas needed that same guesthouse for its Daniel C. Gainey Conference Center campus in Owatonna, Minnesota. In the 20 years since the Wintons hired an up-and-coming Santa Monica-based architect sho seemed to be onto something with his use of vernacular materials and mishmash approach to buildings, the name Frank Gehry has gone beyond household, and the guesthouse has become more than just a place to sleep.

The Winton Guest House comprises a 2,300-square-foot collection of discrete shapes that form one building (one can see in its separate cohesion a precursor for Mississippi’s Ohr-O’Keefe Museum). It is clad in brick, plywood, and black and galvanized sheet metal—the same types of materials Gehry used on his own Santa Monica home, the design that launched the Frank O. Gehry Associates frenzy.

John Powers at Virgil de Voldere

EXTENDED: John Powers: Empire, Virgil de Voldere, 526 West 26th St, Rm 416, New York, February 21-April 25

Richard Serra at MoMA (wallpaper.com)

Published June 1, 2007 (link)

For a site-specific project on a private California art ranch, minimalist sculptor Richard Serra made a series of hyperdense Cor-Ten steel blocks. They are so heavy that they have their own gravity, or at least, when you walk past them, that’s how you feel: as though you might very well fall over, and into them.