A Manor In The Hugh Jacobsen Manner
Sometime in the mid-1980s, I realized that Julie’s illness,2 while modulated by treatment, was likely unremitting. This recognition resulted in a number of consequences, one of which was the decision that if we were to build Julie’s dream house, we had to start immediately.
Update: For views of the house, see Our Bull Valley IL House Is A Very, Very Fine House Slide Show
Because of a trusted friend’s enthusiastic endorsement of him, I was already favorably predisposed toward the builder (aka Bo the Builder) Julie and I were meeting over lunch to discuss our plans for the new home and decide whether to hire him for the job.
That vetting was effectively completed within moments after the introductions and obligatory small talk, at which time we discovered that the two articles I had brought from the hundreds we had ripped from house magazines3 as exemplars of the kind of place we preferred and the pages Bo had marked in the book he carried to the restaurant to give us an idea of the kind of place he preferred all featured designs that were not only compatible but similar. Of course, this was unsurprising since all of the houses we had selected were by the same architect – Hugh Jacobsen.
Hiring Jacobsen himself, by the way, was never a consideration; he builds homes for the beautiful people – the beautiful, incredibly rich people.4 We could either contract with Jacobsen to design a house or we could build a house based on Jacobsen’s vision; we could not, however, do both. (Update: See, for example, Minimalist home with jaw-dropping Rocky Mountain views asks $16.9M)
Hugh Newell Jacobsen5
A severely dyslexic child and self-described “terrible student,” who grew up in a “Coca-Cola Colonial” in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Jacobsen was admitted, with the help of a family friend, to Yale’s school of architecture, where he studied under Louis Kahn and discovered in architecture a world in which “everything finally made sense.” After graduation in 1955, he apprenticed with Philip Johnson, setting up his own office in Georgetown three years later.
While Jacobsen is acknowledged to be “one of the few American Architects capable of sensitive restorations” and has won awards and enviable institutional commissions, including the restoration of two Smithsonian museums, The United States Embassy in Moscow the American embassy in Paris, additions to the U.S. Capitol, as well as work at the University Of Cairo, Egypt and American University, Athens, Greece,6 his appeal to us was his accomplishments in his preferred area of focus – residential design.
This focus and Jacobsens’s popularity among nonprofessionals may have exacted a price in lost prestige. By my reading, his home design work is often acknowledged by critics and academics by left-handed compliments. This excerpt from his biography at Great Buildings Online is characteristic:
His designs are carefully attuned to their practical requirements.
Jacobsen is more a client’s than an architect’s architect.
“People look good in my buildings”
While I am enthralled by the pithiness of the Jacobsen quote,7 I’ve commandeered as a heading for this section, the context offered by the preceding sentence is enlightening:
My detailing is deliberately sparse and linear in order to enhance the spaces within and without. People look good in my buildings.
The same design strategy can be elaborated in a more academic manner:
Jacobsen is concerned primarily with the sensory aspects of design. He talks about buildings in terms of how they will be experienced both visually and spatially. Although he adheres to few consistent mannerisms he regularly uses certain shapes and details including pavilion arrangements, pyramid and prism shapes, flat arches, and staggered plans.8
On the other hand, the model I’ve chosen to illustrate Jacobsen’s style is less impressive but does have the advantage of widespread familiarity. My suggestion is to think of Jacobsen’s central motif as the shapes used in Monopoly houses and hotels. Consider these familiar icons.
Then, compare them to this sketch of a Jacobsen house.
Now, take another look at the portrait of our home atop this post.
The Jacobsen Look
For the record, Julie, Bo, and I, the primary designers of Heck of a House,9 did not consciously copy any specific Jacobsen-originated design. The profile of the house as well as the lack of ornamentation, however, is clearly inspired by Jacobsen’s architecture.
At the time we designed the house, it was fashionable to build within the vernacular of a region, a trend with practical as well as aesthetic appeal. There are reasons, for example, that lots of Cape Cod homes were built in New England and adobe homes were constructed in the Southwest.
Few residential styles (and none of them striking) are identified, however, with the Midwest.
Perhaps because Julie and I both grew up on farms, the simple lines of a barn, a shape echoed in Jacobsen’s designs (as well as those Monopoly hotels) seemed distinctive and fitting.
It also fit the description I had jokingly adopted for our dream house conversations; “our house,” I would portentously intone, “must befit our lives of quiet ostentation.”
More About Hugh Jacobsen
Those interested in Hugh Jacobsen’s work should check out his web site at Hugh Jacobsen and the three books, all available at Amazon and other bookstores, filled to overflowing with photographs of his work: “Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Architect” (Book I), “Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Recent Work” (Book II), and “Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Works from 1993-2006.”
Finally, I highly recommend the web site devoted to the 1998 Life Dream House designed by Jacobsen which contains much detail about the house itself and its architect.
Credit Due Department: Photo of Hugh Jacobsen by RyanRMiner1585 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
Note: Originally posted July 11, 2007 at 1HeckOfAGuy.com, a predecessor of AllanShowalter.com
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- The graphic atop this post is a scan of a picture that was given me by the invariably thoughtful Lady Lawanda (who consulted with Prodigal, earning him an assist on the play). I’ve designated it a “portrait” because it seems to have been composed by applying digital effects to an aerial photo to soften some of the hard edges and give it something of the appearance of an oil painting. The result is a photographically accurate representation of the house with a touch of romanticized glow, not unlike shooting love scenes with Vaseline smeared on the camera lens. [↩]
- Julie Showalter: Julie Showalter was the fiercely intelligent, sexy, and loving woman with whom I had a outrageously wonderful marriage that ended with her death in late 1999 from cancer diagnosed the week of our wedding nearly 20 years earlier. She was also a brilliant scholar, the mother of our two sons, and a prize-winning author. Many posts on this blog are about her and still others consist of her writings. Julie’s Story is the account of our unlikely romance, Information can be found at Julie Showalter FAQ. [↩]
- This was before one could find a plethora of house plans, as well as shoes, dishwashers, cereal, and dates, on the internet. [↩]
- One of his sons, according to the article about his 1998 Life Dream House, took to calling him a “Jackie-tect” after he designed Mrs. Onassis’s house at Martha’s Vineyard. [↩]
- Except as noted, the factual data in this section is from the article about his 1998 Life Dream House, Update: This article is no longer online [↩]
- Hugh Jacobsen Web Site [↩]
- The quotation is from the Design Philosophy portion of the Hugh Jacobsen web site [↩]
- Muriel Emmanuel. Contemporary Architects. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980. pp 391-392. [↩]
- Julie, Bo, and I had many conversations (in every combination and permutation possible), exchanged many drawings, revised “final” sketches, and then revised the revisions. Bo put the ideas together, adding in such extras as plumbing and electricity. Only after that process was competed did we hire an architect “to make it legal.” [↩]