The Un-Private House [Paperback]

Terence Riley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1999

How would you build a house for a cyborg? The Un-Private House examines this and other questions confronting domestic architecture as the 20th century turns into the 21st. Changes in family structure, shifting concepts of privacy and domesticity, the home as workplace, and the revolution in communications and media have created totally new relationships between exterior and interior worlds. Photographs, plans, and drawings present 26 projects by architectural firms in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Their innovations include spectacular new materials, including "smart skins" through which houses themselves transmit information, as well as structural forms. The houses presented here, and their architects, are not only reconfiguring the domestic landscape but also launching the first architectural debates of the new century.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

From the Publisher

How would you build a house for a cyborg? The Un-Private House examines this and other questions confronting domestic architecture at the end of the century. Changes in family structure, shifting concepts of privacy and domesticity, the home as workplace, and the revolution in communications and media have created totally new relationships between exterior and interior worlds. Photographs, plans, and drawings present 26 projects by architectural firms in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Their innovations include spectacular new materials, including "smart skins" through which houses themselves transmit information, as well as new structural forms. The houses presented here, and their architects, are not only reconfiguring the domestic landscape but also launching the first architectural debates of the 21st century. 200 illustrations, 58 in full color, 9 x 1011/2" Terence Riley is chief curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Exhibition Schedule The Museum of Modern Art, New York June 30-Oct. 15, 1999

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Product Details

• Paperback: 152 pages
• Publisher: Museum of Modern Art (July 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810961997
• ISBN-13: 978-0810961999
• Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 8.9 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,729,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Avant Garde, August 23, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Un-Private House (Paperback)

An amazing book of an equally amazing exhibition. The book continues where the exhibition left off, questioning what is private and what is not in each of the houses. More than that, the reader should look at each house and the "architectural letter" that it claims to write. Koolhaas' house is a Corbusian critique with a Miesian base. Xavier's house si definately Corbu, the slow house is a slug....and more. Each is an individual criticism on modern architecture and/or on the state of architecture today.

A note:
This is the most comprehensive list of architects that we should look out for....and are the worlds' best. Also if anyone can understand each of these projects, he has understood 80% of architecture today....(but that is if he "reads" each of the houses :-) Each house is prototypical of the architect's interests and what drives him.....see the house and you will understand all his other projects.

BTW get that Menil house out of there. There is no letter he is writing.....

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars changing lifestyles influence home design, June 16, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Un-Private House (Paperback)

Terrence Riley's introduction to the museum of modern art show's "The Unprivate House" sets up a great framework for categorizing the architectural intent of the 26 examples of residential design represented in this show. Riley reminds us that historically privacy was not always associated with dwellings. Just when we may have become committed to private dwellings, this book challenges that notion and asks us to consider the reality of our revolution in communication and media, complex multi-generational housing needs, and the fact that many homes actually house only a single person. This book provokes the question; what is the character of the housing that will best suit our changing times? Each of the examples challenges our thinking in some way concerning the design of residences today; e.g. should a mixed-use work/home space be clearly divided into distinct sections-even in distinct architectural materials or forms- or should these functions merge together, as is the case in the house designed for wall street currency traders (they even have a video monitor above their jacuzzi). Privacy is challenged to the greatest degree in the structure that closes itself off from the street with a literal "curtain wall." A perceived building line is virtually non- existent when the curtains are open.