Modernism fans dismayed by the abnormally short lifespans of homes by late legend Paul Rudolph finally have a recent Rudolph-related development worth celebrating. The Sarasota Architectural Foundation recently announced that Rudolph's iconic Walker Guest House will get the full-on replica treatment. More than sixty years after it was built, the boxy, pared-down beach house on Sanibel Island, Fla. will get an architectural doppelganger on the grounds of Sarasota's John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. The Walker Guest House redux is expected to open to the public in 2015, before getting disassembled and embarking on a tour of several museums around the U.S.
Widely known for his six years as dean of the Yale School of Architecture, and for the alternatively renowned and reviled building he designed for the program, Paul Rudolph was an early pioneer of Brutalism who also completed many frills-free function-first homes. Completed in 1953, the Walker Guest House is notable for its 24'x24' square core built from common, inexpensive, locally sourced materials, which contrasts a kind of pragmatic minimalism with one rather whimsical touch—a series of pulleys, counterbalanced by large red concrete spheres, that control the shades of the large external windows that surround the home on all sides. The authors of Paul Rudolph: The Florida Houses describe the style as "the prosaic material of the lumberyard" getting directed toward "a refined expression of American ingenuity."
A $75K grant brought this program about. Assumedly, more of the same could widen the scope of the tour once the replica starts making the rounds. Just sayin'.
· Paul Rudolph's Iconic Walker Guest House To Be Re-Constructed [Arch Daily]
· All Paul Rudolph coverage [Curbed National]
· All Sarasota coverage [Curbed National]