“400 years of building for the moment…” Cape Cod Modern charts the history and underpinnings of the moderism’s arrival to the coast of Massachusetts, told in full color photos, accessible text, and richly researched writing, it’s a book that inspires and educates in equal measure.
The small summer homes were laboratories for construction ideas, experiments, inexpensive, sympathetic to the land, the place. Many were constructed without clients as proving grounds for new technologies or academic explorations and built by the architects or designers themselves who worked in academia or as carpenters. As such, they employed inexpensive materials: homasote, off-the-shelf plate glass, or no glass at all – screens, salvaged materials, local cedar planking. Because these homes lacked clients, the designers weren’t afraid to try new ideas…to fail.
It’s the narrative quality of the book that I especially appreciate, humble stories of designers solving real problems, of physical space, with strict budgetary restrictions, and limited access to materials or heavy equipment. These limitations – as they so often do – became the fodder for the mid-century modernists practicing on the Cape to invent and innovate. And this book thoroughly documents those inventions.
Find the book here: http://thirtybyforty.com/cape-cod-modern
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Please watch: “Making a Site Model – The Outpost Project”
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