DESIGNS FOR LIVING

CELEBRATING its 100th anniversary in Washington this week, the American Institute of Architects got down to a five-day series of speeches, panels and discussion groups on the past and future of U.S. architecture. Looking back over the past 100 years, a photographic exhibit of some 200 black-and-white photographs singled out 65 high points of U.S. building, from Richard Upjohn's 1853 Victorian Wyman Villa to Mies van der Rohe's glass-and-steel Crown Hall, built last year at the Illinois Institute of Technology (TIME, July 2). Looking to the future, the A.I.A. also presented its annual awards to 20 contemporary architects. The top winner: Architect Eliot Noyes. 46, for his own Connecticut house (opposite), which also won a Homes for Better Living Award, co-sponsored by HOUSE & HOME, the A.I.A., Better Homes and Gardens, NBC and 13 other groups.

The Noyes house, set in a pine grove just above a brook, harks back to Greek and Roman town houses, built around a central patio. Designed to accommodate a family that includes four children aged four to 16, a squirrel, a rabbit, two French poodles, a parakeet and two ring-necked doves, the house is, says Noyes, "a very hard-boiled piece of architecture." It is basically two houses set in a rectangle formed by side walls of fieldstone and glass. Carried out in a strict modular pattern (columns and girders joining at 11-ft. intervals), the design provides for living and working areas in one house, sleeping quarters in the other, which includes a laundry and small extra kitchen. The two parts are connected by open, roofed-over passageways. In winter, says Noyes, "it never fails to be an invigorating experience."

Two other winners of the Better Living Awards, to be presented at the A.I.A. centennial:

P: A split-level, $20,000 development house designed by the architectural firm of Danforth Compton and Walter Pierce and built by Edward Green and Harmon White in Lexington, Mass., nine miles northwest of downtown Boston. The exterior is finished in cedar to match the rustic surroundings. The interior is separated into functional areas on a triple-level scheme: three bedrooms and bath on the top level; living room, dining room, kitchen and main entrance on the middle level; playroom, utility room and garage (convertible into two more bedrooms) on the lower level.

P: A bachelor pavilion in Lake Wales, Fla. designed by Architect Mark Hampton for an atmosphere of elegant privacy and relaxation. The house, which cost an estimated $40,000 to build, is in effect a single room composed of "freestanding circles in a rectangle," with the kitchen and bath the most prominent circles set in the rectangle of the living area. Blue translucent-glass panels let in light and cut the glare; the interior is furnished with pale Japanese silks, gold-veined black Belgian marble, Finnish lamps, lacquered cane and teak chairs, aquamarine Puerto Rican tile, East Indian alabaster, a walnut-paneled bath with a circular tub of cerulean Italian tiles. Architect Hampton built the house to suit the owner's specific demands: "A home where I and my friends could be comfortable in shorts or a dinner jacket."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.