apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I fell in love with this house when the Saarinen exhibit was at the Walker Art Center. What ever happened to conversation pits?

Used to live in this town and worked in the library designed by I.M. Pei. Drove past the Miller home every day and loved the church buildings designed by the Saarinens. Podunk town in the middle of the cornfields, but it has some amazing architecture.

Being someone who is NOT a fan of these modernist masters, I am surprised by how fresh and beautiful I find the interior! What a unique look - I love how the clean lines and boxy shapes, which I would otherwise read as cold and impersonal, come alive with the bright Indian pillows, oriental rugs, and rich colors of the detailing. This is really a fusion and look I've never encountered before, and I love how it compliments each other.

agree about conversation pits-love em. I realize I picked my sectional because it has the feel of a conversation pit.

sizzling hot interiors! i really love the mix of saarinen's architecture and girard's interior design. great light and lines with fun, but not funny, use of color, pattern and texture.

"What ever happened to conversation pits?"

They went the way of sunken bathtubs and freestanding fireplaces: They weren't easily built into developer/tract houses, they took up too much floorspace, and they weren't fit for people's existing furniture - so they were eliminated...
...plus they didn't fit stylistically into America's late 70's/early 80's regression into Post-Modernism/Faux-Traditionalism.

i love this house, i fist saw it in the ima brochure and it is so gorgeous... i love it. and the ima director, maxwell anderson, his house is beautiful too. He has really brought great design to indiana

I say we take back the conversation pit one home at a time. Start your chainsaw's everyone!

This house is just truly stunning - it's amazingly coherent between the three elements - architecture/interiors/landscape. There is also a great flickr thread about it.

this is mcm at its best! As modfan says the house brilliantly foregrounds the relationship between nature and the domestic interior. the light and landscape (esp. those gorgeous magnolia trees) make the geometric architecture and the minimal design appear more organic and livable than cold and formalistic. the conversation pit says it all.

I once lived near Columbus, what a great little town.

"What ever happened to conversation pits?"

Have you any idea how difficult it is structurally to drop a large section of floor down two or three feet? Plus, as bepsf mentioned, conversation pits are very proscriptive in terms of furniture style and placement.

AND the safety implications, especially in this lawsuit-happy age, are considerable. Even this beautiful house has that awful brass handrail sticking up like a sore thumb, presumably to prevent grandma from taking a tumble after she's had one too many sherries. No doubt other family members got the odd lump after accidentally headbutting the thing while they were seated.

All of that said, I love the intellectual vibe of this place; the blend of modernism, highbrow pursuits (books, grand piano)and ethnic materials that put out the message, "I am a well-bred citizen of the world."

For any genuine lover of architecture, Columbus, Indiana, is a must see, in fact, a site of pilgrimage. It will knock your socks off. And it really is in the middle of nowhere.