Cape Cod Modern

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"More than just a paean to an architectural style, Cape Cod Modern illuminates a rich, under-examined moment---from 1938 to 1977---when the towns of the Outer Cape drew a hyper-cre ative crowd of design-besotted artists and intellectuals... and just about everyone built themselves simple retreats that expressed the organic cross-pollination of vernacular building traditions, Yankee economy, and Bauhaus rigor... The book traces the flowering of a distinctly regional modernism marked not by flashy commissions but instead by deeply personal spaces meant for repose." -Peter Terzian, Elle Decor In the summer of 1937, Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus and a professor at Harvard’s new Graduate School of Design, rented a house on Planting Island, near the base of Cape Cod. There, he and his wife, Ise, hosted a festive reunion of Bauhaus masters and students who had recently emigrated from Europe: Marcel Breuer, Herbert Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy, Xanti Schawinsky and others. Together they feasted, swam and planned their futures on a new continent, all sensing they were on the cusp of a momentous new phase in their lives. Yet even as they moved on, the group never lost its connection to the Cape Cod coast. Several members returned, when they had the means, to travel farther up the peninsula, rent cabins, buy land and design their ideal summer homes. Thus began a chapter in the history of modern architecture that has never been told--until now. Beyond a mere documentation of forgotten architecture, Cape Cod Modern is a first-rate chronicle of a special place and period in American cultural history. Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 9781935202165 Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.6 x 1.1 x 10.8 inches Show more