The first thing everyone tells you about the New Canaan, Connecticut, house Eliot Noyes built for his family is that you have to go outside—outside!—to get to the bathroom. In 1954 architect and industrial designer Noyes made the separation of public and private life complete—bedrooms and baths on one side of an open courtyard, kitchen-living-dining on the other. “We used to tell our friends there was a tunnel from one side to the other,” says Fred Noyes, third of the four children. But really that walk outside was no big deal—short, covered, and from one radiant-heated stone floor to the other. “Try it sometime if it snows,” his brother, Eli, says. “Take your shoes off, run out into the snow for ten seconds, and run back in. It is actually cold and refreshing. We used to do that all the time.” Nonetheless, when Marcel Breuer’s client Edith Hooper requested a similar house, she made it clear she wanted the simplicity of Noyes’s design—but with a breezeway that could be enclosed in winter.

Name droppin' accordian playing A-holes.
- L.M. 1-21-2007 9:53 pm [add a comment]