Hammer exhibits modern conceptual housing

  Illustration by JARRET QUON/Daily Bruin

By Jacqueline Maar
Daily Bruin Contributor

In a world full of cell phones, e-mail and computers, our lives
have become surrounded by constant changes and new innovations.

But through all these changes, the home, for most people, has
remained their one reliable source of comfort and constancy.

Because of the human need for shelter, the house has always been
a sanctuary, where people can relax and escape to when they want
privacy.

“The Un-Private House,” an exhibit now showing at
the UCLA Hammer Museum through Jan. 7, features twenty-six
miniature model homes, each giving its own modern twist on what the
new privately owned home should be.

Ranging from a digital house that uses liquid crystal displays
for walls, to a home that uses a giant curtain in place of an
exterior wall, the houses in the exhibit display innovative and
imaginative designs.

Showing both contemporary and ultramodern homes, “The
Un-Private House” gives viewers a look into the future as
well as a look at the changes houses have made since the
seventeenth century.

Many of the houses on display are different from traditional
designs, built by various architects around the world, and each
house embodies its own theme and idea.

The exhibit looks at the privacy of the home and the role that
it plays in modern lifestyles.

For example, “House for a Bachelor,” designed by
Joel Sanders, revolves around the lifestyle of an unmarried man. A
convenient grassy area runs below the house serving as an exercise
room, a wall full of closets with a one sided window/mirror running
along them enables the resident bachelor to try on his clothes
while looking outside.

Other homes, such as the “Y House,” by Steven Holl
Architects, are designed for families and use innovative ideas to
merge form and function.

“The Y House,” built on top of a mountain in New
York, is shaped in the form of a Y, with one split of the Y
reaching toward the parent’s master bedroom and the other
split for the children’s rooms.

Influenced by modernist Le Courboisier’s innovative
architectural designs, Preston Scott Cohen’s “Torus
House” uses curvilinear forms and shapes to morph the home
into one fluid whole.

“The Un-Private House” provides a modern atmosphere,
complete with two digital flat screen TVs that exhibit the features
of two of the homes on display, giving insight into their design
and function.

The exhibit not only appeals to architects and designers, but
also to anyone interested in the implications that these innovative
designs have in changing the definition of the modern home in our
culture.

Providing a window into the future, “The Un-private
House” exhibits homes that combine both architectural
innovations and functionality, bringing the vision of the modern
house to reality.

ART: “The Un-Private House” is on display at the
UCLA Hammer Museum, Oct. 4 – Jan. 7, 2000.