Thesaurus House of Design

Soleil House, Palm Springs, California, USA,

Originally designed in 1963 by architect Harold J. Bissner, Sr.

Hyde-Harrison House, London, United Kingdom,

Designed by Ann & David Hyde-Harrison in 1965.

In the 20th century London’s mews, once access lanes to carriage houses and stables of grand townhouses, had lost their purpose with the advent of the car.

By the 1950’s local burroughs and property owners were eager to unload the land and this proved a boon for architects and their clients who wanted a modernist home in a city somewhat reticent to the idea.

That is the case of this home designed by architect couple Ann & David Hyde-Harrison. The Hyde-Harrison’s purchased a plot of land on Murray Mews in 1965 and designed a home for themselves that reflects their ethos defined by color, craft, and also a shared belief that architecture should a lived, personal, and social practice.

Photo: Annabel Elston

Shavin House, Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA,

Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1949.

The Gerte & Seamour Shavin House is a ‘Polliwog-type’ Usonian; Wright’s nickname for a plan where the common areas are in one larger section and a long ‘tail’ section for the sleeping areas.

The only Wright-designed house in Tennessee, the home is still in the same family that originally commissioned it, at least for the time being as it recently entered the market for the first time ever.

The Shavin House was added to the US National Register of Historic Places 1993

Crescent House, Compton Bassett, Wiltshire, England,

Andrew Neff Shell House, Pasadena, California,

Built in 1947,

Designed for his brother, the Shell House is believed to be the last surviving example of the architect’s Airform construction system in the United States.

Better known for designing homes for Hollywood figures including Judy Garland, Groucho Marx and Douglas Fairbanks, Neff developed the experimental building method in the years following the Second World War as a potential answer to housing shortages.

The process was simple in principle: a giant inflatable form was erected, covered with steel reinforcement and sprayed with concrete to create a continuous structural shell. The result was a series of dome-shaped houses that looked unlike anything else being built in postwar America.

“Kocher Canvas Weekend House”,

Fort Salonga, Northport, Long Island, Suffolk County, New York,

Built betwwen 1933 and 1934 and demolished in the 1950s.

This house was designed by the Swiss-born architect Albert Frey for his friend A. Lawrence Kocher.

It was based in a previous project made by him for an experimental weekend house.

The house had three floors: the ground floor was used to park up to two cars, being free and open due to the use of steel beams to support the house.

The first floor was accessed by a spiral staircase on the back of the house and had an open space configuration at its interior, with curtains that moved through a rail system and could be used to divide the space.

The top floor was the house's rooftop, being accessed by the same spiral staircase as the first floor.

The Hunt House, Malibu, California, United States,

Designed by iconic mid-century modernist Craig Ellwood (with design associate Jerrold Lomax) and completed in 1957.

Rosen House (1962)

Craig Ellwood, Designer & Jerrold Lomax, Architect

 Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, USA,

The design of this Mid Century Modern house was heavily influenced by the Edith Farnsworth House of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Characteristics include a highly symmetrical layout around a sunken center courtyard. Boxlike linearity is maintained with floor to ceiling windows along with vertical and horizontal planes of contrasting materials.

Erenhault House, 624 Cole Place, Beverly Hills, California,

Originally commissioned in 1968 and completed in 1970,

Old Castle Road house, San Diego, California, United States,

Kendrick Bangs Kellogg Architect,

The plot was purchased by a family in 1972. Keen to return to their farming roots, they planted over 900 avocado trees on site, shaping the views across the land.

Amid the avocado grove, Kellogg was asked to design a residence in 1984, sourcing rock for the walls from around the property; it took six years to build !

131 Windward East Rd, East Hampton, New York, United States,

Lakeside House, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada,

The home is a showcase of an architect who greatly admired and took inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright, not just in style but also in principle.

In 1951 Hollingsworth met Wright who invited him to join Taliesin but he declined, preferring instead to stay in Canada to further develop his ideas of Canadian west coast modernism through a Usonian lens.

The Lakeside house can be seen as a crystallization of Hollingsworth’s principles where craftsmanship, proportion, livability, and deep site-responsive consideration all coalesce into a timeless, organic form.

Designed by Fred Hollingsworth in 1988,

Ridi & Otto Kolb House, Wermatswil,  Zürich, Switzerland,

 Xalet Del Catllaràs, La Pobla de Lillet, Berguedà, Catalonia, Spain,

The Catalan Department of Culture has formally confirmed that Antoni Gaudí is the author of the project for the Xalet del Catllaràs in La Pobla de Lillet in Catalonia, resolving a long-standing attribution question surrounding the industrial-era chalet.

The conclusion follows a scientific study led by Galdric Santana Roma, director of the Gaudí Chair at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), which identifies geometric, structural, and compositional evidence consistent with Gaudí’s methodology, including funicular arch calculations and the use of a 45-degree interior distributor. 

Designed between 1901 and 1908 to house engineers working in the nearby Catllaràs mines, part of the industrial network supplying the Asland cement factory, the 396-square-meter chalet was embedded within a broader productive landscape.

While the research affirms Gaudí as the designer, it also clarifies that he did not direct the building’s execution, which diverged structurally from the original proposal and may explain why he never publicly claimed the work.

The building was commissioned by Spanish entrepreneur Eusebi Güell and Bacigalupi to house engineers working in the Serra del Catllaràs mines. The extracted material supplied the kilns of the Asland cement factory at Clot del Moro, the fourth cement factory built in Spain in 1901. 

The chalet was therefore not conceived as an isolated architectural experiment, but as infrastructure embedded within an expanding industrial network. Its program responded to the logistical and geographic demands of a mountainous mining environment, a condition that may have influenced later structural adjustments.

Architect: Antoni Gaudí 

Rose Seidler House, Wahroonga, New South Wales, Australia,

The Rose Seidler House is widely considered the first fully modernist house built in Australia and a landmark of twentieth-century residential architecture.

Designed by Austrian-born architect Harry Seidler for his parents, Rose and Max Seidler, the house was completed in 1950.

Educated in the United States under Walter Gropius at Harvard Graduate School of Design, and influenced by Marcel Breuer, Seidler brought the principles of Modernism and the Bauhaus tradition to Australia.

The architect, Harry Seidler, was the winner of the 1951 Sir John Sulman Medal

Rose Seidler House was listed on the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.