Two years ago, Thom Mayne and UCLA’s Now Institute produced 100 Buildings, a guide to the “most important and influential buildings” of the 20th century, as ranked by nearly 60 leading architects and practices. While the projects range in location, scale, and function, by far the most common building type is the single-family house. Twenty-four houses appear in the survey—more than twice the number in any other category. Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (1931) tops the whole list, and two other houses are included in the top 10: Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House (1951) and Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre (1932). (Wright’s Fallingwater is No. 13.) By these measures, houses dominate the canon of 20th-century architecture.
Yet the timeline reveals that houses became less and less common on the list over the century. Half the 24 were designed before 1930, but only six after 1950, and none of those ranked in the top 50. Only one house—OMA’s Maison à Bordeaux (1998)—was completed after 1980. By the year 2000, leading-edge houses had all but disappeared.
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