The sheer beauty of Richard Meier’s Douglas House in Harbor Springs, Michigan, stunned the profession when it first appeared on the cover of Progressive Architecture in 1973. The blazing white, spatially complex and porous four-story structure—looking like an apparition on a steep, forested hillside facing Lake Michigan—consolidated Meier’s reputation as a leading Modernist. With the Douglas House and its forerunner, the Smith House (1967) in Connecticut, among others, Meier moved beyond the initial influence of Le Corbusier and embarked on a major American career. For the following decades, until his ultimate retirement, under a cloud, in 2021, he would develop the vocabulary he established in these early projects.
But the problem with crisp, white, pristine houses is that their impact depends on remaining crisp, white and pristine. Meier’s buildings age like any other, subject to time, weather and gravity. Aging, however, doesn’t suit them as it might, say, a Richardsonian masonry structure enhanced by the patina of time. Changing home ownerships can also take its toll. After the Douglas family sold the Harbor Springs house, new owners wallpapered the interiors, and under a third owner, it suffered years of delayed maintenance. Meier’s buildings may be born as perfect Platonic ideals, but the perfection requires regular care, even upgrades.
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