After a yr of fundraising and negotiation, the Cape Cod Trendy Home Belief (CCMHT) has purchased the Modernist architect Marcel Breuer’s summer season home close to Wellfleet, Massachusetts. The deal closed final week, transferring possession to the belief from Breuer’s son, Tomas. The constructing will now bear cautious renovations to protect its unique design, earlier than opening as much as host a residency programme for artists, architects and students.
“It’s been an extended marketing campaign, however collectively we now have saved an vital place from possible destruction,” a consultant for the CCMHT stated in an announcement. “Work begins on the restoration instantly.”
Breuer began constructing the home in 1948, designing it to look “like a digicam on a tripod” suspended within the surrounding panorama. “It’s a superb constructing and a prototype of Breuer’s imaginative and prescient of how he may marry the ethos of the Bauhaus with the traditions of the American summer season cottage,” the Breuer professional Barry Bergdoll advised The Artwork Newspaper final yr. “It’s a kind he repeated for quite a few his associates, forming a casual colony within the woods of Wellfleet.” Breuer’s is one in all about 100 Modernist homes within the space. The architect and his spouse are buried subsequent to its driveway.
The CCMHT, based in 2007 by the architect and carpenter Peter McMahon, has already saved and restored 4 different Modernist homes on Cape Cod. These now host residencies and academic programming, in addition to serving as rental properties in order that guests can expertise them as they have been supposed for per week at a time. McMahon works on the homes himself, making needed renovations and even constructing period-appropriate furnishings.
Though Breuer’s home will not be in one of the best situation, McMahon is thrilled that it has remained unchanged for the reason that architect’s dying in 1981—together with the unique furnishings Breuer himself made, and an enormous assortment of books and artwork. As McMahon stated final yr: “It’s a treasure trove.”
