Famous House Museums And Architectural Styles To Jumpstart Your Home Design
What better time to explore some of the world's most famous houses than when you're in the middle of planning your own home.
Here's a listing of favorite house museums open to the public, including each website, from the Gamble House in Pasadena, California (considered the ultimate Craftsman bungalow) to Thomas Jefferson's classical Monticello in Virginia; from Le Corbusier's modern Villa Savoye near Paris to the Mayan-inspired Hollyhock House by Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Angeles.
Find the architectural style below that interests you and see what your future house has in common with some of the world's great works of residential architecture. A useful round-up of historic houses can also be found at http://www.oldhouses.com/historic-house-museums.htm.
The intellectually curious Jefferson looked to classical European architecture for design inspiration.
CONTEMPORARY/BAY REGION STYLE The Sea Ranch is a second home community on the Sonoma Coast of California, three hours north of San Francisco. The development is famous for its environmentally sensitive planning and contemporary ranch-inspired architecture. Eminent landscape architect Lawrence Halprin created the landscape plan in the early 1960s. Development clusters along hedgerows and at the edges of meadows in order to preserve open space and views. The original condominium building at the southern edge of the community--with its central sloping courtyard and shed-roofed tower form, shown above--was designed by the award-winning architects in the historic photograph by Jim Alinder: Charles Moore (seated), Richard Whitaker (far left), Donlyn Lyndon (second from left), and William Turnbull (far right). Sea Ranch architecture draws inspiration from area barns, the 19th century Fort Ross just a few miles south, the Bay Region Style, and the architecture of Louis Kahn.
You can read the history of The Sea Ranch and explore important custom house plans by many of Northern California's most famous architects through the sumptuous and critically acclaimed book The Sea Ranch, by Don Lyndon and Jim Alinder. You can purchase copies of the iconic small house plans William Turnbull designed for Sea Ranch workers in our Excusive Studio Collection at http://www.houseplans.com/exclusive_house_plans.asp. The originals are preserved at the Environmental Design Archives at the University of California, Berkeley: http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/cedarchives/profiles/turnbull.htm. A percentage of the price of each Turnbull design goes to support the Archives.
This house is the apotheosis of the California bungalow. A Japanesque attention to woodworking details makes this house resemble a huge piece of furniture.
This remarkable labyrinth of a house, formed by combining several row houses into a single home, is full of storage and display ideas for the architect's collection of artifacts.
One of the most famous icons of the twentieth century: the architect called it a "machine for living" as a way to imagine a new forward-looking architecture. It became a powerful symbol of modernity even though the roof always leaked.
The long covered galleries and sheltering roof of the Custom House and similar structures from mid-nineteenth century Monterey inspired many later architects to work in a Monterey Revival style.
In warm weather climates, like those of California and Florida, architects and homeowners sought design inspiration from the courtyard-and-garden-oriented architecture of Spain and Mexico. California and Texas missions were another important influence.
The Victorian style is really a compendium of many variations that appeared in the United States during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Picturesque outlines, multiple gables, turrets, and bay windows are signature features.
