Product Description

First developed in the 1920s, the Hamptons were fashionable with avant-garde luminaries such as Jackson Pollock. This fascinating book looks at the Hamptons in architectural terms and also charts the life stories of the famous people who lived there.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1052168 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-15
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.05" h x 9.99" w x 12.30" l, 3.31 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 181 pages

From Amazon.com
The beach house was "the sonnet form of American architecture," writes Alastair Gordon. "This was where the revolution began." In his gracefully written, stunningly illustrated book, he shows how the evolution of summer housing on the once-rural eastern end of Long Island, New York, heralded key developments in architecture.

By the late 1920s, the sprawling Southampton mansions of Stanford White and others were passé. The new style was a modernist box, raised up on supporting columns for protection and a better view, with a sun deck and floor-to-ceiling windows. (See Palm Springs Weekend: The Architecture and Design of a Midcentury Oasis or Palm Springs Modern: Houses in the California Desert for a West Coast version of modernist vacation home design.)

After World War II, the Hamptons became a favorite destination of New York artists, architects, and writers, who ushered in a period of fanciful experimentation. Then came the deluge. Gordon's own family, who bought their prefab beach home in the '50s, was part of a trend celebrated by Life magazine in 1959, the year Nixon and Khrushchev held their Kitchen Debate at a Leisurama house.

Gordon vividly describes the innovations of the '50s and '60s, from the stunningly pure Blake House (two square, ground-hugging sections with a central breezeway framing the ocean view) to the proud verticals of the Gwathmey House, clad in vertical cedar siding approximating the look of carved concrete. In the '70s, as ocean-view lots became scarce, some architects ignored the natural setting, creating imposing sculptural statements craning to isolate an elusive view. Others, including Robert Venturi and Jack Lenore Larsen, gave vernacular styles a postmodern twist.

Rightly decrying the neotraditional behemoths built in the '80s to satisfy the insecurities of the megarich, Gordon takes the long view. Each wave of newcomers remade this flat land in their own image, yet "something about it resists change." --Cathy Curtis

From Publishers Weekly
For a good beach read (or a distraction from traffic on the Long Island Expressway) the coffee table-sized Weekend Utopia: Modern Living in the Hamptons chronicles successive waves of refuge seekers and the architectural innovations they spurred on, culminating in New York's beachfront babylon. After a decade as an East Hampton Star columnist and with his current gig as a House & Garden contributing editor, Alistair Gordon has an insider's knowledge of the area, which he supplements with 75 color and 100 b&w illustrations and photos. From the late-19th-century "Tile Club" to Pollock, De Kooning & Co. to today's moguls, Gordon's eye for the convergence of arts, architecture and commerce is unerring.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

New York Times
"For a younger, braver generation, 'Weekend Utopia' offers an alternative to home sweet home."