architectural ruminations
Saint Louis architecture and related ruminations including pioneer modern architect Harris Armstrong
03 June 2012
Isadore Shank, Architect
Following is a blog post from the course "Mid-Century Modern Architecture in St. Louis" at the Sam Fox School for Design and Visual Arts taught by Andrew Raimist and John Guenther. The following entry was composed by Andrew Raimist.
Today our class visited two houses designed by Isadore Shank: the Shank House and the Zerman House. The Shank House was designed and built around 1940, while the Zerman House was from 1958. While both houses are clearly "modern" there is a great distance between them intellectually and philosophically.
Isadore Shank, Shank House, circa 1940.
The focus in the Shank House seems to be more on the planes and material textures than on the volumes. The design of different surfaces with contrasting materials or textures tends to break down our reading of the volume as a consistent piece of three-dimensional geometry and forces the viewer to pay more attention to the separate surface textures, colors and surfaces in trying to understand the architect's intentions.
The Zerman House seems much more easily legible and readable in the sense that whether you look at the house from the street, from the side, rear or interior, it's organization and structure are clearly evident. There is a similar interest in using contrasting planes and materials, but the palette used is more limited and more "logical" in the sense that brick masonry suggests mass, solidity and privacy and it performs in that way. Similarly, the glazing is used in a way that offers clarity of vision and structure, allowing us to see the actual wood framing of the house which extends from inside to outside. In this way, the house has a greater sense of transparency and honesty of expression than the Shank House.
Isadore Shank, Zerman House: view from Family Room toward Entry. Photograph by Andrew Raimist.
One of Shank's preoccupations seems to be with issues of privacy. It appears in many of his designs through the use of screen walls and layered compositions that don't reveal the entirety of the structure from an initial glance. The sense of protection seems to be of special importance with respect to the relationship between the street and the house interior. The Shank House is more closed and disarming to the visitor, while the Zerman House offers a clear sense of entry and arrival and welcome with the covered walk and extensive glazing adjacent to the main entry which allows visitors to see into the main public space of the house. If a party were going on in the house at nighttime, that would be evident to anyone driving by, while I'm not sure that would be so clear for visitors to the Shank House (unless the party spilled out onto the porch).
Isadore Shank, Shank House, facade, circa 1940.
The front/side porch is an unusual feature of the Shank House. It functions in a way like historical porches on