Hasta La Ideas

Famed designer and architect Robert Venturi is going to be busy over what’s sure to be a stressful next couple of days. After a house he designed in 1968 in Long Beach Island, New Jersey was recently sold, the new owners of the property said they were planning to demolish the house and build something new. This didn’t sit well with Venturi who decided to make a deal with himself and the new owners: if he could move the house out in ten days, it would be spared. So now the race is on, with a crew trying to move it onto a barge where it will be moved to Long Island where a couple have already agreed to purchase it. Assuming Venturi can get through a city council somewhat hostile to the idea of loading a house onto a boat in the middle of their town, the process should hopefully be going full steam soon, all of which should make great footage for his son, who is in the middle of making a documentary about his father. Here’s a bit about the house:

The Lieb House, a two-story box-shaped home, now gray and weather-beaten, features a five-foot-high number 9 next to its front door and a 24-foot-wide stoop that stretches across the front of the home. In August 1970, an article in the New York Times called the Liebs’ vacation retreat a “real dumb house” in a “banal environment.” Robert Venturi’s son, Jim, said his father embraced the word “dumb”.

“Dumb sort of means the opposite of showy. The home gets its artistic identity through the iconic elements – its large nine, round window and the original two-tone tile,” Jim Venturi said.

Can we tell you how much we love that the Times used to write things like “a real dumb house” in their architecture reviews?

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