Frame House (Harwood Taylor, 1960). Photographs by Ben Koush.
OffCite and Rice Design Alliance are exploring the potential of Instagram to engage more people in the built environment. A recent RDA program, #HOU_OLD6, was an Instagram Scavenger Hunt of the Old Sixth Ward. Similarly, designer and architectural historian, Ben Koush, has brought all his acumen to Instagram. (You can follow him @benkoush.) He shares images and commentary on architecture in Houston and many other cities. This post draws from his series of photos on Harwood Taylor’s Frame House.
From the front, it seems like a nice but typical postwar modern house. Once you walk past the gate, the Frame House (1960), designed by Harwood Taylor, brilliantly slinks down in section across its sloping, bayou-edged site. I think it’s his best work and probably my favorite, or close to it, house in Houston.
Always a pleasure to see this house, even in its current empty state.
Parties can spread over the multilevel living area.
The previous owner, who painstakingly rehabilitated the house ten years ago added this sunken terrazzo bathtub.
Inside the house is a symphony of walnut veneer and creamy terrazzo that descends in section following the sloping site. Note the super-cool semi-cantilevered terrazzo stair.
The rear section of the house seems to hover, recalling Richard Neutra’s Lovell Health house, over a small, smoothed-over ravine running down toward the bayou.
You can learn more by reading Koush’s “Light Touch: The Work of Harwood Taylor” published in the Summer 2005 issue of Cite (64) and from his book Booming Houston and the Modern House (A Houston Mod Publication, 2006). The house was part of the Rice Design Alliance Architecture Tour in 2006. The following year, Swamplot covered the rehabilitation by Stern and Bucek here.