Robert Motherwell #15

Motherwell’s Quonset hut house and studio, East Hampton.

"....
That year (1947), Motherwell had the architect Pierre Chareau design a home and studio that was built on a two-acre property in East Hampton. Chareau’s design used surplus army Quonset huts and other, simple low-cost materials. But Motherwell only used that studio for a few years before moving back to New York City.
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(bron: Dedalus Foundation)


Motherwell’s Quonset hut house and studio, designed by Pierre Chareau, East Hampton, 1947. (bron: Dedalus Foundation)


(bron: The Architects Newspaper)


(bron: The Future Perfect)

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Motherwell had purchased a four-acre plot in East Hampton’s estate section in 1945 for $1200. Motherwell bought two surplus quonset hut kits from the navy in 1950 ($3000) and Chareau and Motherwell designed and imagined them into useful and beautiful structures…in exchange for Chareau being able to build a small cottage for himself on the land. The article’s author Alastair Gordon suggests the project “was surprisingly sophisticated. Certain elements suggested a cruder, low-budget version of Chareau’s masterwork, the Maison de Verre in Paris”.
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The metal structural members in the quonsets were painted Calder red. The windows Chareau and Motherwell used were re-purposed green house windows. Motherwell sold the house in 1954 to Barney Rosset, the publisher of Grove Press, who owned the house until 1980. In 1985 the new owners announced their decision to build an “Adirondack-style” house on the lot. “Early in the morning of Friday, August 2, 1985, the Motherwell house was bull-dozed and carted off to a local landfill.” The demolition included both Motherwell’s house and studio (“I did the best pictures of my life there…”) and Chareau’s tiny cottage “La Petite Maison de Repos”…the only three Chareau structures in the U.S.
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(bron: Bonnie Hull)

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