uncube x NEW PARADIGM IN NEW CANAAN

“As US cities continue to expand, questions about the development of green spaces are becoming increasingly pressing for communities and architects alike. Yet, as David Bench discovers, the opening of a multi-purpose community centre in New Canaan, Connecticut this week sets a new precedent for suburban development in the region, much to the delight of both local residents and the architecture world. 

New Canaan, Connecticut became the site of formal and social evolution in the relationship between architecture and landscape. This was initiated by Philip Johnson's groundbreaking modernist residence, the Glass House in 1949, which blurred the boundary between interior and exterior and set the stage for a proliferation of formalist exercises by other like-minded architects on former agricultural land around the town. In particular these included a series of significant modern houses by the so-called “Harvard Five” – including Marcel Breuer and Eliot Noyes – in which the Bauhaus ideology of Walter Gropius was first implemented in American residential architecture on a broad scale.”

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Grace Farms, roofline perspective of the River Building and Barns. Image by Iwan Baan.