Summer S House

Finnish Summer Houses

Summer is when Finland is at its spellbinding best. Emerging from a seven-month long winter, Finns head outdoors to savor the magical light of the all-too-brief Scandinavian summer. Cityscapes give way to pristine lakes, endless forests, and idyllic seaside vistas. The Finnish summer house offers a unique opportunity for their owners to relax, get back intouch with nature, and enjoy outdoor activities such as boating, swimming, and hiking. Not surprisingly, the architecture of the Finnish summer house occupies an almost mythic, even mystical, place in the hearts of their inhabitants as well as their architects. Indeed, many Finnish architects regard the design of their own summer residence or weekend studio as one of their most important works. For them, the summer house is not only a place to spend leisure time, but also a chance to study specific technical details and experiment with new spatial concepts. Finnish Summer Houses presents in detail twenty villas, cottages, and cabins by architects such as Eliel Saarinen, Oiva Kallio, Alvar Aalto, and Juhani Pallasmaa, among many others. Authors Jari and Sirkkaliisa Jetsonen use contemporary photographs, archival images, drawings, and plans to illustrate the diversity found in the designs of Finnish summer residences. From Lars Sonck's Lasses Villa (1895), with its traditional farmhouse elements, and Alvar Aalto's Muuratsalo Experimental House (195254) to Erkki Kairamo's sparse Villa Aulikki (19952003), which seems to grow out of its landscape, the works in this book are of a highly personal nature; indeed, most of the summer houses are still used by the architect or the families of their children. The very best examples of these fantastic summer homes are collected here, making Finnish Summer Houses an inspiration for anyone dreaming about a summer home of their own.

High Country Summers

High Country Summers considers the emergence of the “summer home” in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains as both an architectural and a cultural phenomenon. It offers a welcome new perspective on an often-overlooked dwelling and lifestyle. Writing with affection and insight, Melanie Shellenbarger shows that Colorado’s early summer homes were not only enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy but crossed boundaries of class, race, and gender. They offered their inhabitants recreational and leisure experiences as well as opportunities for individual re-invention—and they helped shape both the cultural landscapes of the American West and our ideas about it. Shellenbarger focuses on four areas along the Front Range: Rocky Mountain National Park and its easterly gateway town, Estes Park; “recreation residences” in lands managed by the US Forest Service; Lincoln Hills, one of only a few African-American summer home resorts in the United States; and the foothills west of Denver that drew Front Range urbanites, including Denver’s social elite. From cottages to manor houses, the summer dwellings she examines were home to governors and government clerks; extended families and single women; business magnates and Methodist ministers; African-American building contractors and innkeepers; shop owners and tradespeople. By returning annually, Shellenbarger shows, they created communities characterized by distinctive forms of kinship. High Country Summers goes beyond history and architecture to examine the importance of these early summer homes as meaningful sanctuaries in the lives of their owners and residents. These homes, which embody both the dwelling (the house itself) and dwelling (the act of summering there), resonate across time and place, harkening back to ancient villas and forward to the present day.

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