Yesterday I went to Sarasota with Summer, Emily and the recently resurfaced Francis. We did a driving tour of Sarasota Modernist architecture. We downloaded the tour from a realtor that specializes in selling Sarasota Modernist School houses. Today I found another website that lists many more structures with addresses and short bios on the architects.
I've been a long time fan of the Sarasota Modern work, but I had only seen pictures prior to yesterday. My friends Matt and Jessica did the tour a couple of months back. Jessica wrote a great article for The Orlando Weekly about the tour.
Sarasota seems like a curious town of money and some progressive highlights like the architecture, but like a lot of places in Florida and the rest of America, you can see an architectural marvel across from a McMansion. We saw a few of these examples. One of my favorite houses was the Hiss Studio by Philip Hiss. It's next to another great one The Umbrella House by Paul Rudolph. Then there are some horrible attempts to better something great. The tour mentions horrible additions. Read Umberto Eco's Travels In Hyperreality, he talks about this. California and Florida are the worst offenders, according Eco. He's probably right.
Sarasota is also the home of The New College. Hiss helped start the school, a quirky but highly respected place of higher learning. I.M Pei designed one of the dormitories. I'm not sure it's one of his better works.
I hope to go back to Sarasota soon. It was getting dark, so we headed home.
If I do have a regret about the trip, it would be not purchasing a Fudge-A-Gator or the smaller Junior Fudge-A-Gator. Francis was inspecting all the merchandise in the store where tourists buy bags of oranges, Emily bought a bag. I guess she's a tourist. She lives in Brooklyn. I told Francis that the Fudge-A-Gator might melt in the car. I could tell my pragmatism made him sad. At least we know there is a Fudge-A-Gator within 45 minutes of our home. What is a Fudge-A-Gator? It's a gator made of fudge. Summer bought a plastic gator that has a mouth that can be controlled. She played with it while she was driving. I had an orange and vanilla swirl ice cream cone.
Today I went to the library. I live a mile from the library. It's a very nice walk, around the lake. It was around 70 degrees and sunny. I stopped off to see Jane's new office. It was built in 1960. It's one of my favorite modern designs in Orlando. Jane's busy painting and making the building a place where someone might be excited about coming to work. While we were talking I noticed that she was wearing a St. Petersburg shirt, very strange, I had a St. Petersburg shirt on too. The shirts look very different. Hers was the Russian city, mine the Florida one. I've always wanted to go to St. Petersburg Russia. I read an article a few years ago about Brian Eno living there.
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2 comments:
I have a friend that goes to New College. I visited her last Spring to coincide with one of New College's "Walls," which are parties they throw in the courtyard of the IM Pei dormitories.
The theme of this Wall was "Flood." They assembled hundred of beach balls and gathered them in the courtyard. It was really windy that day, though, and a lot of the beach balls blew out of the courtyard, across campus, and onto the runways at Sarasota Airport.
Alcohol is allowed at the Wall, but it can't be in a glass container because so many people walk around barefoot. I was sitting on the wall at the Wall beside a beer bottle someone had left. I was pretty exhausted and buzzy, and I inadvertently knocked the bottle off the wall and onto the courtyard where it shattered. 100 New Collegians turned towards me and started booing. My friend stood in front of me, waved her hands, and yelled "Shaddap! He doesn't even go here!" It was the most chivalrous thing anyone's ever done for me.
Hey Pat,
I did the same tour a year and a half ago. It was like being on a treasure/easter egg(Sarasota modern) hunt.
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