Events

Video and Slide Deck of Miller House and Garden Talk

The Ann Arbor District Library made a video of the recent presentation:

Quintessentially Modern—and Midwestern:
Landscape Typologies and Cultural Memes in the
Miller House and Garden, Columbus, Indiana
Peter Osler, speaker

You can watch the video here, courtesy of the Ann Arbor District Library.

Peter Osler made the slide deck he prepared available:

Download the slide deck here, courtesy of Peter Osler.

Miller House and Garden Talk

Quintessentially Modern—and Midwestern:

Landscape Typologies and Cultural Memes in the

Miller House and Garden, Columbus, Indiana

Peter Osler, speaker

Sunday, October 1, 2023
2:00 – 3:30 PM Eastern
Ann Arbor District Library Downtown
353 S. 5th Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48204
4th Floor Meeting Room
Admission is free, there is no need to register in advance

Long hailed as one the most iconic works of mid-20th-century American design, the J. Irwin and Xenia Miller residence (1957) is noted for its material and formal elegance. While the designers—and indeed, the client—for this project were of global importance in both reach and influence, Peter Osler, Architect and Site Designer, FAAR, will present a less common reading of this landmark, emphasizing its abstraction of familiar midwestern landscape typologies and cultural memes.

About the speaker: Peter Osler was born into a family with farmers on one side and an obscene number of architects on the other, and has spent his peripatetic adult life as a spatial practitioner and part time academician. He has lived in Ann Arbor—his birthplace, as well as that of his parents—for two-thirds of his life, but has also enjoyed stops in Bloomington, Indiana; Cambridge & Boston; San Francisco; Chicago; Champaign-Urbana; and Rome, Italy. He has taught at the University of Michigan (where he received his B.S. in Natural Resources and where he was Associate Professor of Practice at the Taubman College), the University of Illinois, the Escola Tecnica Superior d’Architectura in Barcelona (ETSAB), the Harvard Graduate School of Design (where he received his professional training in both landscape architecture and architecture), the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he directed the Master of Landscape Architecture Program for its first seven years, and most recently, Washington University, St Louis. He is currently developing a landscape design curriculum for the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, to improve both employment opportunities for, and the dignity of, its inmates and returning citizens. Osler’s academic interests are focused on modernist site planning and landscape materiality, especially plants as historical and cultural ciphers, their potential as a contemporary art medium, and their maintenance as an untapped source of poetics–a subject about which he has lectured widely, at venues such as the Arts Club of Chicago, the University of British Columbia, Ohio State University, and Harvard.
Professionally, he has worked in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design practices large and small, and as Campus Landscape Architect and Planner at the Cranbrook Educational Community. He works at a wide variety of landscape types and scales, both as a sole practitioner and in collaboration with larger firms. Recent completed projects range in scale from the outdoor spaces of Title Town in Green Bay, Wisconsin (in collaboration with Design Workshop), which won the Merit Award from state ASLA chapters of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Colorado, to sculptural stainless steel furniture for the Knight Wallace Journalism Fellowship program at the University of Michigan. His designs have been published in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and he has been an invited juror at universities throughout the U.S and in Europe. Having won the Rome Prize in landscape architecture, he is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.
Peter’s sister, Molly Osler, was a long-time a2modern board member until her passing in 2019.

American Mid-Century Modern Dinnerware

The Ann Arbor District Library will have a presentation on American Mid-Century Modern Dinnerware online over Zoom,, with Michael E. Pratt, Wednesday, September 14, 2022,  6:30pm to 7:30pm.

 
For more information, and instructions on connecting to the Zoom call, click here.

The Return of Walking Tours!

Buy Tickets Here

Mark your calendars for our fall walking tour on September 18 at 1 p.m., starting at the corner of Devonshire and Heather Way. We will look at the exteriors of a variety of midcentury modern homes designed by local architects including Robert Metcalf, David Osler, Herb Johe, William Muschenheim, Joe Albano, Edward Olencki, Thomas Tanner, and Walter Sanders. We will also see an example of famous Midland architect Alden Dow.

The cost of the walk will be $15.00 per person. Follow this link for tickets.

If it rains, we will walk the following Sunday, at the same time.

Open House at Hammett Designed Home

a2modern is hosting an open house on Sunday, July 21st at the home of Margaret Leary and Russ Serbay. Their home is at 1056 Newport Road just north of Miller Avenue.

When Ralph Hammett designed the Newport house in 1942, there were very few Mid-Century Modern houses in town to model on and World War II was in progress so it was hard to get materials, as most were needed for the war effort. However, he was well versed in MCM principles and did a wonderful job of siting the house on the two and a half acre former farm land and creating a home with large windows well placed for maximum sunlight and built-in furniture to make it look less cluttered. He was able to use recycled materials, including a support beam and other wood from the First Methodist Church who were replacing their 1866 church with a new one.

The next year Hammett joined the Monument Men, saving Europe’s art treasures from war devastation. After the war he resumed teaching at U-M and became a nationally recognized expert on modern church architecture, spending his sabbatical year in Europe studying their modern churches. He built three churches in Ann Arbor – Lord of Light Lutheran Church, Northside Community Church, and Trinity Lutheran, of which he was a member. He designed additions for St. Andrews, first Congregational, and also for the City Club (then the Woman’s City Club).

Hammett was also interested in historic architecture. When he came to town he and his family lived in the 1842 Guy Beckley house, which he spent years restoring. He oversaw the restoration of Kempf House after the city bought it in the 1950s. Meanwhile, in 1957 he built an ultra-modern house for his family at 485 Riverview.

The house was built by Dr. Ruth Cecelia Wanstrom. She retired in 1958 and sold the house to Alfred H. Stockard, head of the UM Biological Station on Douglas Lake. Margaret Leary bought the house from Stockard’s widow. They have kept or restored the original features including bathroom tile, wooden kitchen cabinets, and marble window sills. They enlisted the help of Mary Jane Williamson, interior designer for Gunner Birkerts, who Margaret, now retired as head of the Law Library, met when she was working on the Birkert-designed Law School addition, to help with paint colors and furniture selection. Russ, an architect with Hobbs and Black, designed an addition over the garage that creates a luxurious master bedroom and bathroom.

Tickets can be purchased here. Parking is on the opposite side of the street. After the inside tour, people are welcome to wander in the gardens around the house.