Category Archives: Archive

Modern fans bask on butterfly roof

June 15, 2015 – 10:41 am

“I loved the light and the trees,” said Elaine Blank in response to the question of what she enjoyed the most of her 60 plus years in the house at 2133 Owens Lane. In 1951 Elaine and her husband, local photographer Robert Blank, purchased plans from House Beautiful magazine. Their desire to live in something […]

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DIY modernism June 7th

May 17, 2015 – 9:20 pm

Back in the days before Eisenhower was president, Bob and Elaine Blank were a typical young couple driving around Lawrence looking for a place to build their dream house when they found a barren-looking lot south of the KU campus for $2,000. At the time, Blank was a professional photographer who admired the architectural photography featured […]

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Modernism in Film: a New Series

March 13, 2015 – 11:26 pm

When Tim Hossler, an assistant professor in KU’s Department of Design, approached Lawrence Modern last fall with the idea of collaborating with the School of Architecture on a series exploring modern architecture in film, we reached a consensus almost instantly. The concept is appealing: examine the role that modern architecture has played in film—the modernist medium par excellence—appreciated through the […]

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Shibui: ‘Easy to live with beauty’

January 30, 2015 – 6:34 pm

It would be hard to overemphasize the influence that Japanese design has had on the development of modern architecture in the West. Indeed, nearly 400 years after the Katsura Imperial Villa was constructed in Kyoto, modern architects are still in awe of the precise geometrical forms of its sukiya-style buildings and the abstract beauty of […]

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Lawrence Public Library, Jan. 11th:

December 11, 2014 – 4:41 pm

Emerging from the devastation of World War II, Japan entered an intense period of reconstruction in the 1950s, propelled in large part by international successes in design-related industries. These attracted the interest of foreigners in residence and soon came to the attention of Elizabeth Gordon, editor-in-chief of House Beautiful magazine from 1941 to 1964, who […]

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