From the home front: Albert Frey house, Tom Kundig's Delta Shelter, living apart together, architectural haiku

Tim Bies/Olson Kundig ArchitectsTom Kundig's Delta Shelter.

Albert Frey's house:

Noted Seattle architect Tom Kundig, designer of the Delta Shelter weekend cabin and other award-winning projects,

offers his appreciative take on a 1964 house

designed by midcentury "desert modernist" architect Albert Frey that's all of 800 square feet in size. Frey built the Palm Springs, Calif. cliffside house for himself. The Wall Street Journal story says:

"Walls slide back at two corners to eradicate the boundary between living room and landscape. The forward-thinking design shattered the notion of 1960s glass-box architecture, Mr. Kundig explained. 'The midcentury-modern promise of indoor/outdoor living largely failed; all those glazed walls didn't actually make the outdoors more accessible,' he said. 'Instead, houses were like aquariums. That inconsistency of transparency was resolved by the early '70s, but in 1964 this degree of openness was a risky move.' "

Tim Bies/Olson Kundig ArchitectsThe Delta Shelter in winter.

Take a look at more photos of the house

(Frey House II) here.

Read an

Architectural Record interview with Kundig

about the Delta Shelter and his work generally.

Read

more about the Delta Shelter

-- and see the hand wheel that operates the large shutters that open and close the house to the outdoors-- in Buildipedia.

See

more of Kundig's work

at Olson Kundig Architects.

Wikimedia CommonsDesert modernist architect Albert Frey designed the modest Carey/Pirozzi House in Palm Springs. It was built in 1956.

Living apart together:

Florida artist

Laura Ann Jacobs

had never shared a home with anyone since college, so when art dealer Robert Pardo proposed marriage, she told him she couldn't possibly. The only way imaginable would be if they had two houses, she said.

Now they live in two 700-square-foot bungalows, her blue home set behind his pink one on a skinny lot in Lake Worth, Fla. -- a setup that the story describes as "a new twist on a newish trend, particularly among boomer-age couples."

It's an entertaining story, which includes Jacobs' history of growing up with undiagnosed Tourette's syndrome, and the once-abused cockatoo that perches on her shoulder.

Check out

the couple's story at The New York Times

. You can see samples of Jacobs art at the

Virtual Shoe Museum,

among other places.

Architectural haiku contest:

April is

National Poetry Month,

and its intersection with

National Architecture Week

(April 8-14) led BuildingGreen to hold a haiku contest. Take a look at some of the haiku

submissions at Twitter;