[.ca] Weekend Utopia: modern living in the hamptons (ISBN 1568982720)

From Amazon.com:
The beach house was "the sonnet form of American architecture," writes Alastair Gordon. "This was where the revolution began." In his gracefully written, stunningly illustrated book, he shows how the evolution of summer housing on the once-rural eastern end of Long Island, New York, heralded key developments in architecture. By the late 1920s, the sprawling Southampton mansions of Stanford White and others were passé. The new style was a modernist box, raised up on supporting columns for protection and a better view, with a sun deck and floor-to-ceiling windows. (See Palm Springs Weekend: The Architecture and Design of a Midcentury Oasis or Palm Springs Modern: Houses in the California Desert for a West Coast version of modernist vacation home design.) After World War II, the Hamptons became a favorite destination of New York artists, architects, and writers, who ushered in a period of fanciful experimentation. Then came the deluge. Gordon's own family, who bought their prefab beach home in the '50s, was part of a trend celebrated by Life magazine in 1959, the year Nixon and Khrushchev held their Kitchen Debate at a Leisurama house. Gordon vividly describes the innovations of the '50s and '60s, from the stunningly pure Blake House (two square, ground-hugging sections with a central breezeway framing the ocean view) to the proud verticals of the Gwathmey House, clad in vertical cedar siding approximating the look of carved concrete. In the '70s, as ocean-view lots became scarce, some architects ignored the natural setting, creating imposing sculptural statements craning to isolate an elusive view. Others, including Robert Venturi and Jack Lenore Larsen, gave vernacular styles a postmodern twist. Rightly decrying the neotraditional behemoths built in the '80s to satisfy the insecurities of the megarich, Gordon takes the long view. Each wave of newcomers remade this flat land in their own image, yet "something about it resists change." --Cathy Curtis

Warmed Me Up on Winter Weekend:
Finally got the chance to sit and read Gordon's excellent text in Weekend Utopia. The book goes way beyond an illustrated coffee book. Gordon manages to weave together stories about the characters who shaped the place (like developer Carl Fisher who created Montauk to be the "Miami Beach of the North")with stories about the flamboyant architecture, post-war artists like Pollock and Motherwell and his own personal memories as a boy spending summers there. While the book has a large format with hundreds of illustrations it is most readable and explains so much about how a rural American landscape was transformed into a resort for show-offs. I loved it and can't comprehend what reviewers from Hong Kong and the Netherlands were talking about. It is neither trying to be a professional book on architecture nor a cheap gossip book about pseudo-celebrities. It is an intelligent cultural history that also happens to be well designed and illustrated. It warmed my soul on a chilly winter weekend and made me want to go to the beach as soon as possible.

Historical Monograph:
Wonderfully written and researched. Architecturally lacking photographs, drawings, or any substance for inspiration or idea generation. Cover and size of book suggests more pictorial content, but fails to deliver.

Don't shoot the messenger:
I'm a bit mystified by the comments below that seem to implicate this book and its author in what the Hamptons have become. To the contrary, Weekend Utopia celebrates happier days pre-mega mansions: when culture and architecture and some fascinating characters created some truly exceptional houses, most of them modest in scale. In fact, today's Hamptons home-builders could learn a lesson or two from this book (like small can be very beautiful), and stop the further despoilment of what the Hamptons used to be: something Weekend Utopia shows with great clarity and style. This wonderful book is certainly no apologia for the mess that awaits you at the end of I-495...

Don't let the cover mislead you:
When i saw the cover of this book i thought this would be a great book. I wanted to find pictures of beautiful decorated houses,nice gardens and offcourse the habitants of the mansions. Well, that's not quite what's inside this book. For the most only pictures of houses taken in the 50's and 60's and a lot of text!! I want pictures of Aerin Lauder and the Miller sisters!!

An interesting if sad look back:
I agree with the reviewer who said that the Hamptons were ruined long ago -- by the very succession of waves of development that this book touts. I do love looking at some of the quality design of the past that this book shows, but the new reality is overbuilding and, even worse, tasteless building. The feeling of getting away to a charming, easy-going, and low-key place with rural roots is gone forever in the Hamptons. We left because of the continuing intrusion of the nouveau riche who are more interested in showing off than in quietly relaxing-----peoplewho have now made the Hamptons a decidedly UNCOOL place to be.