Welcome & introduce yourself here.

Welcome to the Madison Forum. If you are a new visitor please post and introduce yourself here.

I'm Craig Hopkins, the designated moderator for the forum. My father, a landscape architect/urban planner and reluctant modernist/maverick, introduced me to the minds and works Roberto Burle Marx, Alvar Aalto, Bucky Fuller, Ian Mcharg and Charles Eames as a kid, 'A Pattern Language and 'The Place of Houses' in college, and most recently Wolfgang Oehme and James van Sweden's New American Gardens'.

Today my bookshelves are lined with works on modern residential architecture, the case study homes, green building, alternative energy and landscape architecture, and I enjoy searching for Scandanavian modern furnishings, glass and ceramics to decorate my ever-so-normal 50s ranch home with. Recently I've decided it's time to move my life, wife, guitars, music, bikes and gang of Greyhounds to a modest groovy little prefab home on some yet-to-be-discovered isthmus lot (can anyone recommend a good realtor?). Thanks for reading and I look forward to meeting you here.

Craig

Wow, modern houses, bikes (bicycles?), and greyhounds - three of my favorite things all in one post! I hope you grace us with photos of all three on your home page. :grin:

My name is John. I live just a few minutes north of Madison, and I am a project manager for a local architectural firm.

Madison and the surrounding area is a very builder/realtor driven area where anything out of the norm is looked down upon, to the extent that I have had several clients with intrests in building modern structures talked out of building what they want through threats of difficult to impossible resale. Its in a sad state, but it has only one way to go from here.

My name is Gabe. I work in Real Estate. A Realtor by profession, I mainly focus on creating developments - specifically geared towards modern tastes. I am also active in local politics in the attempt to make building modern easier and thus more affordable.
I know there are more like minded people in Madison - they just haven't found this sight yet.

Well, I've only just found it now! Alas, I am but a poor musician with no money to build anything except a little patio outside my little 2-br Cape this summer! But...

My mother was an architect here in Madison in the 60s and 70s (also in Urbana, IL in the 50s) and was enthusiastically committed to Modernism. She was the first woman to graduate from the Yale School of Architecture, in 1946. She primarily designed homes and was an early proponent of passive solar design ideas way back in the early 50s. She also worked for the State of Wisconsin for a few years, most notably designing the display for the Wisconsin State Constitution in the State Capital Building rotunda.

She was quite a maverick in her time, fighting not only for acceptance of her designs but for respect among her male colleagues. I was a kid during most of her career so I wasn't aware of her battles with permits and contractors, but I'm sure whatever a male moderist architect typically experienced went double for her.

I have now started researching her houses and plan to create a website of what I find, which I'll post here when it's functioning. She has absolutely left her mark on my tastes, and I find I feel most at home in modern design. I've never understood the bias against the style, but then I grew up assuming architecture was a woman's job, like being a schoolteacher or secretary, so my perceptions may be a bit off kilter! In fact, I can remember thinking Mr. Brady, on The Brady Bunch, wasn't supposed to be doing that job!

Funny. Ah, well, interesting to find this forum - there are lots of lovely modern houses in this town, so let's celebrate them!

I've posted in the MadCity Modernist area, but since there aren't many of us, I thought I'd introduce myself here.  My husband and I are building a "moco" home here in Madison and have created a blog; www.tillsnewhome.blogspot.com

We'd love to meet some like-minded Madisonians!

Laura Tills