Prior to it being a museum, the Asakura Museum of Sculpture was the home and studio of sculptor Fumio Asakura.

Asakura moved to the Yanaka area after graduating from Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1907. He expanded the property over the years and completed a renovation in 1935 in order to open a sculpture school.

Kinfolk

Stroll Tips

The building was dedicated as a museum in 1967, three years after Asakura’s death. It mixes Western styles with the more traditional Japanese wooden structure. He lived here with his family and his more than 10 cats, and the living area is preserved with the original furniture.

ASAKURA MUSEUM OF SCULPTURE

Artist Alberto Giacometti is widely acknowledged as having made some of the most important contributions to Surrealist sculpture in the 1930s, and later became influential in the art scene with his human sculptures.

Giacometti moved into his small studio with his brother in Paris in 1926, and worked here until his death in 1966.

Fondation Giacometti

Annette Giacometti, whom he had married in 1949, collected all of Alberto Giacometti’s belongings, such as tools, art supplies, sculptures, prints and photos, furniture and even the renowned painted walls in his studio. 

The Giacometti Institute in Paris presents a permanent and detailed reconstruction of the studio of Alberto Giacometti based on Annette Giacometti’s conservations.

ATELIER DE GIACOMETTI

Barbara Hepworth was a British artist and sculptor, who was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire in 1903. Hepworth studied at Leeds school of Art from 1920–1921 alongside artist Henry Moore, and both students continued their studies in sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London.

Hepworth primarily focused on modern sculpture, and she made use of the direct carving method, where she would work directly in to the chosen material. She avoided the more traditional process of making models from which a craftsman would then produce the finished work. She has worked with stone, wood, bronze and clay among others. Hepworth was interested in form, movement and abstraction, and her art was primarily about relationships.

Tate

Visit Cornwall

BARBARA HEPWORTH HOME & STUDIO

She became a major international figure, and she was also chosen to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1950. 

In 1933, Hepworth travelled to France, and became incredibly inspired and influenced as she met and visited the studios of Picasso, Brâncuși, Mondrian, Jean Arp, and more. 

In 1939 when the Second World War broke out, Hepworth and her then husband Nicholson moved to the seaside town, St Ives. They lived in Trewyn Studios in St Ives from 1949 until her death in 1975. She said that "Finding Trewyn Studio was sort of magic. Here was a studio, a yard, and garden where I could work in open air and space." 

Following her wish to establish her home and studio as a museum of her work, Trewyn Studio and much of the artist’s work remaining there was given to the nation and placed in the care of the Tate Gallery in 1980. Displays include sculptures in bronze, stone and wood, along with paintings, drawings and archive material.

This is a personal favorite for the homes+studios team! :)

Black Mountain College was an experimental liberal arts school founded in 1933 in Black Mountain, North Carolina by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, Frederick Georgia, and Ralph Lounsbury. The school was governed by both students and teachers, and it believed in an anti-hierarchical philosophy and that the arts are central to the experience of learning. The school didn’t have any course requirements, official grades, accredited degrees, entry exams or tuition, and the college community participated in its operations such as farming, construction, and kitchen duty.

Many of the school’s faculty came from the Bauhaus, a similarly progressions liberal arts school in Germany, due to the school being shut down by the Nazis in 1933. Notable faculty members who left Europe for the US were Josef Albers, who was hired as Black Mountain College’s first art teacher, and his wife, Anni Albers, who taught weaving and textile design at the school.

Black Mountain College

A partial list of the faculty and students include Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Josef and Anni Albers, Jacob Lawrence, Walter Gropius, John Cage, Cy Twombly, Susan Weil, Ruth Asawa, Franz Kline, Arthur Penn, Buckminster Fuller, Dorothea Rockburne and more.

The school closed in 1957 due to funding issues, but the history and legacy of Black Mountain College are preserved by Black Mountain College Museum & Arts Center located in Asheville, North Carolina.

BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE

American artist Ellsworth Kelly’s “Austin” is a 2,715-square-foot stone building with a 26-foot ceiling, colored glass windows, a totemic wood sculpture, and black and white marble panels.


The structure is the only building the artist designed, and is a blend of art, architecture, painting and sculpture. It was made with the help of Blanton Museum of Art’s director, Simone Jamille Wicha, who helped raise $23 million for construction and endowment, and is part of the museums permanent collection in Austin, Texas.

NYTimes

The construction of “Austin” began two months before Kelly’s death, and it was the artist’s final work.

BLANTON MUSEUM

Casa das Canoas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was designed by Oscar Niemeyer in 1951 as a family home.

It was used as his family home until 1965, the year in which he had to abandon Brazil due to the military dictatorship.

Architect Magazine

Architectuul

It is considered to be one of the most significant examples of modern architecture in Brazil with its curved flat roof supported by light steel columns and transparent glass walls. 

The home is designed to complement its surrounding nature and it was built to on the slope of a hill overlooking the bay. The interior was designed by Niemeyer himself and his daughter Ana Maria.

CASA DAS CANOAS

Luis Barragán (1902-1988) was a Mexican architect and engineer. Barragán met with Le Corbusier, and became influenced by European modernism. Opposed to functionalism, Barragán claimed that "any work of architecture which does not express serenity is a mistake."

In 1975, Barragán was honored with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In 1980, he won the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the highest award in architecture, and in 2004, his personal home, the Luis Barragán House and Studio, was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


Dwell

Kriteria

The Modern House

Casa Luis Barragán, built in 1948 after the Second World War, was Barragán’s residency and studio located in Miguel Hidalgo district, Mexico City. 

With the exception of the breakfast nook, the house is designed to not need artificial light during the day, with windows and other openings placed to let in as much light as possible. 

In 1993, the government of the state of Jalisco and Arquitectura Tapatía Luis Barragán Foundation acquired the house, turning it into a museum in 1994. It is to this day kept just the way it was when he lived there until his death in 1988, and retains the original furniture and Barragán's personal objects.

CASA LUIS BARRAGÁN

Sculptor, collector, educator and designer Chaim Gross worked in New York City from 1921 until his death in 1991.

Over the course of his life, Gross collected and created hundreds of works of art.

RC Gross Foundation

Gross worked predominantly in wood, stone, and eventually bronze, and is known for his carvings of circus performers, dancers, and intimate mother and child pairings in a style that combined Modernist, African, and folk forms. 

Gross and his wife Renee moved into a four-story historic townhouse in Greenwich Village in 1963 and made it their home and studio. This townhouse is now the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation, and Gross’ collection of artwork remains largely as he left it inside his home.

CHAIM GROSS HOME & STUDIO

Chapelle de Roseaire de Vence was was built and decorated between 1947 and 1951 by Henri Matisse for the Dominican sisters, and it was his final project.

He did the project for his nurse, who was a nun at the chapel.

Chapelle Matisse

Matisse was very involved in the project, and designed everything from the colorful stained glass windows, the priest’s ceremonial garments to the basins used for washing hands. 



Inside the chapel, you find large stained glass windows composed of yellow, green and blue, flood the walls with light and the 3 large paintings in black lines on white ceramics which evoke Saint Dominic, the Nativity and the Way of the Cross. The majority of the work was done from bed in his old age.

CHAPELLE DE ROSEAIRE DE VENCE

The Eames House, our first and a first for many and all-time, also known as Case Study House No. 8, is a mid-20th century modern architecture, and was designed and constructed in 1949 by Charles and Ray Eames to serve as their home and studio!

Charles and Ray Eames were an American married couple who significantly contributed to the developments of modernism working in architecture and furniture.


Eames Foundation

Arch Daily

Design Curial

THE EAMES HOUSE WAS ONE OF THE STARS OF THE CASE STUDY PROGRAM, WHICH WAS AN INFLUENTIAL SERIES OF EXPERIMENTAL HOUSES IN CALIFORNIA COMMISSIONED BY ARTS & ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE 

The idea of the program was to showcase inspirational houses that in theory would be both affordable and easily available in the post-war era through industrial methods of production.

The Eames House is open to the public, and the residence is presented as it was at the time of Ray’s death in 1988, which is amazing to us.

CHARLES & RAY EAMES

Constantin Brâncuși (1876-1957) was a Romanian sculptor, painter and photographer, and is considered a pioneer of modernism. He arrived in Paris in 1904, and lived and worked here until his death in 1957. Brâncuși found a welcoming community of artists and intellectuals. He was invited to work for Auguste Rodin and though Brâncuși admired Rodin, he allegedly stated that, "Nothing can grow under big trees."

His sculptures are made mainly from materials such as metal, plaster, stone, or wood, and Brâncuși left the original material intact so you could see its connection to its natural origins. Brâncuși considered the relationship between sculptures and the space around them to be very important.

Centre Pompidou

Artsy

Magnus Photos

He eventually turned his studio into his exhibition space, and it became his preferred place for the presentation of his works and the whole space functioned like a unity. 

Towards the end of his life, Brancusi stopped creating sculptures and concentrated on the studio space. This relationship became so important to Brâncuși that he avoided exhibiting and if he would sell a piece of his artwork, he would replace the sold work with a plaster replica in order to not do destroy the unity of the group.

Brâncuși died on March 16, 1957, aged 81, and is buried in Paris. At his death, Brâncuși bequeathed his entire studio and collection to the French state on condition that his workshop be rebuilt as it was on the day he died. 

This reconstruction of his studio was made in 1997, adjacent to the Pompidou Centre, and is open to the public.

CONSTANTIN BRÂNCUŞI STUDIO

The Cranbrook Academy of Art was an experiment in education founded by George and Ellen Booth, and Eliel Saarinen, a Finnish architect who designed the campus and served as the first president.

The students were encouraged to envision, create, and understand all aspects of design, from architecture to furniture to metalworking, and to engage in experimentation. Cranbrook has had a large impact on American modernism, and especially from 1937 to 1941.

Cranbrook Art

Cranbrook has had a large impact on American modernism, and especially from 1937 to 1941.

In 1940, Ray Eames enrolled at the Cranbrook, where she met Charles, who was at the time the head of the department of industrial design... other notable alumni include Florence Knoll, Harry Bertoia and Jack Lenor Larsen.

CRANBROOK ART MUSEUM

American architect John Lautner, a former apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright, completed the Elrod House in 1968 for designer Arthur Elrod, who did the interiors for the home himself.

The modernist building located in Palm Springs is centered around a circular living room that measures 60 feet (or 18 metres) in diameter with an indoor and outdoor pool with views of the Coachella Valley.

Dezeen

When the house was built, the rocks were kept in place and became part of the interior of the house and runs through the walls and windows. The Elrod House's most notable appearance was in the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever.

James Bond scene here: https://youtu.be/aRSZPXXGCp0

ELROD HOUSE

Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator, and designed over 1,100 buildings in his life.

Wright designed Fallingwater, a private residency in Pennsylvania, in 1935. Built partly over a waterfall the home exemplifies the harmony between art and nature as the house was.

Fallingwater

It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with seven other buildings Wright designed, in 2019, and Fallingwater is open to the public. 

This for many is where Homes+Studios tours start :)

FALLINGWATER

The Farnsworth House, designed and built between 1946 and 1951 by architect Mies van der Rohe, is recognized as a masterpiece of the International Style of architecture, and has National Historic Landmark status.

The one-room weekend retreat was commissioned by and designed for Dr. Edith Farnsworth as a place to relax, play the violin, entertain, and enjoy nature.

Farnsworth House

Architectural Digest

The 140 m2 house is located in Plano, Illinois, and the glass pavilion takes full advantage of relating to its natural surroundings, achieving Mies' concept of a strong relationship between the house and nature. 

The significance of the Farnsworth House was recognized even before it was built. In 1947 a model of the Farnsworth House was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

FARNSWORTH HOUSE

Danish architect and designer, Finn Juhl, was from around the 1930’s until the end of the 1960’s a part of the Danish Modernisme movement which including names such as Arne Jacobsen, Hans Wegner, Poul Kjærholm, Kaare Klint, Mogens Koch and Børge Mogensen. This movement became the foundation for the massive international export of Danish architecture and design.

Finn Juhl’s home in Ordrup, which he built for him and his family in 1942, is the epitome of his visionary approach of working across disciplines. The home is an interplay between art, design, architecture and interior. The house is composed of two blocks standing at right-angles to each other. In one block is a large living room and a small study, while the second block houses the kitchen, dining room, bedrooms and bathroom. The two blocks are joined by an entrance hall which opens to the garden.

Ordrupgaard

Phaidon

An important factor for Juhl was the relation between the rooms and the influx of natural lights from the surrounding garden and woods. The ceilings are painted in pale light yellow and when they reflect the light from outside, they resemble the roof of a tent with light shining through. 

All the furniture in the house is designed by Finn Juhl. Among other things you can experience some of Finn Juhl’s most iconic designs such as the FJ45 chair, the FJ46 chair and Høvdingestolen.

The home is now a permanent part of Ordrupgaard Museum, and the doors opened to the public on 3 April 2008.

FINN JUHL HOUSE

In 1945, George Nakashima opened his woodworking business as a reaction against the twentieth-century modern architecture, design, and art movement, and to earn a living using his skills. Nakashima believed that the inherent beauty of natural materials like wood should be studied, understood and respected, and that the products and materials should retain its individuality.

Nakashima first discovered and purchased the land along Aquetong Road in 1945, and as his business grew, he purchased more land and built more building, all facing south to maximize the sunlight. He had respect for the natural landscape and use of regional materials while also experimenting with new innovations.

Nakashima Woodworkers

Depasquale Maffini

The Nakashima grounds consists of the Conoid Studio, the Showroom, the Finishing Room, the Chair Shop, the Reception House, the Arts Building & Cloisters, the Pole Barn, the Lumber Sheds, the Pool House, and lastly, the Main Shop.

Nakashimas's unique bathtub has his kids and grandkids names written out in mosaic. 

The grounds are open to the public during designated Studio Hours.

GEORGE NAKASHIMA WOODWORKERS

The Georgia O'Keeffe Home and Studio is located in the small village of Abiquiú in New Mexico. In New Mexico, she experimented with fresh colors, forms, and compositional strategies, and the house inspired many of her paintings such as a door through the patio wall and cottonwood tress growing in the Chama River Valley below her studio.

O'Keeffe purchased the land in 1943, and used it as her main residence and studio until 1984. She died in Santa Fe on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98.

O'Keeffe

Domino

Today, it is part of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, and the home and studio became a National Historic Landmark in 1998. 

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum owns a large body of her work such as photographs, archival materials, and her Abiquiú house, library, and property. 

In 2014, after her death, O'Keeffe's 1932 painting “Jimson Weed” sold for $44,405,000, more than three times the previous world auction record for any female artist. 

Visiting O'Keeffe's home and studio is the ultimate pilgrimage; life-changing inspiring.

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE HOME AND STUDIO

Gropius House is a National Historic Landmark, as you would guess, founded by Walter Gropius. He designed Gropius House as his family home when he became director of the Department of Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

For the construction of his two-story house, Gropius picked a position on top of a modest hill, in the middle of an orchard. The Gropius House is now a historic house museum, owned by Historic New England, and is open to the public. The Museum also has one of the largest of Bauhaus-related source materials outside of Germany.

Arch Eyes

GROPIUS WAS THE FOUNDER OF THE GERMAN DESIGN SCHOOL BAUHAUS, AND WAS ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL ARCHITECTS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

GROPIUS HOUSE

Artist and sculptor, Isamu Noguchi, first visited the Japanese island of Shikoku in 1956 searching for stones for his garden at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, and returned multiple times.

By 1969, Noguchi had established a studio in the village, Mure. A stonecutter from the village, Masatoshi Izumi, built a studio compound for Noguchi.

Isamu Noguchi

Noguchi worked in Mure for about six months each year during his last two decades, traveling back and forth between New York and Mure. 

After Noguchi's death, the workshop was converted as a fulfillment of his wish into the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum which exhibits both his art and his work and living space to serve as inspiration for artists and scholars. 

The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum was reserved to show Noguchi’s residence and atelier as it had been at the time Noguchi had lived there. Its collection includes 150 sculptures, many of which are still unfinished.

ISAMU NOGUCHI GARDEN MUSEUM

Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) spent his lifetime experimenting with sculptures, gardens, furniture and lighting designs, ceramics, architecture, and set designs, as well as utilized a wide range of materials. He travelled extensively throughout his life, and incorporated the impressions from his travels into his work.

Noguchi was born in Los Angeles, California, to an American mother and a Japanese father, and he lived in Japan until the age of thirteen. He studied pre-medicine at Columbia University in New York City, and took evening sculpture classes. He left university to become an academic sculptor, and eventually went to Paris in 1927 to work in Brancusi’s studio.

Noguchi

Amview

Noguchi became well-known in the US around 1940. Noguchi’s first retrospective in the United States was in 1968 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and in 1986, he represented the United States at the Venice Biennale.

The Noguchi Museum was founded and designed by Isamu Noguchi in 1985 for the display of what he considered to be representative examples of his life’s work. Located in a 1920s industrial building across the street from where the artist had established a studio in 1960, it has a serene outdoor sculpture garden, and galleries that display Noguchi’s work, along with photographs, drawings, and models from his career.


Located on Long Island City, this is one of our ultimate all-time favorite places to visit over and over again, especially when New York City life feels overwhelming.

ISAMU NOGUCHI MUSEUM

Donald Judd and his family lived in Marfa, Texas from 1979 until his death in 1994.

It's said he moved to Marfa for the light. In 1979, with help from the Dia Art Foundation, Judd acquired 340 acres of land in Marfa which included abandoned buildings of the former U.S. Army. He transformed the space to showcase art in a non museum setting.

Champ Magazine

Judd Foundation

JUDD FOUNDATION MARFA

He also founded the Chinati Foundation, which is a contemporary art museum in Marfa. Chinati opened to the public in 1986 as an independent, nonprofit museum. 

La Mansana de Chinati, Judd’s residence and studio in Marfa, informally known as The Block, is the site of some of the artist’s first large-scale architectural projects. 

Judd also had three main studios, which he permanently installed with his early work, and his personal library, which houses his collection of over 13,000 volumes. 

The Architecture Studio, Art Studio, the Cobb House and Whyte Building are spaces that contain furniture by Judd, his early paintings from the 1950s and 1960s, an extensive collection of modernist and period furniture, and works by other prominent twentieth century artists and designers.

Second to Eames for us and many on the homes+studies journey is the American artist and furniture designer, Donald Judd. In 1968, Judd purchased 101 Spring Street for $65K, a former garment factory and five story cast-iron building located in SoHo in New York City. Designed by Nicholas Whyte and constructed in 1870, it was the first building Judd owned and served as his New York home and studio!

Judd wrote in 1989 in an essay titled “101 Spring Street”:
“My requirements were that the building be useful for living and working and more importantly, more definitely, be a space in which to install work of mine and of others. At first I thought the building large, but now I think it small; it didn’t hold much work after all. I spent a great deal of time placing the art and a great deal designing the renovation in accordance”.

The house is filled with artwork from his many of his contemporaries, Stuart Davis, Marcel Duchamp, Frank Stella, John Chamberlain, Dan Flavin, and Ad Reinhardt, and furniture by Alvar Aalto, Gerrit Rietveld, and of course Donald Judd himself. 

Similar to the Eames house, the works on view at 101 Spring Street remain as installed by Judd.

JUDD FOUNDATION NEW YORK

The Kaufmann House was built by Austrian architect Richard Neutra for Edgar Kaufmann, an American department store entrepreneur, and his family in 1946.

The house, located in Palm Springs, California, was a vacation home for the Kaufmann family to escape the harsh winters of the northeast. In 1935, Kaufmann had also commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build Fallingwater, his home in Pennsylvania.

Neutra's modernist Kaufmann House has five bedrooms and bathrooms. 

The house is tailored to the California desert climate, and features slatted metal walls enable the rooms to be shaded and cooled during extreme heatwaves, and closed up during sandstorms. It is oriented toward east-west maximizing the sunrise and sunset views. The Kaufmann House is considered to be an architectural landmark.

KAUFMANN HOUSE

The James and Sarah Kirkpatrick home was designed by architect and American Modernist designer George Nelson and Gordon Chadwick.

The the four-bedroom, 3,500-square-foot home located in Michigan was completed in 1958.

Curbed

The home is a rectangular, two-story, wood and steel-frame structure of metal and painted wood, and the home is designed with the surrounding nature in mind (our favorite type of design) and fills with natural light. 

George Nelson was the design director at Herman Miller from 1947 until 1972, and the Kirkpatrick home was filled with Herman Miller furniture. Nelson also prototyped furniture through the building phase of the house using them as experiments for future furniture designs.

KIRKPATRICK HOUSE

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, was a Swiss-French architect, artist and writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture.

Le Corbusier’s apartment in Paris' 16th arrondissement, where he lived with his wife Yvonne, his housekeeper, and his dog from 1934 to 1965, is open to the public and allows visitors to experience his home and his private studio where he would paint and write (Le Corbusier wrote over 40 books in his lifetime).

Fondation Le Corbusier

The apartment features unique details such as an unusually raised double bed so he and Yvonne would be able to see the view of Boulogne over the balcony railing. 

The apartment is part of the modern glass building, The Immeuble Molitor, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site designed by Le Corbusier in the early 1930s.

LE CORBUSIER HOME

Maison de Verre, French for House of Glass, was built from 1928 to 1932. The design was a collaboration among Pierre Chareau, a furniture and interiors designer, Bernard Bijvoet, an architect, and Louis Dalbet, a craftsman metalworker. 

It was commissioned by Annie and Jean Dalsace, who had bought the site, but were unable to evict the woman who lived on the top floor. As a result Chareau had to build out his creation underneath her apartment. Chareau also designed all the furniture and lighting in the house.


Francois Halard

Yellowtrace

Located in the wealthy Left Bank neighborhood in Paris, it was the first house to be built in France from glass and steel. The house was built in the brief period between the two world wars, which was the peak of classical Modernism.

In the 1980's, Dalsace's daughter considered selling the property to the French government in hopes of them turning it into a national landmark as Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye was, but the government declined. 

In 2006, Robert Rubin, an American collector, bought the property for an undisclosed price. He has meticulously restored it and now lives there.

You must be a student or professional working in architecture or a related field, in order to book a tour of the house.

MAISON DE VERRE

Manitoga is the former home of American industrial designer, Russel Wright (1904-1976). Located in Garrison, New York, approximately one hour north of New York City, Manitoga has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public.

Wright named the house, studio, and immediate landscape, Dragon Rock. He hired architect David Leavitt (1918-2013) who shared Wright’s appreciation of Japanese architecture and landscape design, which is reflected in the scale, structure, and details of Dragon Rock.

Visit Manitoga

Arch Paper

The house is intervened with nature blending architecture and landscape fx with the large expanses of glass provide views to a 30 foot waterfall, a quarry pool, and the surrounding landscape. 

A large cedar tree trunk functions as a design element and is the main structural support of house. The Dragon Rock Studio was Russel Wright’s personal space where he slept and worked. In the studio, furniture that Wright designed as well as personal items are on view.

MANITOGA BY RUSSEL WRIGHT

In 1963, Father Barnabas Reasoner of Mount Angel Benedictine Monastery, wrote to Finnish architect and designer, Alvar Aalto, asking him to design a new building for the library.

Aalto agreed to the project due to his love for libraries and he was intrigued by the site.

Mount Angel Abbey

The library opened in May 1970. The library is built into the side of a hill, and much of the interior lighting is natural. 

“I HAVEN’T BEEN EVERYWHERE, BUT IT’S ON MY LIST.” - SUSAN SONTAG