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Ira B. Joralemon house and studio, Berkeley CA

Architect: Bernard Maybeck, 1923

 

In talking to Dorothy Joralemon about the design of the Joralemons' house in 1923, Maybeck said that too much architecture was sober and drab, and he asked if she would prefer "a white house resembling a bird that has just dropped down on your hilltop, or an earth-colored one that seems to rise out of it."1 When she chose the latter, Maybeck invited her to participate in the process of spattering the walls with colored stucco. Four pails of wet stucco were prepared, each tinted with a different hue--pale chrome yellow, deep ocher, Venetian red, and gray--and each painter was given a whisk broom with which to flick the stucco onto the walls. Maybeck directed the operation like a maestro: "Red here. Ochre there. Now lighten with yellow. Now soften with gray." When the job was finished, he announced approvingly that the walls vibrated.

(Bernard Maybeck: Visionary Architect

by Sally Byrne Woodbridge - 1992 Abbeville Press)

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Uploaded on July 21, 2009
Taken on July 20, 2009