Puerto Rico's Henry Klumb

A Modern Architect's Sense of Place

Cesar A. Cruz, Cesar Cruz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781032237428
• eBook ISBN: 9780429620393
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

This book follows Henry Klumb's life in architecture from Cologne, Germany to Puerto Rico. Arriving on the island, Klumb was a one-time German immigrant, a moderately successful designer, and previously a senior draftsman with Frank Lloyd Wright.

Over the next forty years Klumb would emerge as Puerto Rico's most prolific, locally well-known, and celebrated modern architect. In addition to becoming a leading figure in Latin American modern architecture, Klumb also became one of Frank Lloyd Wright's most accomplished protégés, and an architect with a highly attuned social and environmental consciousness. Cruz explores his life, works, and legacy through the lens of a sense of place, defined as the beliefs that people adopt, actions undertaken, and feelings developed towards specific locations and spaces. He argues that the architect's sense of place was a defining quality of his life and work, most evident in the houses he designed and built in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico ' s Henry Klumb offers a historical narrative, culminating in a series of architectural analyses focusing on four key design strategies employed in Klumb's work: vernacular architecture, the grid and the landscape, dense urban spaces, and open air rooms. This book is aimed at researchers, academics, and postgraduate students interested in Latin American architecture, modernism, and architectural history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Image credits
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Looking into a modern architect’s sense of place
• 2. From Germany to the modern American metropolises, 1905–1927
• 3. With Wright in Arizona and Taliesin, 1929–1933
• 4. Vernacular influences I: the Native American projects, 1938–1941
• 5. Vernacular influences II: reimagining Puerto Rico’s jibaro hut, 1944–1948
• 6. The grid and the landscape: rhe Haeussler Residence, 1945
• 7. Open air rooms: the Emilio Rodriguez and Duchow residences, 1951 and 1958
• 8. Additional house types: houses in dense urban spaces and modern stilt houses
• 9. A coda to a sense of place: the Klumb House, 1947–1984
• 10. Conclusions
• Appendix A: Klumb’s pamphlet series
• Appendix B: Henry Klumb’s “Taliesin”
• Appendix C: Notes on Klumb’s Houses
• Index