MID CENTURY MODERN LIVING

Custom Mid Century Modern HOMES & NEIGHBORHOODS

Frank Lloyd Wright

No other modern architect had such a diversified building career—from skyscrapers to gas stations, factories to flower stalls—Wright wanted to reinvent all aspects of life. Nevertheless, no other architect returned so persistently to what Wright considered the true building block of social transformation—the single family home. No matter the scale or scope of the project, Wright always aspired to provide his client with environments that, were not only functional but also “eloquent and humane.”

Ralph Haver

It is estimated there are 20,000 Haver designed tract homes in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. Haver Home characteristics include low-sloped rooflines, clerestory windows, massive mantle-less chimney volumes, floor-to-ceiling walls of glass, brick or block construction, clinker bricks in the wainscoting, angled porch posts and brick patios.

Al Beadle

During his lifetime Beadle was best known for designing Case Study Apartment #1, a three-unit apartment development known as the Triad in Phoenix, AZ, which was part of the Case Study House program of Arts & Architecture magazine. More recently Beadle has been rediscovered for his stylish mid-century residential housing stock and for his influence on desert modernism, reflecting a rigorous, rectilinear modernist idiom.

Blaine Drake

Architect Blaine Drake was one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s original apprentices at Taliesin, Wisconsin, in 1933, and went on to establish his Arizona practice in 1945. He designed approximately two hundred projects during his long career, nearly two-thirds of which were built. Most of his work was in the Phoenix area and focused on residential architecture, though he also designed office, medical, and apartment buildings and churches.

Bennie Gonzales

An American architect known for a distinctive style of Southwestern architecture which has since been widely copied. Gonzales designed most of Scottsdale, Arizona’s, major municipal buildings including Scottsdale City Hall, the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts and the Civic Center Library. His resume also included hundreds of private homes and residences throughout Arizona. Examples of Gonzales’s work can be found sprinkled across Arizona, the United States and the world.

Fred Guirey

Considered one of the founding fathers of Phoenix midcentury-modern architecture, Guirey’s work stands with that of such legendary Phoenix architects as Ralph Haver, Ned Sawyer, and Al Beadle, playing with the Wrightian notion of indoor-outdoor living, particularly in his home designs, which often pulled interior beams straight through walls and out onto porches and overhangs. He was trusted with commissions like Gilbert Olson’s SuperLite Block Headquarters and the Art & Architecture complex at Arizona State University, marking him as a professional among professionals.