PaperCity Magazine

September 2019- Fort Worth

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the swimming pool and an automobile courtyard. Visitors enter the house under an astonishing 40-foot-long cantilever. Inside, Rudolph choreographed space like dance moves, with a boggling series of steps and landings leading to sunken and elevated areas. Intimate spaces with low ceilings open into larger double-height rooms. A more kinetic house has yet to be devised, and it all makes sense: Anne was trained in ballet, and dance served as one of Rudolph's inspirations for the house. "The ideal of weight and counterweight, similar to the movement of the human body, became the genesis of the house," Rudolph told House & Garden writer Mildred F. Schmertz. The house is designed to showcase extraordinary art — and for good reason. At the time of the 1991 House & Garden feature, the article prominently spotlighted Anne's collection of works by Mark Rothko, Alexander Calder, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, Morris Louis, Henri Matisse, and Andy Warhol. Rudolph designed some of the furnishings himself, including leather banquettes in the sunken living room and a floating platform bed for the master bedroom, mixing it with iconic Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs and Cedric Hartman lighting. Rudolph collaborated on the design for the property's extraordinary grounds with modernist landscape architect Robert Zion, while British garden designer Russell Page created the formal and classical aspects, including a striking allée of pleached oaks and a reflecting pool for Aristide Maillol's large recumbent nude sculpture The River. There's also a rose garden, wisteria-covered pergola, and a Rudolph-designed greenhouse. Anne, an avid gardener, has maintained the gardens impeccably, along with the house's architecture and interior furnishings, which largely remain unchanged. Rudolph considered the Bass house his best residential work, and it remains as an enduring tribute to the under-appreciated architect who had an eye for merging beauty with experimentation. "Rudolph's influence is not yet fully recognized, but he's on par with any architect of his generation," says Dan Webre, an architect and board member of the Paul Rudolph Foundation in New York City. "A lot of his ideas are just now becoming mainstream. If you think of Zaha Hadid, it's safe to say she was influenced by Rudolph. He paved the way for new ideas about space and new materials. He was always pushing the envelope." Exterior of the 1970-designed Bass house in Fort Worth. Dean residence, Great Neck, New York. circa 1978. (continued) 77

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