Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/594381
FABLED FOLLIES FABULOUS THE NEW SHINGLED HOUSE, BY IKE KLIGERMAN BARKLEY, TRAINS THE SPOTLIGHT ON AN ECCENTRIC 150-YEAR-OLD ARCHITECTURE STYLE. By Rebecca Sherman Y ou've seen them in New England's storied resort towns, along the Carolinas, in parts of Florida and on the California coast. Galveston had plenty of them before the 1900 hurricane wiped the city out. Shingled-style houses, characterized by cedar shingles that form a sculptural envelope over a European-influenced frame, began appearing in America in the 1880s. Our love affair with the look hasn't waned since. Synonymous with wealth, status and a certain leisure lifestyle, shingled houses have long represented the best of everything. New York- and San Francisco- based firm Ike Kligerman Barkley Architects has built dozens of elegant new versions of the shingled house over the past 25 years, and now the firm's partners have written a book on the topic that was released mid-October. The New Shingled House by John Ike, Thomas A. Kligerman and Joel Barkley ($60, Monacelli Press) features 14 of the firm's own designs in Martha's Vineyard, the Hamptons, Watch Hill, Block Island and other resort towns across the country. Pages and photos are also devoted to important shingled-style houses that have inspired them along the way. No one could be more up to the task of compiling a book on the subject: Ike Kligerman Barkley's work has been featured in Architectural Digest (they are on the AD 100 list), Elle Decor, and many other national design and architecture publication, and they are recipients of prestigious Julia Morgan and Stanford White awards from the Institute of Classical Architecture. All three architects with the firm — John Ike, Thomas Kligerman and Joel Barkley — will be in Houston Thursday, November 12, to talk about their book and sign copies. "We do a fair amount of work in the shingled style, so it made sense to focus on it for a book," says Ike, who talked by phone from his New York offices. "There's a romance about it because it was the type of house that wealthy people built on the east coast. It's classic — people feel comfortable with it — but it also feels contemporary." Ike's former second home is included in the book, a 1945-era house on Point Loma Peninsula in the San Diego harbor. "It relates to the shingled style and is part of the evolution of California modernism," he says. "It's all glass and shingles, but it turns the whole concept inside out — the shingles are on the inside." The sculptural style and often the location of the houses lend themselves to free association and playfulness, as Joel Barkley writes in a chapter on a beach house in Southampton he designed for clients: "the site found its way into my thinking as well, as the shape derived, in part, from the idea of the house rolling up from the waves and dunes, as though it had been formed by the actions of nature." A house for clients in Rhode Island, designed by Kligerman and dubbed the Origami, combines modern and traditional aesthetics. "I developed the house by drawing on the crisp geometry of origami, almost as though I'd taken a sheet of pale grey paper and folded it into sharply articulated planes," he writes. While the shingled house may be one of the firm's passions, they are working on about 20 houses currently in a wide range of styles across the country. Past projects include a Georgian townhouse in River Oaks; a mountain lodge in Aspen; a loft in a repurposed butter factory in Manhattan; a vernacular white villa in Cabo San Lucas; a Romanesque building on Stanford's campus; and a rambling, weathered shingled house in Martha's Vineyard. Books on the horizon include a retrospective of watercolor paintings by Barkley, a talented artist, and a focused book on houses made from stone, brick and stucco. John Ike, Thomas Kligerman and Joel Barkley of Ike Kligerman Barkley Architects will speak and sign The New Shingled House Thursday, November 12, 6 to 8 pm, at Greenwood King The Lobby, 3201 Kirby Dr.; RSVP thelobby@greenwoodking.com. Blue Ridge Lodge Thomas Kligerman, John Ike, Joel Barkley Black and White house, Connecticut Sagaponak Gambrel, eastern Long Island Waterfront house, Rhode Island "THERE'S A ROMANCE ABOUT IT BECAUSE IT WAS THE TYPE OF HOUSE THAT WEALTHY PEOPLE BUILT ON THE EAST COAST. IT'S CLASSIC — PEOPLE FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH IT — BUT IT ALSO FEELS CONTEMPORARY."— JOHN IKE