CINCINATTI MODERN
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High on a hillside in Cincinnati, sits a two-storey modernist wonder by two unsung heroes of American architecture, built for an art collector in the 1980s and that has been given a sensitive makeover to accommodate the collection of its second owner. The Weston House is the work of Carl Strauss and Ray Roush, who for some 40 years created a network of poetic, idiosyncratic modernist homes for wealthy Midwestern clients with vanguard tastes.
Art collector and film producer Ronnie Sassoon is a Cincinnati native who later moved away and over the years amassed a renowned collection of Italian modernist art, furniture and design, specifically 1960s and 1970s avant-garde Italian such as Arte Povera; she also restored six houses, mostly from the 60s. During the pandemic she bought the capacious steel-framed Weston residence and embarked on a year-and-a-half-long renovation that would preserve the spirit of Strauss and Roush’s lyrical design while stripping out some of the more embellished 1980s ornamentation that fought with the modernist ethos. Behind a bunker-like entrance, the house transforms to spacious art-filled residence drenched in sunlight and stepped down the hill.
“I value Strauss’s work because it’s so grounded in the landscape and art of Cincinnati,” Sassoon says. “He’s such a part of its architectural history. But I do see a real thread of consistency with our Breuer and Neutra houses, an extension of the same principles.”
Read more in Ark Journal VOLUME XI.
WORDS CHRISTOPHER BOLLEN
PHOTOGRAPHY WICHMANN + BENDTSEN
STYLING HELLE WALSTED
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CINCINATTI MODERN
Home
High on a hillside in Cincinnati, sits a two-storey modernist wonder by two unsung heroes of American architecture, built for an art collector in the 1980s and that has been given a sensitive makeover to accommodate the collection of its second owner. The Weston House is the work of Carl Strauss and Ray Roush, who for some 40 years created a network of poetic, idiosyncratic modernist homes for wealthy Midwestern clients with vanguard tastes.
Art collector and film producer Ronnie Sassoon is a Cincinnati native who later moved away and over the years amassed a renowned collection of Italian modernist art, furniture and design, specifically 1960s and 1970s avant-garde Italian such as Arte Povera; she also restored six houses, mostly from the 60s. During the pandemic she bought the capacious steel-framed Weston residence and embarked on a year-and-a-half-long renovation that would preserve the spirit of Strauss and Roush’s lyrical design while stripping out some of the more embellished 1980s ornamentation that fought with the modernist ethos. Behind a bunker-like entrance, the house transforms to spacious art-filled residence drenched in sunlight and stepped down the hill.
“I value Strauss’s work because it’s so grounded in the landscape and art of Cincinnati,” Sassoon says. “He’s such a part of its architectural history. But I do see a real thread of consistency with our Breuer and Neutra houses, an extension of the same principles.”
Read more in Ark Journal VOLUME XI.
WORDS CHRISTOPHER BOLLEN
PHOTOGRAPHY WICHMANN + BENDTSEN
STYLING HELLE WALSTED