Two by Ames: Encounters with History and the Modern Aesthetic

The architecture of Anthony Ames (1944–) evidences an intelligent and sophisticated elaboration of Modern design methodology, developing the essential Modernist theme that the plan is the generator of architectural space and form. By means of devices including rotation and superimposition, Ames juxtaposes and mediates Pre-Modern and Modern spaces; as a late Modernist, Ames embodies in his work an eclecticism whose encounters with recent history offer ironic parallel to traditional historical revivalism. Critical analysis of the Hulse Pavilion (1976) and Hulse House (1985), featured in Ames’s Five Houses, and of the Villa Bernina (1989–1990), a warehouse conversion briefly described in Architectural Record in 1991, demonstrates the scope of Ames’s interventions, disclosing design inspiration from varied sources that range from C. R. Macintosh and Edwin Lutyens to Le Corbusier. Ames orchestrates Modern open planning, Pre-Modern “contained” space, and “occupiable pochi” in mediated spaces in between. In these projects, the fundamental design elements of form, space, and light conspire to create an architecture of transparency, precision, and eloquence—contradictory, as well as enriched, by their encounters with history.