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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LAKE COME DESIGN FESTIVAL 2025
The city of Como once again hosted the seventh edition of the Lake Como Design Festival, under the theme Fragments. The festival invited visitors to reflect on fragmentation not as a sign of rupture, but as a catalyst for creative rebirth, for the preservation of memory, and for a regenerative approach to design.
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