Villa Spies - Staffan Berglund and Mikael Askergren (E&R Forlag)
From the outside it looks like a UFO, from the inside like a set from U.F.O - Uppers investigates Villa Spies.
When you think of Modernist architecture from the 30s to the 50s, it's easy to think of examples, from Corbusier and Gropius, through to Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra and Palm Springs. Yet strangely, it's much more difficult to find buildings that epitomise the design of the 60s.
Furniture and design, on the other hand, was moving on - embracing the new plastics, and more curved forms - from Saarinen's round based Tulip dining set in the late 50s through Ball and Egg chairs, to Joe Colombo's giant hand shaped seats, there was a rediscovery of an exhuberance last seen in the Art Deco era, and from a sober Modernist point of view, a massive lapse of taste (given where it all ended up by the 70s, perhaps they had a point).
While design went 'Pop', architecture - for good reasons never a fast-moving profession - did not. For the best part, architects carried on in that same Modernist tradition - open spaces, straight lines, glass fronted buildings, skyscrapers. It was also the 60s that - in a diluted way - those ideas went mainstream and mass market.
At worst, it was the era of concrete Brutalism - cheap tower blocks and housing projects, less designs than exercises in cost-saving, for people who had no choice in where they lived.
Of course there are exceptions - the City of Brasilia for instance, LAX airport, or the Palais de Bulles (which while not built in the 60s, is certainly a design of the era) - and perhaps less well known, on a small island in the Stockholm archipelago, Villa Spies.
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Designed for Simon Spies (as in spee rather than spy) by architect Staffan Berglund, this is a building to match the Joe Colombo and Eero Aarnio chairs it was furnished with - curved rather than a grid. At the press of a button, Jetsons style, the central table and chairs rise into the ceiling, while a dining table rises up from the kitchen below. At the press of another button, slides can be projected onto the walls or the colour of the room can be changed via lighting control - an idea that has only recently reappeared in interior design. Another place where - more trivially - Villa Spies was ahead of its time - a specially made, completely transparent bathroom sink - now a contemporary design cliche.
It's only in the last few years, however, that the Villa has come back into international attention - it is only featured in very recent books on 60s design. Intriguingly, it seems that this wasn't just down to carelessness.
In 1996, a book dedicated to Villa Spies was published by E&R Forlag - a large format art paperback, the majority of the book is given over to the the architects own photographs of the Villa, while the rest is an essay (printed in both Swedish and English) by Mikael Askergren.If you want to know anything more, this is the place to head.
As well as providing a wealth of information on the villa, it also sheds light on the controversy over the building. What was it that led the Swedish architectural community, for instance, to deliberately exclude the Villa from an English language guide published in the 70s?
Well, one theory held that it related to the controversy surrounding its owner, Simon Spies, who made his money flying Danes and Swedes to holiday's in Franco's Spain (morally dubious rather than illegal). Another simply that it was an afront to architectural good taste, completely against the main school of the time - a bit too 'Evil Lair'. But apparently, the main reason was nothing to do with dealing with Fascists, but that rising dining table. Or rather than it implied servants in the kitchen, and the old 'upstairs/downstairs' world egalitarian Modernism was supposed to do away with.
Even if that is true, it is probably no coincidence that the 'rediscovery' of the Villa has only taken place since Simon Spies death - it has allowed the building to be seen in its own light, rather than through its owner. It has also only been in the past decade that there has been a real revival in interest in 60s design and architecture.
After Simon Spies death, the house passed to his widow, and amazingly (at least as recent as information gets) it hasn't been modernised or refurbished.
Villa Spies is the definitive document of a remarkable building, and worth tracking down for anyone with a keen interest in 60s design.
[Published 1 April 2003]
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| Fred, Uppers. | apr 2 2003 6:32AM |
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| My cool aunt Jane worked for Simon for many years and was often invited to Villa Spies. I can assure you all that Simon put on some pretty swinging parties there over the years... | |
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