Once and Future House of the Future
Everyone in Lawrence comes across it eventually. Perhaps you were avoiding traffic on 19th or 23rd streets. Or just idly driving around an unfamiliar neighborhood on your way to see friends in a new house. Whatever the reason, at some point you are driving down 21st street, passing block after block of nondescript low-slung dwellings thrown up in the post-WWII housing boom. And then, there it is: the Double Hyperbolic House.
It almost seems like a joke out of a Men In Black movie - an alien landing craft hidden in plain sight as a suburban home. Yet had its inventor’s vision gained acceptance, this home would be exactly the opposite - just another house amidst a sea of like examples.
The idea for the home sprang from the mind of Donald Dean, a civil engineering professor at KU. In the mid-1950’s, paraboloid buildings by Felix Candela in Mexico were gaining international attention for their modern design and for their unique structural advantages. Hyperbolic paraboloids are stronger and use less materials than a traditional roof, and can even be self-supporting, negating the need for load bearing walls. However, these structures in Mexico were being built with concrete. The mathematical theory undergirding the engineering dictated that paraboloids could only maintain their structural integrity if they were a shell - a single solid piece, as concrete construction allowed. But the labor costs of using concrete in America were so much higher that they cancelled the economic advantages of using less material.
Professor Dean looked for a way to create a hyperbolic paraboloid with cheaper building materials and a less labor-intensive building process. His innovation was to construct the parabola shape using a lattice of wood. He theorized that a hyperbolic paraboloid built in this fashion would perform identically to one that was a solid shell, but he still had to put his ideas to the test.
In the spring of 1956, Dean, along with William Strode, an associate professor of architectural engineering at KU, engaged engineering students in a project to demonstrate the feasibility of the design. As part of the school’s engineering expo, they constructed a 20’ x 40’ model of the roof in front of Lindley Hall.
Around the same time, Dean began construction of a full scale, 40’ x 80’ double hyperbolic paraboloid that would be his home at the corner of 21st and Alabama. It was a testament to the confidence he had in his design that he had completed and moved into his home before he and his students conducted practical engineering load tests on the lattice construction shell that was still standing on the KU campus in the spring of 1957.
photo from the Lawrence Journal-World, 06/23/1956
According to newspaper articles of the time. the house attracted positive and negative attention from the get go. On August 26, 1956, the Kansas CIty Star quoted unnamed sources praising the design, writing “some called it the first innovation in home building in the previous 50 years. Others referred to it as a fantastic departure from the conventional.” But the Lawrence Journal-World’s article later that fall about the home’s completion was headlined “Controversial House Occupied” and led with this sentence: “A local architectural creation has created something of a furor among Lawrence residents in the last few months.” It goes on to quote Prof. Dean’s exasperation with the critics: “We have had so many people commenting on the low corners and the awkward space caused by them that we started judging them by the vehemence of their comments.” Noting that those spaces were mostly used for storage, he continued “we answer the critics by saying that few people walk into their kitchen cabinets.”
The floor plan of the home at the time it was built was open, with some moveable walls. Due to the self-supporting roof, none of the interior walls are permanent or load bearing, as in traditional construction. An architecture student at KU at the time, Allen Long, helped design the interior floor plan, although in a University Daily Kansan article in the fall of 1956, Prof. Dean admitted, “I’m not sure if this is the best floor plan, but we were in such a hurry to begin construction that we didn’t waste too much time with the small details.”
The Deans in their newly built “dream home” (photo from the Lawrence Journal-World, 11/23/1956)
On the big details, Dean was always certain. Despite its dramatic appearance, he always stressed the practicality of the design. It was cheaper to build than traditional structures (according to a February 1957 article in Forbes magazine, the cost of the home partly furnished was $18,000, while a similarly-sized and furnished home built with traditional methods cost $36,000), offered greater flexibility in interior design, and was more economical to heat and cool. So why didn’t the idea take off? Why aren’t gently curving roofs found all throughout the suburban housing developments that exploded around American cities in the 1950’s?
Part of it might be explained by the personality of its inventor. Donald Dean was first and foremost an engineer. From his public statements, he seemed to view the double hyperbolic paraboloid as the solution to a practical problem, and that the aesthetics of the design - positive or negative - were irrelevant. Although from the outside the home appears to be part and parcel of what is now called Mid-Century Modern, the home’s interior had more in common with what was termed “up-to-date” furnishings and layout at the time. Nor did Dean promote the idea like a star architect intent on selling a vision to clients. Despite a smattering of attention from the national press, there was no organized effort directed at architects or the homebuilding trades to sell them on the benefits of the design.
Location may have played a part as well. Had the home been built someplace like southern California, where the population was more open to new building ideas and a climate more suited to an open design, it might have seen more success. Finally, just getting financing to build something that was such a radical departure from the ordinary might have been a challenge. According to local real estate agent Tom Harper, a founder of the architectural advocacy group Lawrence Modern, “It can be difficult to get a loan on a different style of home. It’s harder to judge how it will sell or resell when you have nothing to compare it to.”
Newspapers during the construction of the house tending to refer to the structure as a “dream home” for the Deans, but it turned out that being an associate professor at KU wasn’t his dream job. Dean left Lawrence in the summer of 1960 for a position at the University of Delaware. His Double Hyperbolic Paraboloid House would pass through several owners, with improvements to the roof covering and ceiling in the late 1980s being the only major changes over the years.
As it nears sixty years old, the house still stands out as fresh and futuristic - and it should be surprising and delighting Lawrencians who stumble upon it for generations to come, thanks to the efforts of Tom Harper and the Lawrence Modern advocacy group. Together with the current owners, Randy and Kathleen Masten, they spearheaded the work to have it placed on the local, state and national registers of historic places, designations it would receive in 2007.
Links: A gallery of the Double Hyperbolic House exterior and interior on Flickr via Lawrence Modern. Read the original engineering bulletin about the creation of the hyperbolic paraboloid, with more pictures of the original test structure.
Special thanks to Tom Harper and Lawrence Modern for providing a treasure trove of documentation about the Double Hyperbolic Paraboloid House and Dr. Dean. The mission of Lawrence Modern is to raise awareness of midcentury and modern architecture in Lawrence and promote its preservation to ensure that future generations of Lawrencians will have significant examples to appreciate and/or to live in. Learn more at the Lawrence Modern website.
TRIVIA BONUSES
Basic Trivia: Engineering students at KU built the test structure on campus and were hired by Dean to construct the roof of his home as well.
Bar Trivia: The home at 21st and Alabama is the only residential home Dr. Dean ever built with a double hyperbolic paraboloid design. He spent the rest of his career creating infrastructure, such as bridges and towers.
Showing Off Trivia: The original test structure was not destroyed, at least it wasn’t supposed to be. Don Trent, a student graduating with a degree in architecture that year, had it cut into eight pieces and shipped to Kansas City where he planned on incorporating it into a home he had designed:
There is no indication it was ever built (if anyone knows him, please ask him to contact me. I’d love to find out what happened.)
LFK Trivia: The home is the first example of a residential Mid-Century design in Kansas to be added to the National Register of Historic Places