Property of Mr. and Mrs. Philip H. Hiss, on Lido Shores in Sarasota, Florida | Architect: Philip H. Hiss

 

"In 1955, when we set about designing a new house for ourselves, we had out-grown two previous ones. There were five Hiss children in two age groups: Valerie was 21 and soon to be married: Michael was 14. The small ones were Philip, 4, Shirley, 3, and Larry, 1. All of them had lived with modern design since birth, and we only learned the full extent of their appreciation for it when we sold our home and moved into a pleasant but old-fashioned house while the new one was being built. They called the place "gloomy" and "awful," and the older two protested that they couldn't live in it. They did, of course, but their outburst reassured us that they preferred to live in a contemporary house.

Our building site on Lido Shores in Sarasota stretched 250 feet between a busy waterway and a main highway. It was quite bare and flat, with no old trees or interesting contours. But the beauty of the water more than compensated: moreover, almost anything can be made to grow in semi- tropical profusion in a remarkably short time. The design possibilities were great, even though the problems were many and sometimes contradictory: our needs were for a relatively large house on a small lot, privacy from the outside world and for each of us indoors, a civilized yet practical design in a sub-tropical climate of well defined rainy and dry seasons and occasional hurricanes. We wished most of all for a dramatic and stimulating environment in which architecture does not overpower the individual but instead becomes a disciplined, orderly and beautiful background, even for the prosaic affairs of everyday life.

A number of architectural solutions were considered and rejected. We preferred a two-story plan, and the smallness of the lot finally dictated it. The desire for visual openness and through ventilation in the spring and fall, when the house would not be closed for heating or air conditioning, suggested a plan one room deep. In essence, the rectangular form of our house is quite simple. It is based on a 31' module. All doors and windows are this size, and bay sizes are a multiple of this basic unit. Thus the house is 105' long and 35' wide, with all bays measuring 14' x 21' except for the central bay, which is 21' wide. Despite the basic simplicity of design. there is much detail to arrest the eye; and preciseness of structure is contrasted with the rich color of tropical planting."

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source: House and Garden Magazine | October 1957