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Greyscape celebrates Brutalist, Modernist and Constructivist architecture. We bring you a carefully considered edit of the best examples of those designs from around the world.

Greyscape was born out of a passion for under-appreciated 20th Century design. Originally launched in 2016 as a passion project an Instagram account, our audience grew fast, with thousands sharing a similar interest in game-changing buildings. We now have an unrivalled position as a crowdsourced archive of little and well-known architecture. Greyscape is a destination where everyone can learn, share and interact with the very best in Brutalism, Modernist and Constructivist design.

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The gravestone of author and Nobel Laureate Thomas

The gravestone of author and Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann, his wife Katia and their son Michael in Kilchberg near Zürich. Mann was a German patriot but his pro-democracy views, his opposition to the Nazi’s and their Jew Hatred meant he couldn’t return to Germany from a lecture tour when the Nazis took power. He emigrated to the USA, which gave him a safe haven from which he broadcast his views. Later he became a target for Joe McCarthy although he was not a communist. In Mann one sees the best of Germany when it descended into government by evil and the USA extending its freedom to a genius. Image Peter Berger CC BY SA 3.0

‘Seven Palms’ the name Thomas Mann fondly gave

‘Seven Palms’ the name Thomas Mann fondly gave his new home in California, today simply known as Thomas Mann House. Designed by architect Julius Ralph Davidson with Ernst Moritz Schlesinger with interior architect interior architect Paul Huldschinsky. Gardens designed by Theodor Löwenstein 1941–42.

Mann was a German patriot but his pro-democracy views, his opposition to the Nazi’s and their Jew Hatred meant he couldn’t return to Germany from a lecture tour when the Nazis took power. He emigrated to the USA, which gave him a safe haven from which he broadcast his views. Later he became a target for Joe McCarthy although he was not a communist. In Mann one sees the best of Germany when it descended into government by evil and the USA extending its freedom to a genius.

Pacific Palisades became a haven during the war for German anti-Nazi intellectuals. Thomas and Katia Mann chose fellow refugee Julius Ralph Davidson who in turn employed Schlesinger as the architect over Richard Neutra who may have seemed the obvious choice. In 1941, Mann already well known and highly respected, was given the honorary post of Consultant in Germanic Literature at the Library of Congress, sponsored by Agnes E. Meyer who sponsored him and underwrote his mortgage for the house. It was from the house that Thomas Mann recorded a series of 55 famous lectures for the BBC during the war aimed at listeners who were brave enough to attempt to listen to them in Germany, Holland and Czechoslovakia. Swiss and Swedish listeners could freely access them.

In 2016 the house was put up for sale without mention of its important history and in real danger of being demolished an influential group came together to try to save the house, by the autumn of that year the German Federal Government had bought the house for around $13 million. Today it offers fellowships and programmes funded by the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and private foundations. In 2018 Frido Mann published Das Weiße Haus des Exils.

Image Mirkomlux • CC BY-SA 4.0

Harwell Hamilton Harris’s 1940 Weston Havens Hou

Harwell Hamilton Harris’s 1940 Weston Havens House on Panoramic Hill above UC Berkeley. A stunning example of Californian modernism.

According to Berkeley College of Environmental Design, ‘As an influential work of architectural significance, it has been compared to Richard Neutra’s Lovell Health House and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.’

Harwell Hamilton Harris, the son of an architect was Californian born and bred. After a visit to Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House, he was set on a course. He applied to UC Berkeley to join their architecture programme and joined Richard Neutra and Rudolf Schindler as an intern and later employee. According to Friends of Weston Haven House, Neutra discouraged him from attending formal classes in architecture (with interesting later repercussions) although he did attend classes given by Neutra at the Los Angeles Academy of Modern Art.

It was with Neutra he worked on the Lovell Health House and modernism became his consuming passion. He became secretary of the American chapter of CIAM, the Congrés Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne.

In 1933 Harris established his own practice accepting commissions for private homes. The award winning design of his own home sealed his national reputation, followed by a commission from John Entenza (who commissioned the Case Study house project) to design his family home.

Harris took up a position at Columbia University on the East Coast in ‘43 and was part of CIAM’s Chapter for Relief and Postwar Planning. He returned to California in 1944. At this point according to Friends of Haven House ‘Harris and his wife Jean rediscovered the work of Greene and Greene. The influence of their Japanese-inspired bungalows can be seen in Harris's work of the 1940s’. Harris’s career continued to run in parallel teaching and in practice.

His academic was as stellar as his work in practice. He was made a Fellow of AIA in 1965 and received an honorary doctorate from North Carolina State University in 1985.

It looks like there are occasionally opportunities to take a tour of the house via Friends of Weston Havens House.

Image: University of California, Berkeley, Environmental Design Archives

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