Thank you so much. George for your very kind introduction and to the entire College of Architecture. I just can't say how nice it is to be back and how much I really enjoyed my time here how a great impression it made on me and it just resonates with me. Still every day and you know when George is complimenting my explicit details you know it was George that was beating me up and studio saying what's that clumsy detail make it better. So it's all you George. I'm just a little housekeeping before I kick off. There is a clipboard going around on which you can sign up for very occasional author updates. I do guided House tours out in the island preservation work and that sort of thing and occasionally I'll send out you know one of my newer design projects so. This all started because something kept drawing my eye through this particular tangle of holly trees. A meandering wooden bridge suspended high above a hillside threaded its way to a house seemingly floating among the tree tops. Other odd in the luring homes invited exploration with the hook of a soaring roof line or a breezeway cut right through the middle of a house or a dance of platforms artfully dodging the trees. None looked alike but all seemed to be part of an extended architectural family. I began knocking on doors and was soon regaled with alternately poetic and salacious tales of the young handsome and talented architect who once had the run of this island and eccentric and charismatic a man whose business attire consisted of an attache case and a Speedo. I was explore. In Fire Island Pines one of eighteen summer communities on the glorified sand bar which protects the south shore of Long Island from the Atlantic Ocean forming the Great South Bay thirty one miles long and barely a quarter of a mile wide Fire Island rewards the effort to reach it with carfree boardwalks and expanses protected dunes. Accessible only by ferry it is hard to imagine a setting more removed from the skyscrapers of Manhattan that loom just fifty miles to the west with the pines is very much an urban invention possessing a rustic but thoroughly modern static. Horse Gifford built his first beach house in one thousand nine hundred sixty one. Over the next twenty years. A remarkable series of homes performed a transformation of terrain and culture growing up on the beaches of Florida. Gifford forged a deep connection with coastal landscapes. Pairing this well of sensitivity with improvisations on modernist themes he perfected a sustainable modernism in cedar and glass but in rediscovering Gifford's architecture. I also found a portal to a lost generation truncated by aides and widowed by the passage of time but still resonant with artistic and cultural significance. I learned that Marilyn Monroe Diahann Carroll. Natalie Wood and Montgomery Clift once spurned Hollywood limos for the rustic charms of Fire Island boardwalks Truman Capote he wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's here. Diane von Furstenberg showed off her latest rap addresses for an audience that included Halston Giorgio sent Angelo Calvin Klein and Jeffrey bean Jerry Herman and Tommy Tune compose their smash Broadway hits here and composer Ned Rome was inspired by the staccato rhythms of the new modern beach houses quote architected by Horace Gifford so that you live simultaneously indoors and out today we might expect their successors to vacation in the gated compounds of the Hamptons or Malibu. But these celebrities lived in models modestly scaled homes. Alongside middle class vacationers all with equal access to fire islands natural beauty. Difference art was informed by a desire to do more with less reflecting his sensitivity towards fragile coastlines and ecosystems. But weaving at the believing that life at the beach should be carefree as well as maintenance free. He loved to clip the lawns painted surfaces and all the brute force of maintaining a typical suburban home some balked at Giffords and for simplicity. Others reveled in the power of his liberated and libertine spaces. The majority of Gifford's clients were gay men and the two decades of his beach house career were bisected by the Stonewall Rebellion of one thousand nine hundred sixty nine the Greenwich Village revolt that launched the modern gay rights movement Giffords work mirrored the arc of gay liberation with almost uncanny persuasion from serene early sixty's pavilions that provided refuge from a hostile world to exuberant post stonewall pretty AIDS masterpieces that orchestrated dolls of liberation. If it paired timeless environmental responsibility with Stonewall era sexuality. Harris Gifford was born in one nine hundred thirty two to the family that founded and built Vero Beach Florida at the turn of the twentieth century. Today there is a town adjacent to Vero Beach called Gifford after his family. But as shy at first and almost eerily handsome Gifford was an overachiever in high school. Among other titles he was class president editor of his yearbook band officer and director of its the actual productions his home life was outwardly conventional but shadowed by the depression suffered by both of his parents his high school classmates voted him best looking boy in one nine hundred fifty he was accepted to the University of Florida. The third was a confident and charismatic. Architecture student in thrall to the innovative beach houses designed by Paul Rudolph and Ralph Twitchell along the coast of Sarasota would also work staked out new ground with kinetic and louvered facades imbuing these homes with a climatic dexterity appropriate to the hot and humid environment but Rudolph was also a gay man and his work possessed a certain theatricality that was often lacking in high modernist architecture. And his Fire Island summer homes. Gifford would essentially transplant. Many of the ideas that Inform Sarasota as winter homes. Gifford also learned from Paul Rudolph's youthful Sarasota example that a Southern man of modest origins did not have to work in someone else's office for twenty years before making his mark. Traces of other Sarasota school architects such as William Morgan and Edward Siebert would also appear in his work. It was recently remarked in Sarasota magazine that the largest concentration of Sarasota school homes are actually to be found on Fire Island. Thanks to get heard. If it moved to New York City in one nine hundred fifty five. At first cobbling together a living as a draftsman a model and a set builder. But he soon found another hero the architect Louis Kahn shimmering glass and steel the twentieth centuries architectural totems receded in Kahn's work in favor of stone concrete and brick. All powerfully composed with a monument Tallahassee and geometric rigor to evoke abstracted ruins by nine hundred fifty eight Gifford was invited to study with Louis Connett the University of Pennsylvania. Horace Gifford Mary the sensibilities of the two most important architects of the one nine hundred sixty S. style himself as the architectural love child of Paul Rudolph and Louis Khan. Soon Gifford's wanderings took him to Fire Island Pines where talent cunning and excellent timing set a career in motion. Cherry Grove is the oldest community on Fire Island. One of eighteen dating to the eight hundred seventy S. by the one nine hundred thirty S. It attracted a Bohemian crowd whose members included many homosexuals much to the chagrin of its A stablished families. And one nine hundred thirty eight hurricane proved to be the last straw causing many longtime residents to depart the newly cheap real estate and the relative safety afforded by geographic isolation conspired in the creation of America's first openly gay community in a hostile world there emerged in a way says a free love. Artist took note the poets W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender vacation there with the novelist Christopher Isherwood. Paul Cadmus composed slightly erotic portraits with an architectural compositions. Within walking distance of Cherry Grove lay the uninhabited windswept vistas of lone Hill during the one nine hundred forty S. lone hill became a favorite haunt for nudists. By nine hundred fifty two the postwar appetite for weekend getaways caused the home Guardian company to sweep into lone hill and lay out six hundred lots oceanfront property sold for eight hundred dollars they christened the new community Fire Island Pines. Peggy Fear's a Cherry Grove transplant former Ziegfeld Follies show girl Broadway producer and discreet lesbian held court at her rustic Yacht Club fears introduced the show business undercurrent to the pines that persists to this day. Cherry Grove was a well known gay destination and therefore a dangerous address for anyone wishing to keep their orientation private more cautious vacationers realized that they could maintain an untainted address in the pines while the forbidden pleasures of Cherry Grove Lay just a stroll away. The pines homeowners association tried to make the interlopers unwelcome as it was well known that the appearance of gays meant that real estate values were about to plummets. But the family values continue. I was no match for John Burlingame white. Successful model who bought out the figures and amassed a commercial monopoly in the pines rights entourage of fellow models and photographers injected glamour and into the sleepy outpost. With the architecture of the pines offered a drab backdrop for all of this local color. Most of the homes erected in the one nine hundred fifty S. were mean prefabricated cottages with tiny windows delivered on barges and dragged across the fragile Dune. But came to an arrest upon a scrum of skinny pilings then in one nine hundred fifty eight architect an industrial designer Andrew Geller began literally turning fire island's architecture on its head with her key and enduring designs that revealed quote how far a little plywood and a lot of guts will take you by nine hundred sixty Galahad can be completed seven homes across Fire Island and his debut in the pines arrived with the construction of the Frank House in one thousand nine hundred sixty one. It's canted walls rose at the same moment when Horace Gifford's own modest home was being constructed one hundred yards away soon the Franks close friends. Edwin Steen and his partner Robert Miller decided they too wanted to be inspired rather than merely housed the commission for the what Steven Miller residence was endure Geller's for the taking. That is until the upstart Horace Gifford brazenly lured the couple to his bed thereby lending his first Fire Island clients and together never built another home in the pines like a scene from All About Eve Gifford stole Gellar show. This architect with benefits arrangement resulted in a celebrated house many referrals and Giffords first magazine cover Sunday to the north and south formed a crisscrossing plan. Cerate of roofline flooded the mahogany and Redwood interiors with light framing the bay to one side and the trees on the other the three bedroom home cost twelve thousand. Five hundred dollars about ninety four thousand in today's dollars from the start. Gifford rejected prefabrication for this island setting materials were carried by hand to undisturbed sites all surfaces were treated essentially like floors with planks that flexed with the inevitable movement of a house on stilts. Edwin wood seen was flush with the proceeds for his from his set design for The Fantasticks a long running off Broadway show. This led to a second commission for Gifford which he sketched in the sand for his delighted clients for a site with a wooded views all around Gifford designed a vast octagonal space with alternating rooms and Sun decks across its eight sides. The architecture relationship with Steven Miller cooled after the pair went rogue and built a third home influenced but not designed by Gifford when passing by Gifford would ostentatiously cross his arms and turn his back to the house before offering a slim greeting. Angelo donkey a rising interior designer hired Gifford to create a bayside retreat for himself and his best friend a young fashion designer named Halston for shadowing Ralph Lauren and Martha Stewart donkey a pioneer of the practice of licensing his name for mass market home furnishings dog is classic sizing influence can be felt in the broad actually a walkway that approaches three arch bays though Gifford prevailed in saving the trees. The graceful vaults diffused light evenly throughout the central space and the three bedrooms paint and plaster make a rare appearance in this house but it's that it was not the only sensibility that separated architect and client. Possessed a legendary halter and maintained an aloof manner and all of his business dealings differed a man who as we saw had no real boundaries between his personal and professional life felt like a lover scorned. I found the drawings for this house labelled with an angry red scrawl under the heading of Miss donkey. The Pines was not the only creatively infused Hamlet on Fire Island a residence in Fair Harbor was created for Dr Benjamin couch podiatrist the stars of the stage and screen. But the car of his first conversation pit into the living area sheltered by and circling clerestory that directed dramatic shafts of east and west facing light into the space. Windows took on painterly compositions and covered porches lent additional degrees of enclosure Gifford eventually designed forty homes in the pines and twenty three more across Fire Island but Cherry Grove proved immune to Giffords charms the pines bigger lots more varied topography and safely ambiguous orientation had siphoned off much of cherry Groves artistic and intellectual Sheen in the years since Isherwood and Auden had summered there divided by age and class a parallel universe of two gay cultures ensued and. Modern architecture was not an obvious vehicle to house gay liberation Cherry Grove was inhabited by theatrical men in theatrical houses its signature architecture offered a delirium of urns fountains and painted curly cues that quickly flicked away in the sea air like glue gun sequins on a homemade dress. This was architecture and drag wires Gifford's all stair creations and cedar in glass houses the generation that traded moves for muscles and mascara for mustaches his architecture was Butch but many of the gay men who spent the one nine hundred seventy S. clad in Levis and flannel recognize the performative nature of this hyper masculine drag and for all their austerity difference homes rarely lacked for drama. It took a certain suspension of disbelief to build anything on Fire Island in the early sixty's. Robert Moses New York's ruthless and multi title director of housing transportation and Parks had long coveted a parkway to traverse the length of the island such a road would have flattened a series of autonomous diverse communities into an anonymous strip but enraged residents successfully lobbied Governor Nelson Rockefeller and the secretary of the Interior to designate Fire Island as a as a federal nature preserve in one thousand nine hundred sixty four existing communities could build freely within their borders but the expenses of dunes between them were sacrosanct. Robert Moses had finally lost a battle allowing fire island's most ambitious beach house era to begin. The spray Gellar residence consisted of a pin wheel plan elevated a story off of its low lying site with strategically directed diagonal views that dogged the existing grid of homes. Robert Sprigg a textile executive described how the home and its sighting emerged from a free hand sketch that embroidered prevailing winds sightlines landforms and sunlight studies. The neo feudal aura of the spray Gellar House reached its apogee with a pavilion for the society decorator Gail Bursch. Slender Sky Tower soared above the dunes connected to an existing cottage by a catwalk. Mr Burgess children and a nurse were confined to the cottage while Giffords pavilion sheltered a sybaritic master suite behind its austere shell. And difference early as homes were delicately situated into the landscape their roof lines are king just above the dunes. These new tower houses were less deferential and more demanding perhaps echoing to molt both personal and societal he adopted a more abstract a cowboy who cabbie Larry that relied exclusively upon flat and shed roof. Scale became ambiguous as his influences veered toward monumental sources like Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin building on the right there. By this time. Gifford was sharing his life with Tom Prentice a principal illustrator for Scientific American and an articulate polymath who moved in the circles of New York's artistic and literary elite. Like Gifford Prentice was tall blond muscular and an ardent nudist The couple presided amiably over cookouts and conversation quote looking like gods as one reverent client told me. Another friend recalled the salon like atmosphere at their home filled with quote Ivy League young men both students and graduates cultivated well spoken people all very different from most of that Cherry Grove crowd. In the summer of one thousand nine hundred sixty five Gifford toiled on a new beach house for he and Prentice a perfect shelter for their charmed life. He looked forward to his thirty third birthday a Saturday in August but on that day he was arrested in the dunes separating the pines from Cherry Grove and he wasn't innocent. They called these dunes the meat rack as clothes were shed so too were the cultural and class divides between Cherry Grove and the pines freedom so fiercely denied to homosexuals everywhere else found their ultimate release in this radicalized domain. But the mainland police who had jurisdiction over the two communities did not share of YOU'VE and frequently raided the meat rock for concluded his birthday in handcuffs his crime described as loitering in a public place for immoral purposes might today be called flirting while gay Gifford was still working full time for another architect in arrangement that soon ended. This was not the real problem however New York's licensing statute required architects to be quote of good moral character for the remainder of his career the accomplished designer would pay others to stamp his drawings rather than risk reopening the humiliations of that cruel summer. Despite these challenges Gifford created some of his strongest work to date with a second series of tower houses. The Evans Depass residence was delicately tethered to the landscape on its tower bases a space ship as Gifford described it hovering over its earthbound neighbors the octagon of the second with Stephen Miller house merged with his early cruciform plans to create a flared cross and planned in profile three decks facing due west south and east chased the sun from a seated position the solid deck rail created a filtered idealized horizon line where ocean met sky the central living space was left open for dancing Gifford second personal residence featured a clutch of shed roof volumes around a breezeway through which birds flew he described his home as quote towers that reach out and grab for light. I designed it for sun But when the moon goes around it is so beautiful. The bedrooms were compact and plan yet cathedral like from a reclined position. The house was organized as a series of five stages rising from a shady path to a water view if it was so proud of the project that he sent photographs to Louis Kahn his mentor replied. Horace you have created a mountain and a valley and like Khan Gifford would obsess over every detail in the home an example of this are the rooms that were laid out with the classical golden mean proportion overlaid in red on the floor plan shown here. The Gifford residence was built for two but ultimately inhabited by one for all was not well with the union of Tom Prentice and Horace Gifford Prentice ran off with one of Giffords clients. Her name was mentioned it's. Sam scaly was the quintessential nine hundred sixty S. madman a creative director of advertising campaigns for Volvo Maxell the Herald Tribune and produced. Farm's scaly and his wife Joan an artist purchased a large law and Fair Harbor another community on the island with babe use. If it responded to the expensive but unsecured site with a cluster of link to cubes floor to ceiling windows in the gaps between these staggered forms assured a constant wash of light against the diagonally oriented cedar sheeting three ship like bunk rooms How's the scale these young children all windows face north or south leaving a windowless but playful tumble of cubes to face the public law walkway for all it's artfulness the opacity of this home's public facade resembled that of most post-war housing in which the front of the house now shorn of its front porch sheltered an automobile while the rear secluded a nuclear family. But back in the pines the community was imagining a very different version of the American dream and Gifford gave form to this shift. The pedestrian boardwalks of the pines created spatial intimacy between home dwellers and passers by that invited socializing or more. After all the pines was a place to meet like minded people a place to marvel as journalist Albert Goldman put it at quote the remarkable shorting out of the barriers to interpersonal communication cruising along at sunset with a glass in one hand and a modest pitcher of martinis in the other you find yourself far more socially desirable than you ever realized. Cherry Grove had once been the illicit playground for discreet pines residents but by the late sixties the majority gay population of the pine set the tone. As pretenses fell away. Gifford began to rotate glass walls into public view fashioning voyeuristic vistas from within and without. Lawrence Bonaduce a prominent attorney purchased a large law in the pines along a well trafficked boardwalk. If it first organized its horizontal surfaces an intricate counterpoint with the ground plane then folded the roofline into a series of nested cubes like the scaly house. Can you see the drawings OK from here. I just see a blur but maybe from straight on they're visible. The architect described the house as a series of telescoping spaces in the landscape and the metaphor hints at the atmosphere in the pines at the time a telescope is a device often used for spying which you long gets when engaged in order to capture objects in its view. Gifford commissioned this peephole view of the house an image that seems to announce an imminent indiscretion. The architects highest ceiling to date imbued the living room with a grander that was complemented by a bright red conversation pit. Hovering decks edging to around each side of the house evoking the waters of the Great South Bay nearby unshorn tree trunks set back in shadow from the edges supported these decks to enhance the illusion of weightlessness. A separate guest house with a raked roof line anchored the rear edge of the site. A third telescope house appeared with the Travis Wall residence. Built for two hairstylists who requested a quote drop dead entry a stabilizing triangular truss seen on the right hand side of this image was hastily added during construction to make sure their request remained metaphorical. If there was an implicit flirtation embedded into the public glass walls of the bottom greedy house the Travis Wall residence beckoned with a come hither stare. A skylight set into the deck illuminated a multi manned shower. The master bath shown to be in favor of plate glass that face the nearby boardwalk. But mirrors abounded everywhere else as step risers to make objects disappear and as bedroom ceilings to make objects multiply all of this tailored in formality and Frank erotic Cism reflected a new decade of the bitterness license. Immortalized in one thousand nine hundred seventy one by Wakefield pools boys in the sand the first widely released porn film to exploit the sexual energy of Fire Island and the architecture that housed it scored to classical music and brandishing a palette of bronze skin stripped bare facades of cedar and glass and shimmering pools boys in the sand. Re situated gay desire in a decidedly upscale romantic and aesthetically sophisticated mill you know the glamorous modernism on display help boys in the sand inaugurate the era of porno Chic a year before Deep Throat mainstream the genre for heterosexual audiences. And many other filmmakers would indelibly to enjoin sex with the emerging Fire Island aesthetic porn star Michael Lewis now resides in the Travis Wall House and the resident stars in several of his films. Gifford's telescope houses luxuriated across some of the more generous lots in the pines. But he achieved other voyeuristic vantage points by reaching upward. The Pines was a rather aspirational name for what started out as a scrubby Dune scape with hardly any trees on its ocean front side. By the mid sixty's the increasing number of homes created a wind break. Well septic tanks enrich the soil from below in an accidental synergy that forever altered the terrain. Gifford responded to the new lushness with a series of upside down floor plans that stacked sunny living areas on top of shaded bedrooms treehouses that gazed across an increasingly frenetic cultural landscape. With his customary dry humor. Horace Gifford began his design presentation to the textile designer Murray Fishman by declaring you will now have twenty closets to come out of. Twelve robust columns containing closets above and below toss to the Fishman residence into the air the architect was notoriously hostile to all of these closets in a simple beach house except when they served his desired form. Effect. The wide angle photo you see here obscures this fact a bit but the plan of this home contains some rare missteps the columns curtailed views the kitchen was tiny and closed off from the rest of the space the stair presented a tight turn. And there was a dead end corridor but the gestures of the Fishman house were perfected a few years later and the casual residence perched on a steep Dune. Amee entering bridge proceeded to a ladder like stair the broken columns of the Fishman house were here rendered as slender in walls and the kitchen was open to the rest of the space. Solid deck rails transformed into low cantilevered planters plate glass animated the master bath and a tiny third bedroom sulked under a veil of shadow they called the divorce room with its most innovative treehouse was commissioned by repeat client Lawrence bought a greedy. In the gaps created between slanted glass walls and the suspended floor trapdoors drew air into the space and then out again through a chimney like skylight. On the left side of this image the sloped last link to the living area to the master bath below its mirror was positioned so a printing or showering host maintained a visual connection with the public spaces above two built in sofas defined as something living area with tailored seat cushions that slid off their frames to create a fireside love nest. Beginning in the late sixty's the larger world began to notice Gifford's work so he a wider geographic net considerable financial success carved out a calm space from which to create homes for the accelerating pace of summer life. Nine hundred sixty eight saw Gifford heaven. Published in both the architectural and the popular press including a twenty House spread in the journal progressive architecture. They had caught on to the fact that he was not simply a gifted architect he was also inventing a place. Gifford our techie articulated a new sensibility quote My style is becoming more complicated as I learn about light coming into space. He explained and Tacitus do you know what that is selective ambiguity. I've learned a little about fooling the eye making spaces bigger than they are in Tacitus was a means by which the ancient Greeks manipulated proportions to create a desired effect the Parthenon slightly bulging columns dramatize the way they carried like a flexed muscle and ancient Greek and Renaissance theater sets employed exaggerated perspectives to create the illusion of death. These techniques rarely surfaced in modern architecture obsessed as it was with straight lines and modularity and Tacitus was a pre-modern lie that aspired to a more beautiful truth and different would draw upon these presidents to choreograph the domestic dramas of his beach houses. John Silver and Gene Kelly discovered Gifford's work in the pines but purchased property in Connecticut. It turned out that Gifford and Silver had enjoyed an unconsummated elevator flirtation and a shared office building for years which broke the ice when the couple showed up at Giffords home for an interview the architect stocked their twenty five acre property with feverish intensity looking for a sign. Soon he discovered a rocky patch where thickets of mountain laurel gave way to wild strawberries indicating a change in soil light and wind it turned out to be a ledge with sweeping views toward Long Island Sound and that's where they built the house. It's most charming feature was a plunge pool inspired by New York's iconic water towers. Mirrors and carpeted platforms introduced optical illusions and a swank undercurrent to the cool minimalism on display for years. Kylie had been guests at others country homes. Now it was their turn to host as a seemingly endless stream of visitors arrived highballs in hand. Dr David luck was a cell biologist who social circle included the architect Peter Blake the choreographer Jerome Robbins and the designers Ward Bennett and Joe Duracell acknowledging the flood prone nature of the Bridgehampton site. Gifford laid out for concrete block peers that cantilever the house to safety. It was inspired by many presidents including Peter Blix home next door and a Sarasota home at a much larger budget designed by William Morgan. Its interior scene here after a recent restoration was all about the sea flecked light that saturated the space. The architecture critic and sometime designer. Yeah that was his own house. And I guess he was the moment curator or something. He had a role at MOMA as I recall. Gifford Sister Jean sleigh and her husband turned to the architect in one thousand nine hundred sixty nine for a new vacation home in Vero Beach which would turn out to be his only Florida project. The intensity of storms along Florida's east coast led him to an entirely different constructional approach than the one he was perfecting on Fire Island. Fashion the home of concrete posts and beams tile floors and glass so that quote water can just sweep through with a little damage lightweight captains chairs and wicker furniture secreted away and double height closets as Danger approached the square plan was sniffed at its edges and oriented forty five degrees to the ocean. Back on Fire Island and inspired synergy with a knowledgeable client led to a rare collaboration for the solitary architect J. Hyde Crawford was a multi-talented illustrator designer of the bond with Teller logo and the founder of quadrille fabrics since both men could draw they exchanged sketches to arrive at the design. And of this house three high ceiling volumes housed a guest wing a living area and a master suite good for joining these pavilions with two glass bridges that held the guest bath in the dining room. Crawford's informed influence nudge to get out of his formula of a single grand space surrounded by subservient bedrooms. Every space surprised here including the secure circular sky with dressing room. Every. As Gifford as Crawford recalled recalled. Once we decided to break the rectangles with circular forms and points of light marvelous things began to happen. The Crawford House added to a growing roster of waterfront homes that announced the modernist make over of the pines by the mid seventy's whimsical fantasies and cedar and glass traversed the entire beachfront as captured on the cover of the pines phone directory. More than a mere listing this became the little White Book of social life in the pines residents could be looked up by first name last name or house address easing the anxiety of following up on introductions made in a haze of marijuana and cocktails. But a few miles down the beach in half their harbor Gifford was called upon to create a guest house for past clients Sam and Joan scaly rather than Echo the nested cubes of their existing home. He responded with a unique pavilion set on a local and with deep overhangs in the shoji like arrangement of glass doors the home was aptly nicknamed the Japanese house by neighbors. West Hampton Beach another barrier island just east of Gifford's usual terrain was the setting for textile executive Albert person's home. The houses most striking features were its flared bell bottom like shading devices unique in Gifford's body of work. At first glance the baroque plan seemed to be a break with past houses but there was an underlying order behind the pie. Wrote technics much like his earliest work a glass a living space was flanked by enclosed bedrooms. But the public space was sheer down the middle affecting distinctive enclosures for the kitchen dining and living areas. It's in large scale combined with expensive touches like a round stone fireplace hinted at the coming gentrification of Long Island as it became a place to cut deals and announce one's arrival. Gifford's Basin Fire Island remained a sphere of pleasure rather than business yet its obsessive pursuit of Nirvana. Aided by drugs and emboldened by changing Moore's made the pines no less ambitious in its way than the Hamptons in the heaviest days of gay liberation the pines threw open its closets and turned to Gifford to capture the full blown hedonism of this cultural moment. What. Nine months before the Stonewall Rebellion of June one thousand nine hundred sixty nine the police raids on the meat rack and Fire Island bars ceased when a newly emboldened population fought back against their entrapment winning historic court battles but a fight that was nominally oversexed highlighted a broader emotional and spiritual awakening. Suddenly it was OK even sheik to be gay. While just a few years earlier self loathing and cultural ostracism had been the norm. Everything was happening so fast. As Gifford reflected quote We have to be ready to accept massive ever quickening change. I hope I can keep up with it. That's what I hope no one embodied the new pulse of the pines more than Stewart wrote or a Warner Brothers P.R. man who never lacked for friends or lovers lunch for forty was a common occurrence sprinkled with famous film directors and fashions leading lights there was no shortage of party favors during one well stocked party roasting birds were briefly reanimated when an exploding of an. Well the shower of quail over the astonished crowd. Gifford sheaves the dowdy Square in one nine hundred fifty S. cottage in a dynamic diagonal wrap that gyrated towards the rock form followed foreplay in the make out loft lined with sheepskin with angled edges for bodies in repose this high perch for base desires surveyed the psychedelic swirl of the conversation pit below. Sunlight passed through circular skylights onto a curved wall creating a trippy light show of overweight shapes House Beautiful approached the house delicately. Affair lined loft sure for this is a beach house with an owner who is enormously gregarious. Meanwhile the less conversational qualities of the space were recognized by the outhouse art house porn director Peter Jerome. In that same house beautiful article Gifford held forth on the homes architectural virtues describing the rakish geometries as quote the lines that tell you where to look from inside. He continued People don't walk smack up to the front door like so many cottages out here. Instead were turning people bringing them in introducing them to the interesting design forms of the House and the deliberate way the abstract sculptural gestures of the rotor house and subsequent designs revealed an affinity with the brutalist movement shaped by architects like Paul Rudolph. But Gifford skillfully channeled the ponderous concrete forms and scale of brutal ism into light in lyrical wooden structures dancing across the sand like divinely inspired driftwood these houses echoed the fluidity of the cultural revolution that they housed. The Lipton's house conjured a discotheque upon the dunes with its pulsating roof line and thrusting cantilevers all was bared with floor to ceiling glass extending across the entire coastal elevation control panels operate. In an array of blinking multi-colored lights installed by the client street lighting company. A sunken living area led down to the cave a windowless den of electric blue shag carpeting walls and oversized pillows. In The Fire Island enclave of Seaview Robert and Gladys Rosenthal had long admired a home different design for Warren Rubin the founder of workbench furniture flush with success. Gifford lay down ground rules to his erstwhile clients. You should know two things about me he said I'm gay and a manic depressive and then demanded complete design control down to the color of the sofa cushions the Rosenthal's were unfazed by his demands but struck by his appearance at age forty. Gifford was still turning heads. And rewarded their trust with a sweet composition nestled between two do's it echoed the topography with too tall. The little spaces canted between a diamond shaped something living area with walls of glass the exposed ceiling framing influenced by Rudolf Schindler formed a dazzling constellation unto itself. Built by one of the three contractors that all Gifford clients were required to use as a condition of working with him. The residence was a tour de force of modern craftsmanship. Harlan's reputation as a testing ground for innovative architecture had been overshadowed by louder whispers about its libertine ways even before the sixties were in full swing summarizing thirteen summers spent there. Albert Goldman declared in one nine hundred seventy two that quote orgy is where it's all headed an orgy is a grand old tradition on Fire Island. Efford retained a vestige of formality amidst all the decadence in one nine hundred seventy three the architect hosted an elegant black tie party. But that's all they wore black ties. In the loosening atmosphere. Even the cultural divide between Cherry Grove and the pines reached a humorous detente. Pansy Hanson a Cherry Grove drag queen who was refused service at one of John White's Butch bars and the pines returned with a posse of drag queens and performed a sit in the spectacle inspired hilarity rather than hostility and the dragon Beijing of the pines became an annual tradition. Fittingly held on Independence Day the invasion scene required the largest ferry boat in service which heaved under the weight of enormous high heels and entanglement wigs. Artists emerged to interpret the new freedom shapely men lounging seductively astride the architecture and pools of the pines Grace Tom beyond these Polaroids his subjects nonchalance prove more shocking than the anatomy on display. But also captured the intense camaraderie of an upwardly mobile society without the burdens of parenthood for Fire Island offered an indefinite extension of adolescence. The literary response to Fire Island in the seventies ran the gamut from the Odes of welcome to Fire Island to the ambivalence of dancer from the dance to the finger wagging takedown issued in Larry Kramer's fagots one pines residents who found it all a bit too intense left for Eastport New York but still hired Gifford. The expansive site allowed for any longer needed footprint. But Gifford elevated the house to capture views that resided above a stand of cat tails. I winding approach to the home and concluded with a circular drive that wound around a magnificent tree but you can capture a little bit on that upper left there too. Semicircular decks hell the glass bridge that spans between shard like bedrooms. A swimming pool set within a circular plinth powerfully restated the geometries of the main house. The stone house stands as the consummate example of Gifford's mature period. Norton and Marlo Sloane. On one of many heterosexual couples who embrace the freewheeling culture of the pines commission to luxury its home whose smooth volumes appear to have washed up on their site. Curved spaces extended clover like from a lofty living room animated by the painter the slash of a diagonal stairway a mirrored wall brought ocean views to both sides of the space. A leather ottoman bridge the conversation pit while the dining room projected like a proud towards the ocean outside a lazy susan lounge rotated to catch the best rays for the sun warship in Marlow slow on the hard living Sloan's divorced and sold their home a few years later but Calvin Klein became its new owner in one thousand nine hundred seventy seven and then acquired the lot to the rear and hired Gifford to add a pool a gym a garden and quarters for the quote pool boy. Doors to one side of the pool pivoted to expose a grand stair that led down to a grove of mature trees helicoptered in for instant effect. After his daughter was kidnapped in one thousand nine hundred seventy eight Klein became obsessed with privacy and security. Tall fences and security systems soon transformed the former Sloan residence into the Calvin Klein compound celebrities were not the only ones who began to screen out prying eyes the increasing number of swimming pools required fences and the non-native flower gardens were fenced off from the deer who once roamed with impunity such developments began to erode the free flowing qualities that made the pine such a public place to enjoy private architecture. A certain intimacy was lost but the pines entered the one nine hundred eighty S. as a renowned resort with an impressive architectural pedigree to match. Living in Gifford's own home as I did invite certain cycle. Logical assumptions about its creator. A light flooded interior a thoughtfully conceived plan a symbiotic connection to all around it. Everything in its place but the resemblance of the man to his architecture was illusory even before the one two punch of AIDS which decimated his audience and post-modernism which discredited his ideas the seeds of the architects decline had already taken hold bipolar disorder stock Giffard most acutely during the dark winter months when fashioning his own residence with towers that reach out and grab for light more was at stake for him than many ever realized. At a moment when most successful mid career architects would begin to land prestigious commissions is output actually declined. He turned to his sister in lifelong confidant and Houston for emotional support impulsively. He moved to Houston in one nine hundred seventy six to be nearer to her once there his efforts to create a beach house revolution in Galveston received favorable press but no commissions two years later he returned to New York a multi level home and studio in Manhattan put a brave face on a faltering career. Fire Island was changing and difference two year absence created an opening for others. Scott Bromley a young protege of Philip Johnson began staking his claim as the go to architect for the dwindling number of empty lots in the pines Bromley had achieved precocious fame as the designer of Studio fifty four and on the right he is photographed by Robert Mablethorpe who they call Bobby. Bromley even purchased the octagonal home of Gifford's first clients and set about enlarging it. It was a handsome expansion undertaken with far more grace than the hatchet jobs that would be fall in many other Gifford residences in the years to come. But it's transformation marked a changing of the guard as well as an era when small houses were synonymous with Fire Island signature architecture in Bromley. Hands a quite fundraiser to purchase a fire truck for the pines became Beach seventy nine an all night dance party sheltered by a tangle of Maypoles and sails made of multicolored mosquito cloth celebrity disco performers presided over the Bach and all this teeming atmosphere was a far cry from the candlelit dinner parties and the almost secret society that differed had joined twenty years earlier the circuit party was born and residents vie to outdo one another for the most decadent event of the season. Canadian architect Arthur Eriksson came close in a party his grand new home nicknamed Lincoln Center. At the stroke of midnight the ceiling retracted and hundreds of silver and gold balloons floated into a starlit sky. It was an era for spectacles. In this increasingly crowded expensive and flashy landscape Gifford's it of pavilions began to seem a bit has say by nine hundred eighty Gifford left Fire Island for good. Occasionally the fog of illness cleared and great work was still possible. In one thousand nine hundred seven past clients Jean Silbert and John Kiley asking for to design a home for the top of a windswept hill. Instead Gifford sheltered the house in the crook of the ledge while a second storey bridge made a soft landing upon the preserved hilltop which you can see in the upper right. It synthesised a lifetime of quote living with nature instead of living on nature but it remained unbuilt the seventy eight modern vacation homes he built between one thousand nine hundred sixty one and one nine hundred eighty one for an audience that would perish before properly recognizing his achievements constitute his essential built legacy. On April sixth one thousand nine hundred two Gifford died of complications from AIDS. He was fifty nine. Or skipper conferred a benevolent order upon a rapidly changing culture in which all the old constraints were falling away his work reminds us of the power of architecture to share. The culture as well as its powerlessness to prevent its destruction. We cannot bring back that lost generation but we can preserve its most enduring artifacts and his last public statement said it best in the end the past is personal and that is what makes its preservation so urgent. It is our own memories intermingled with the collective memory that we call history. This is not so much truth as interpretation but in that interpretation. We can find beauty and wisdom inspiration for living and guidance for the future. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any questions. That's easy. Thank you. Yes yes. So look last. It was one of those one verse. Mostly he was a very small operation. I think he pretty much was on his own through the sixties. By the Seventies he would have one or two assistants and that's as big as it ever got. And he was very kind of solitary in that respect. Says Why what. What was its. So weird that you know it's him his output in the sixty's was astonishing. You know I'm not a I'm hardly a medical expert but I can you can almost interpret the sixty's as like one long manic phase. In the seventy's as kind of a depressive phase and basically he was astonishingly astonishingly prolific from one thousand nine hundred sixty one. They're nine hundred sixty nine doing up to I believe twelve houses a year with a one man office. And then nine hundred seventy. He does one house and then a pig you know and it starts to fluctuate wildly through the seventy's kind of petering out in the early eighty's. And but part of it. He was prolific and productive but he also in many ways achieved something a little bit akin to the use only in houses by right because he essentially trained a small group of contractors in his method of detailing And so when you look at his blueprints from Fire Island they're like six seven eight sheets really simple. But when you see as houses in Connecticut that he's big defensive tomes because he wasn't dealing with his usual crowd and as a result he was able to deliver designs pretty affordably to his clients. He got positively wealthy doing it which is art residential architects Trust me I don't usually get that place but. So it was very productive all around him working and I think that's what's interesting about him. You know so many people that are really ambitious they kind of follow this they kind of jet around the world and plant a sort of monument in every major city and by staying local He kind of achieved the wonderful quality of creating a place that was really with his mark in it and he was by far not the only person I mean it inspired a whole other group of modernist architects in my group pines modern tries to bring kind of celebrate everyone. It kind of made literary sense to focus on this person because he was by far the most prolific and kind of the first. But there were others there and so like last summer I organized a series of House tours nine nine houses four of which are by Gifford five by others and that is a part of the sort of momentum I'm trying to create to educate people about what is in plain sight but which was kind of not really understood for many years. Thank you thank you.