CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/29/2016

EXQUISITE: Alexander Girard: A Designer's Universe

Alexander Girard's iconic interior for Miller House (1953-57, in collaboration with architect Eero Saarinen and landscape architect Dan Kiley) remains, to this day, one of the most original and significant examples of American Modernism. Pictured here is the living area with conversation pit and iconic storage wall. It is reproduced from one of the greatest design monographs of the decade, Vitra Design Museum's 512-page bombshell, Alexander Girard: A Designer's Universe. Of the architecture and design, Elizabeth G. Miller, daughter of J. Irwin Miller and Xenia Simons Miller, who commissioned the house, recalls: "One of Sandro’s main efforts was to educate Mother. Both Eero and Sandro knew instinctively that Mom understood what she saw. She knew how to read floorplans. Her father had gone through two or three businesses during the Depression, and growing up in Indiana she lived in 13 different houses in 13 years. This would be the last place she would live, but she had to have a change all the time. That was her basic premise: if you are going to do a house for me it has to change. That meant everything from slipcovers for the pit to items in the storage wall, to flowers and artwork. Mother couldn’t have things be static."