CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/1/2014

Summer Bauhaus: Cape Cod Modern

Featured detail—of Walter Gropius (center, with hat) flanked by fellow "Bauhauslers" Xanti Schawinsky, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer (mostly hidden) and Mary Coss in the summer of 1937 on Planting Island, Cape Cod—is reproduced from the bestselling architecture title Cape Cod Modern, reviewed this month in Conde Nast Traveler and Elle Decor. Authors Peter McMahon and Christine Cipriani write, "From the Summer Bauhaus onward, the Cape’s modern designers enjoyed a lifestyle based on communion with nature, solitary creativity, and shared festivity. Their houses captured this ethos with their blurring of indoors and outdoors, their secluded studios, and their outdoor party spaces. The group did serious work on the Cape, and exchanged ideas while walking in the woods or boating on a pond. Despite their cosmopolitan backgrounds, a surprising number, including Breuer, are buried by their homes in this quiet place. Their work is now threatened by the passage of time in an unforgiving climate, its transience a poignant testament to their sensitive, sparing designs."