Check Out Architecturally Significant Silicon Valley Properties With Modern Home Tours Next Weekend
Author:Philip FerratoModern Homes Realty, an innovative real estate and consulting firm that concentrates its business around Modern homes across the country, has organized a self-driven, self-paced tour of private, architecturally significant homes on the Peninsula. With an emphasis on Mid-century architectural history, it includes Piero Belluschi’s house for Life Magazine, one of the game changers of suburban living, and we can’t think of a better way to spend Saturday, May 16. The selection was curated by realtor Monique Lombardelli of Modern Homes Realty in Palo Alto. Three of the five houses on tour are featured here.
Mostly known today to architectural historians (top and below) there’s no disputing the importance of Belluschi’s Life Magazine house in the San Mateo Highlands just south of San Francisco. Commissioned by the magazine in 1957, construction estimates came in at double the budget. Enter Modernist developer and builder Joe Eichler. With the aid of his architects Jones + Emmons (and a familiarity with California building codes) Eichler collaborated with Belluschi to get it built for $25,000. Appearing on the magazine’s cover in 1958 and in numerous subsequent print ad campaigns, it would become one of the most influential houses built in this country.
Inspired by his clients’ love of Mid-century architecture, architect John Kloph gave them an elegant composition that hugs a sloping, wooded site in Belmont, that as new construction exceeds California’s energy efficiency codes. 
Bay Area architect Beverly Thorne worked closely with Bethlehem Steel Company in developing and promoting steel as a building material. Built in Portola Valley 1963 for a Bethlehem employee, it’s a simple Post + Beam frame structure in steel combined with wood, allowing wide open spans and cantilevered to perch over a ravine. Simple? Perhaps, but those tapered outriggers (bottom image) are brilliant.
Modern Home Tours: Silicon Valley
Curated by Monique Lombardelli/Modern Homes Realty
Saturday, May 16, 2015 (Tour Details Here)
