This museum-grade modernist mansion by Richard Meier is new to the market. One of a number of palatial residences the architect built in the 1980s and 1990s at the height of his career as a reinterpreter of Le Corbusian simplicity for America’s cultural elite, the Rachofsky House is located in Dallas. Completed in 1993, it is roughly contemporaneous with the public building that shares some of its DNA, the MACBA, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, which was opened in 1995.
An aerial view of the Rachofsky House
Check out this modernist mansion by Richard Meier
Both structures are almost entirely dedicated to the display of art. At nearly 9,000 sq ft, the house is larger than some well-established private galleries, but it was always intended as a place to live as well as to showcase the collection of Howard and Cindy Rachofsky.
Rachofsky ploughed a Wall Street fortune into creative philanthropy and an impressive private collection, with works by Lucio Fontana, Tom Friedman, Mona Hatoum, Donald Judd, Piero Manzoni, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, Gerhard Richter and many more. Additional work was displayed at The Warehouse Dallas Art Foundation, set up by Rachofsky in 2012.
The grounds of the Rachofsky House
In addition to hosting the annual Two x Two Gala at the house to raise funds for the Foundation for AIDS Research and the Dallas Museum of Arts, the Rachofskys also welcomed educational tours to the house. The interior featured a display space that most museum curators would envy, all set among landscaped grounds complete with black granite podium, sizeable lake and site-specific art installations.
Meier’s liberal quotation of key Le Corbusian elements – the five points of architecture, with its pillars, flat roof, free façade and plan, and horizontal bands of windows – are all present and correct.
Liberated from the European sensitivity to scale and grandiosity, the Rachofsky House goes above and beyond, introducing elements of abstraction and minimalist art into the façade and planning and reaching out into the landscape with walls, walkways and staircases. The façade is clad in white metal panels, linking the architecture to the minimalism of Richard Serra, Carl Andre and Donald Judd.
Rachofsky House, Dallas, by Richard Meier
The latter approach is more akin to Frank Lloyd Wright than Le Corbusier, and in Meier’s hands it turns the whole site into a form of abstract composition, a living artwork. Inside, the primary display space is the main atrium, a void that runs through the heart of the house with museum-grade lighting and hanging space for large canvases and sculptures.
Above this gallery space are the private residential areas, with overhanging balconies and walkways that look down on the gallery. A cylindrical staircase tower adds a sculptural element to the ensemble. Meier described the houses as ‘unfolding as a kind of procession through a series of zones, taking one from the outdoors to indoors, and then back outdoors again… grass, trees, pond and sky are visible from every angle of the house'.
The spiral staircase reveals itself as an abstract sculptural form
The house is a balancing act between the private realm and a public-facing life, with careful subdivision of internal space. The study, for example, overlooks the grounds and interior gallery, whilst a grand staircase moves between the display spaces, revealing the landscape, with the more discreet spiral stair leading to the private quarters.
Ultimately, Meier retired under a cloud from the firm he founded way back in 1963. Uncontested allegations of sexual harassment dating back over several years give this house and others like it an uncomfortable aftertaste of the skewed power dynamic inherent in the architectural system. Despite this, the Rachofsky House joins other key Meier projects, like the Bodrum House and Smith House, in demonstrating that the architect was much more than a mere Le Corbusian copyist.
The facade is composed of glass and white metal panels
In fact, this house and others like it reveal an optimal scale for the New Yorker’s architecture, with the rationalist planning, minimalist detailing and complex spatial arrangements working together in perfect harmony, unlike the inherent repetition of the firm’s apartment complexes and towers.
Originally, Howard and Cindy Rachofsky planned to bequeath the house, along with their art collection, to the DMA. However, the museum baulked at the expensive prospect of transforming such an exquisite and refined structure into a publicly accessible place.
No matter – their loss will be someone else’s gain, even if the new owner will need to assemble a museum-grade collection to do the house justice.
The Rachofksy House is for sale at $23 million via Faisal Halum at Compass, Compass.com, RachofskyHouse.com