Freedom to Consider

To those contemplating the purchase of architecturally important homes, Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff tenders this warning: Just because your name is going on the deed and the mortgage and the mailbox, don’t think you can start acting like you own the place (“There Goes Our History,” Perspective, April 28).

Ouroussoff cites the efforts of a “relatively tiny cultural elite” but says “the majority of homeowners are less enlightened.” Nevertheless, he feels government may legitimately compel those who own and occupy a piece of property to defer to those rarefied elitists who simply like to look at it the way it is. If somebody famous built your house with too few bedrooms for your triplets or your widowed granny, how dare you even think about overriding his decision.

I used to think Ellsworth Toohey from “The Fountainhead” was arrogant, but Ouroussoff could give him lessons.

CHUCK HAMMILL

Los Angeles

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Here in Southern California, many aficionados of architecture identify themselves as being Schindler or Neutra people, the id and superego, respectively, of the local Modernist tradition. It’s a boring discussion, facile because it is usually based on personality and not on issues.

The “debate” becomes particularly uninteresting now that both Schindler’s Wolfe House, a series of volumes that elegantly hurled itself down a hill into the sea, and Neutra’s Maslon House, a house that knew exactly how to stir a better martini--and faster--than anyone else at the country club, are gone. It’s not enough to rely on rich celebrities pursuing collectibles.

The irony is that Modernism is for dumb clucks we’ve never heard of--us. We, all of us, must somehow get the point that these are terribly important houses because of the questions they raise and the way these architects answered them: Can we live richer lives in houses that pull off a generic language that precisely fits individual needs? Can we live more intimately with nature yet with technologies that speak to our time? Can we live more gracefully, more artfully, in smaller, not bigger, houses? Yes, our local boys said, sometimes not getting it right, but yes we can.

Every time we lose an example that speaks to these values, we lose a witness to a different way of living.

BARBARA LAMPRECHT

Author, “Richard Neutra, Complete Works”

Pasadena