Not much is known about this unbuilt urban renewal project, except that it was to be located roughly where the Power and Light District is now near the Sprint Center Arena and that it was designed by Environmental associates which was a partnership between David Runnells, AIA, Architect and W.G. Roeseler, AIP, City Planner. The project demonstrates early 70s style semi-brutalist architecture not unlike the built Crown Center urban renewal projects.
Portrait of David B. Runnells taken by Life Magazine in 1950
Name: Modern Cape Cod House
Name: A Climate-Wise House for the Missouri Valley - Stuart Williams Residence
Name: Revere Home
This photo of Architect, David B. Runnells (left foreground) with Architects, Eero and Eliel Saarinen and others was taken on the steps of the Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Ralph Rapson Quote from Ralph Rapson Rules, Architecture magazine, March 15, 2005Rapson’s focus on affordable housing predates the Greenbelt project (Arts+Architecture Case Study House No. 4). ”In the 1930s, David Runnells and I designed an earth-sheltered house we called the Cave House. We also entered another competition with a fabric house, where I made an ill-advised comment that no longer would the architect be necessary because people could simply go to the hardware store, buy their fabric, and roll out their house. Charlie Eames was on that jury, and said that we were thrown out of the competition for that particular comment.”Many thanks to Ralph's son, Toby Rapson and Grandson, Lane Rapson of Rapson Architects for giving us permission to use these images.
Text taken from the competition presentation:A Fabric House
Basically this house is and insulated tent, all roofs and walls are insulated fabric panels that allow the utmost flexibility in planning and design. A completely plastic wall such as this “roll fab wall” permits Mr. A., with a wife, two children, and a particular site and living requirements to practically “mold” his house to suit his changing and varied requirements. While on the other hand Mr. B., a professional man with no children, and entirely different living requirements and site, can, just as easily, with the same material, wrap himself in his own individual shelter.
From this it is easily seen that the basic purpose of the roll fabric wall and roof is to
allow absolute and complete planning for infinite human requirements as to construction. The prefabricated roll fabric is placed over a skeleton of light, stamped metal. The structural members are a system of tele-pipe similar to present day airplane sections. A tele-pipe system allows and almost infinite placing of walls and roof.
A mechanical package contains all of the necessary bathroom, kitchen, heating and electrical requirements. Radiant floor heating panels are placed in the floor construction and are completely demountable. Electrical panel boxes, likewise are placed in the floor. The floor is chemically treated tamped earth laid over six inches of crushed rock bed on which any floor covering such as linoleum, canvas, etc., can be laid.
The entire system becomes thus becomes one of maximum planning, maximum economy, maximum demountability.
About a month ago I received a box of papers and a couple of portfolios from David Runnells daughter, Jill (Runnells) Grose. One of the most interesting things in the box was a hand made bound brochure with canvas fabric pages. Laminated to the pages were 8x10 photos of drawing boards and a model that Ralph Rapson and David Runnells made for a design competition presentation. The project was called the Fabric House and I was already familiar with the project because I had seen it briefly published in a September 1942, Architectural Forum article called "The New House 194X." The tent house project's service core unit (first explored in the cave house) had also been published in Laszlo Maholy-Nagy's book, Vision in Motion. But I was amazed to find this complete competition submission in the neat little fabric booklet. I have scanned the booklet and presented the pages here.
Here are a few more Rapson sketches of the Cave House by Ralph Rapson and David B. Runnells. Again we see that great Rapson hand at work. As always in Ralph's perspectives, you have to love the caricatures of people he added to his drawings.
