1973, Connecticut, USA. The Wall House was designed by John Quentin Hejduk for landscape architect Arthur Edwin Bye. But due to cost issues, the building will never be built. Nearly 30 years later, the building was finally constructed in Groningen, the Netherlands, where Bye was born. Legend has it that the architect designed about twenty Wall Houses in the 1970s. Only model #2 was ever built. Located in a residential area south of the city of Groningen, its windows allow its tenants to enjoy the surrounding countryside, while protecting them from curious onlookers from outside.

The building is built around a wall on which several rooms on two floors are hung, which would serve to separate professional life from private life. For this project, John Hejduk was inspired by cubist still-life paintings. As on a canvas, the different elements of the house, isolated from each other, are suspended on a concrete wall. As for the different colors, they were inspired by those used on Le Corbusier’s Maison La Roche. Once an artists’ residence, Wall House #2 is now an annex of the Groningen Museum.

Lisa Agostini