In its latest issue, the Southern literary and culture magazine Oxford American focuses on our homes. It’s not exactly the Southern Living view of things, which makes it all the more interesting. One of the best articles profiles 11 modern masterpiece homes in the South, as chosen by contemporary architects, including the Miller House in Lexington.
French architect José Oubrerie designed the house, completed in 1992, for Bob and Penny Miller. After Bob Miller’s death, the land was sold for development and the empty house was vandalized.
Michael Speaks, the new dean of the University of Kentucky’s College of Design, writes a short, perceptive essay about the boxy, concrete house, which many Lexingtonians have found difficult to appreciate.
“The story of the Miller House is emblematic of the struggle in Kentucky, and indeed throughout the South, between the soul of modernism — note how the Miller House is both a specific place and yet universal — and the rapacious logic of suburbanization, which produces the stamp of the universal on specific places,” he writes.
A few articles from the Oxford American’s special “Home Sweet Home” issue can be read on the magazine’s Web site, although you’ll have to buy the magazine ($4.95) to see the “Beyond Nostalgia” feature that includes the Miller House. It’s worth a look.
