Chadwick House: A Century of Design is a temporary exhibition by Rarify, a platform for authenticated vintage furniture and curated contemporary collections. Part of Dudd Haus’s presentation of DesignPhiladelphia Festival on October 3 and 4, the installation spans the interiors of Chadwick House, the home and studio of the late modernist architect Frank Weise. This is the first time the home is open to the public in over 70 years, and might be the last as the home goes to market after the show.
You know Chadwick House when you see it. The facade is, in a word, distinct: a set-back entry, framed by two brick-clad columns, gives way to a sequence of arches, topped by a metal mansard roof with circular and polygonal punchouts. Weise purchased the former carriage home in 1958 and began renovating it six years later and never stopped. The home became an open-ended discourse as the architect continued to iterate, moving away from pure modernist designs to embrace historical elements.
Weise—a student of Bauhaus, architect of nearly 30 residential commissions, and staunch opponent of the I-95—divided the home in halves. The top three floors were residential while the bottom three were a studio space. All the levels are linked by a spiral staircase—which made it extremely difficult for Rarify to move and install furniture. (The team instead relied on the building’s original fourth-floor hoist to bring up anything bigger than a lounge chair.)
Under the home’s honeycomb ceiling and geometric arches, Rarify stages designs from across a century, placed not chronologically, but in conversation with one another. “Weise treated this house as a living document—he never really finished it,” said Rarify’ cofounder, who also served as a jury in AN’s Best of Products Awards this year, David Rosenwasser. “Staging our collection inside it isn’t a backdrop for us. It’s a continuation of the same idea: a century of design showing how a house like this keeps being rewritten by whoever lives in it next.”
A Gropius sofa now sits in the office-level, where a wooden model of Eastern State Penitentiary still hangs on the walls. It’s paired with a contemporary Chippensteel Chair 0.5 by Zieta Studio alongside a work desk.
In the residential levels, pieces from Tecta are put in conversation with Midgard Light, a coffee table by Christian Borger, and a side table by Lehni. Material, time, design language, bespoke and industrial manufacturing comingle and collapse together into cohesive interiors. Throughout, ceramic sculptures from Ivan Krevolin fall on nearly every floor, as well as Rarify’s own lighting and rug designs.
Chadwick House: A Century of Design is open October 3 and 4 and then by appointment throughout the fall.
