Community By Design: On The Legacy of Casa Klumb in Puerto Rico
Henry Klumb, reading in a hammock on the porch of Casa Klumb. © AACUPR - Archivo Arquitectura y Construcción Universidad Puerto Rico.
At least once a month, I find myself jumping on Google Maps to glance over my home in Puerto Rico. Navigating from above and using street views, my nostalgia, and curiosities about city planning manifest themselves as I recall my own memories and those of others. One day, hovering over the historic neighborhood of Rio Piedras, I noticed a large, unmarked patch of land in the middle of a residential area. Naturally, I sent a screenshot to my dad, whose decades of work as a location scout has tattooed a map of the island on the back of his hand. “Chico, remember when we used to go to church in Carolina? What you’re looking at is right past that strip mall with the fancy lamps and ceiling fans; you take a left just before the overpass. That’s where Henry Klumb’s house is.” I switched from maps to images and found what reminded me of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth home in Plano, IL. Only this was made of wood rather than steel, and it’s hidden within a dense forest in the Caribbean.
Considered a central figure within the island’s architectural history, Henry Klumb was a modernist designer from Germany who lived and worked the latter half of his life in PR. While he is primarily known for designing public university campuses and many of its buildings, Casa Klumb is the architect’s most personal work, serving as a blueprint and invitation to think of work as a collaborative, lifelong effort towards social progress.
When Klumb arrived by invitation in the 1940s to work on designs for a modern, post-war Puerto Rico, most buildings emulated either the ‘birthday cake’ looking structures of the Spanish Revival or Art-Deco designs. Being born and raised in Germany, where structures tend to have many rooms and walls to create warmth through insulation, he was dumbfounded to see that these same principles were being used for buildings in a tropical climate. So Klumb paid close attention to the elements that living in the Caribbean implied: the blazing sun all year round, coastal breezes blowing through towns, the natural barriers that palm-tree lines created, the constant battle with humidity, and the overall warmth these conditions imbued in Puerto Rican society. Klumb broke away from the historical architecture in place and presented a new language using elements such as vertical lines, large, open, and constantly flowing spaces, and minimalist detailing. But unlike the German and American schools of thought, he came from, Klumb wasn’t interested in designing sterilized or entirely characterless structures.
As he began working on the university campus in Rio Piedras, Klumb bought a ranch nearby that would become his home. With the main structure already built, Klumb renovated the 19th-century wooden house using this modernist language, insisting on his belief in a more socially conscious design by introducing nature into the spaces. He got rid of all the exterior walls, exposed most of the rooms to the surrounding green coverage, designed all of his furniture to be mobile, so he could move with the sunlight throughout the day, and integrated gardens with bodies of water and palm trees around the central structure. In a collaborative effort with his wife, Else Schmidt, the house became a study in which they focused on how to further create dynamics for human interactions within a space by ways of using materials native to the community they were living in.
After the architect’s tragic death in 1984, the ranch was acquired by the University of Puerto Rico. And although it slowly became a ruin due to lack of use and maintenance—in addition to past hurricanes—Klumb’s proposals continue to inspire beyond his architecture. About 25 years after Klumb’s passing, the artist Jorge Gonzalez peeked through the gate and grew interested in the seemingly abandoned house. During his first visits, the then gardener and landscaper met Agustín Perez, the caretaker of the ranch who was approaching his retirement. Through Perez, the artist was able to access the memory of this place, learning about the lifestyle Klumb proposed. As he learned about the garden’s design and its relationship to the house, Gonzalez grew keen on the values of social consciousness and collaboration being expressed, rather than the architecture itself.
“I connected with his ecological mindset, the idea of having the community at the center and connecting with people organically. Klumb would have people over and use the space as he intended, to produce conversations and new designs that would benefit those around him. He’d play dominoes with the neighbors and work with local artisans. His take on modernism intertwined his life with his work so much; his home has that magic to create the interactions he sought. It all comes full circle.”
As Perez’s retirement was around the corner, Gonzalez decided to take upon himself the task to continue conserving the memories and legacy of this home. As a product of a six-month residency in which he worked with Perez maintaining the gardens, Jorge made a film titled Understory, which is an ecological concept that refers to the growth of plants under the tree canopy. A collection of long takes observe the various parts of the garden encompassing the property. Gonzalez understands these as the space in which the conversations between Agustín Pérez and his then landlord and friend take place.
Having presented this film to Beta-Local in San Juan, Gonzalez learned of Klumb’s beliefs in de-scholarization. Klumb wasn’t closely tied with the university’s school of architecture because he didn’t think that architecture was something to be learned at school, rather it’s a discipline learned through the process of using the materials needed to get to a design. Since then, Gonzalez’s work has broadened in its process and reach: from hosting conversations at Casa Klumb in hopes of collecting oral histories, to creating an “Escuela de Oficios”, or trade school, in which he identified and collaborated with master craftsmen and artisans in order to offer workshops while preserving traditional practices and designs (which lead to many of Klumb’s own projects in his time). And in 2014, in an effort of bringing light to the deteriorating historical landmark, a project was devised in which 30 artists and designers were invited to make work inspired by Klumb’s legacy and how it shaped their own practices. Indeed, the Klumb House has expanded out of its dense forest in Rio Piedras. Something that not even Google Maps can point out in its entirety.
At the Casa Klumb garden after the fire, November 2020. Río Piedras, Puerto Rico. Photo courtesy of Sebastián Meltz-Collazo
“Jardín de Klumb”, painting by Alberto Zayas Montilla, 2021, photo courtesy of Sebastián Meltz-Collazo
Today, such collaborative practices and dynamics continue to bear fruit in the design and arts industries in Puerto Rico. But as we are well aware of the natural realities and political atrocities that occur in this country, every structure in the tropics meets its end at some point in the conditions of this hostile and macabre geography. This is an island where humidity and elections are not forgiving through time unless you constantly take care of things.
The text you have read to this point was written in the fall of 2020. While conducting research and conducting interviews to write this article, on November 11, 2020, I awoke to images of Casa Klumb as it burned the night before. With my pencil and papers full of notes still scattered on my bed, the pictures of the fire took center stage and burned everything I had learned over the past two months. Still unable to believe it, and at the same time not surprised by what had happened, I remembered the words I had heard, just a few days before, during an online talk by artist Sofía Gallisá: “The dynamic between climate and memory in the tropics is one in which nature imposes a sense of impermanence.” If we think about the essence of a house, impermanence as a concept goes against the home. As human beings, we seek permanence, a sense of community that creates the image of home for each of us. But Puerto Ricans know well that permanence is rarely our reality. As soon as I arrived at the island, I went to take pictures of what was left of the house. When I looked for the piece of land in Rio Piedras using Google Maps to get there by car, I noticed that it was marked as a historical landmark after the fire: “Casa del Arquitecto Henry Klumb.” The irony filled me with frustration and sadness as I crossed the avenues. I hopped over the fence, and reached the base where there were remnants of the columns and other structural pieces, burned and bent under the intensity of the fire. I looked up at the cover of the trees, the flowers, and the fruits that were growing as if signaling that there is still life within death.
A few weeks after visiting the ruined Klumb House, photos of another home began making the rounds on social media. Near a farm in Adjuntas, our beloved Jorge Gonzalez had been building a house for some time with his teacher and collaborator, Edwin Marcucci. “The house arose thinking about the Whitney show, in which I participated before the pandemic. The word 'Wasichay' [which was part of the title of that show] means to build or create a house. Then, being in the house, both during the hard part of the pandemic, my residence became a living and working space.” By 2020, the artist no longer had the institutional support to continue working at the Klumb House, where he had found his inspiration for his projects since his first encounter with it. As Covid-19 cases fell and restrictions became more flexible, Gonzalez began to reflect on building a house from scratch, as a catalyst and motivation to organize a continuation plan for his Escuela de Oficios. Keeping in mind that space can encourage learning craftsmanship and reflecting on construction techniques, Jorge dedicated himself to the next step of his ongoing process as an artist, as a member of the communities to which he belongs.
Upon completion of construction, the new house in Adjuntas hosted several events around the values that Gonzalez's work carries. And although this house is not directly related to Klumb's, the house in Adjuntas breathes Klumb's will and values. Gonzalez mentioned that someone had seen it as a shrine to the Klumb House in a way. Perhaps we can see it as a new manifestation of Gonzalez's Understudy project: the new structure being what has grown under the umbrella of the German's teachings in Puerto Rico. Whether it was the fault of the relentless forces of nature over time, or the frustrating bureaucracy of the institutions responsible for it, the legacy of the Klumb House lives on through a community of artists, historians, and friends who share the architect's values; seeking to save and restore what remains. My hope is that, as a community, we can continue to find ways to build and grow together; to find permanence.
Sebastián Meltz-Collazo is a writer, visual artist, and musician working towards new experiences through the intersection of narratives. Connecting personal with collective histories, he explores iterations of visual culture and representation with the intention of raising questions around identity and its various manifestations. He is a graduate of Image Text Ithaca and is based in New York & Puerto Rico.