Restored residence

The home at 1300 Westway Drive, in Lido Shores, had three bedrooms, three bathrooms and approximately 2,000 square feet of living space. Its listing price was $1.2 million. Vincent and Julie Ciulla were living in Southside Village, in Sarasota, when, in 2005, they spotted the advertisement in a local newspaper. Working as museum planners and exhibit designers, they were familiar with the house’s architect, Paul Rudolph, who had completed the home, known as the Umbrella House, in 1953 before going on to become dean of the Yale School of Architecture and designing the famed Yale Art and Architecture building.

On a whim, the Ciullas decided to check out the famed Umbrella House, which no longer had its “umbrella,” a trellis structure that sheltered the house and pool from the Florida heat. The structure had been destroyed in the late 1960s, most likely by a combination of hurricane damage and age.

Vincent Ciulla said he gasped in amazement when he saw the inside of the home.

The interior was mostly battleship gray with the exception of two posts that held up the original umbrella.

“The whole thing had a feeling of over reverence,” Ciulla said. “It was very timidly lived in.”

But the home’s design embodied the modernist designs of the German Bauhaus school, which Ciulla studied in the 1960s at the Pratt Institute. Its flat roof was typical of the Bauhaus-inspired Sarasota School of Architecture, and balconies and bridges maximized the home’s square footage. Its walls were made of jalousie windows that could be opened to invite in the breeze, an example of how the house, like other Sarasota School of Architecture structures, was designed to maximize ventilation in the days before air-conditioning.

The next day, the Ciullas made an offer on the home.

Historic home
In 1946, entrepreneur Philip Hiss returned to Sarasota from a trip to Bali and the islands of the South Seas inspired by the region’s architecture. He thought that the functionality of the design of island homes could offer lessons for Sarasota.

Around 1950, Hiss began to develop the Lido Shores neighborhood in a similar style with walls constructed almost entirely of jalousies that could open to allow breezes from the Gulf and bay to cool the homes.

“The average white man’s architecture in the tropics doesn’t offer very good solutions to the problems of heat and humidity,” he later said in the July 1954 issue of House and Home magazine. “Native architecture is much better.”

A July 25, 1954, article in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune described Hiss as a “truffle conservative” with the first of his buildings, “but the latest dwelling, the ‘Umbrella House,’ designed by architect Paul Rudolph is termed ‘one of the most extraordinary houses in the U.S.’”

In the article, Hiss admitted that it was difficult for the public to remain neutral about his homes.

“When they drive out to see the houses, they either voice appreciation,” he said, “or go away laughing.”

Over the next 50 years, the Umbrella House survived while many similar homes were torn down to make way for larger mansions.

Restoration takes root
The Ciullas knew immediately that they wanted to restore the home, including its umbrella, but they didn’t know exactly how to proceed. They wanted to decorate the home with a wider field of vision and knew that their collection of artwork, accumulated from around the world, would fit inside the home’s 2,000 square feet because of the way that it was built to maximize space.

“The house was intended to be lived in,” Ciulla said. “It was intended to be a canvas for peoples’ lives.”

They decided to proceed with restoration in two phases to keep costs down. During the first phase, the umbrella over the house would be restored, and during the second phase, the umbrella that covered the pool would be replaced. It wasn’t until late last year that the Ciullas began major work on phase one. They got permission from the city to make the beams for the posts from an aluminum base that is stronger than the original.

In June, the Ciullas celebrated the completion of phase one. They don’t have plans yet to begin phase two, although they completed the bases for the pool phase should they or a future owner decide to take on that part of the project. The couple plans to live in the house for at least the next five to 10 years.

And the Ciullas hope to maximize the educational value of the Umbrella House and have allowed groups, including the Society for Architectural Historians, the Museum of Modern Art and the Ringling College’s International Design Conference, to tour it.

“This is probably Paul Rudolph’s most famous residential building,” Vincent Ciulla said.

School of Thought
According to the Sarasota Architectural Foundation’s website, sarasotaarchitecturalfoundation.org, between 1941 and 1966, a group of innovative new homes were built in Sarasota. Inspired in part by the Bauhaus school, it largely ignored traditional architectural design and embraced new materials and technologies, “producing a minimalist architecture of flat-roofed buildings with smooth, unornamented walls and delicate, carefully proportioned façades.” The Sarasota design school also was inspired by regional Southern architecture, including the use of flat-roofed patios and verandas that opened up the structures for greater ventilation.

On the Web
For more information about the Ciullas and their work, go to ciulladesign.com. For more information about the Umbrella House, go to umbrellahouse.com.