Our Pace Setters

Our Pace Setters is a 40-minute documentary following the design and construction of a new home/office for the filmmaker. Inspired by her childhood home and her parents’ story of building their dream house, Our Pace Setters presents the filmmaker’s journey to build the house she can’t afford.

The film is titled and formatted to recall the influential House Beautiful magazine of the 1940s, 50s and 60s, and editor Elizabeth Gordon’s “Pace Setter House” program. The mock magazine cover layout pictured above shows the filmmaker’s childhood home and a list of shorts within the film. A symbol and a color introduce each section. Prelude with ABP: The bright yellow sun symbolizes the mind. The rays radiate out spreading the ideas and the vision of architect Alfred Browning Parker. A heart means love for the filmmaker’s parents, Art & Jane du Rivage, and for their Alfred Browning Parker designed home at #3 Meadow Lane. The color is red for passion and blood lines that live on. A hand pressed in clay or cement represents the physical and the present – the new work by architect Vaughan Trammell. The color is green for Trammell’s organic design and the earth-friendly construction of Holiday House. A bird represents the spirit – an homage to those who’ve passed away. The color is blue for the heavens where angels and ancestors watch from above.

The new home/office Holiday House, links contemporary design and sustainable building to the roots of American Modernist architecture through Alfred Browning Parker, friend and follower of Frank Lloyd Wright; and through architect Vaughan Trammell, trained by Wright apprentice, John Lautner. What architect Trammell learned from Lautner, and filmmaker du Rivage learned from Parker, is traced back to Wright’s art and philosophy in [lightbox href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w8jvC0G5Is”]a family tree[/lightbox] of architects, designers and clients showing Vaughan and Holly as part of a third generation of American Modernists.

With an embrace of inheritance and a touch of tomorrow, Our Pace Setters examines the influences that inspired the filmmaker’s new home/office Holiday House, and documents all stages of designing and building this 21st century pace setter.

 

© Bo Parker Photo