Our Founding Director Matt Gibberd has recently returned from Cape Cod, where he experienced and photographed the area’s Modernist structures.

The Outer Cape owes much of its architectural richness to the European refugees, who arrived throughout the 1930s.

In 1937, Walter Gropius hosted a reunion for his former colleagues from the Bauhaus, including László Moholy-Nagy and Marcel Breuer.

The month-long vacation sparked a revolution and many of the guests set about buying land and building their own homes on the Cape.

Hand-painted signs nailed to the pine trees near Wellfleet bear recognisable surnames from the architecture world, such as “Chermayeff” and “Jencks”.

Serge Chermayeff, one of the architects behind the De La Warr Pavilion, erected a mono-pitched timber-framed house with brightly coloured side panels reminiscent of nautical flags, whilst Breuer built himself a prototypical long house in the Wellfleet woods in 1949.  The house is still owned by his family and Breuer is buried yards from the house.

Many of the houses fell into a state of decay and disrepair over the last few decades. However in recent years three have been restored, and are now available to rent as Holiday Lets through The Modern House.