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L E G E N D S P R O F I L E | V L A D I M I R O S S I P O F F
(previous page) Liljestrand House yard, (this page) The iconic IBM Building
O
ne can't help but reflect on what
Howard and Betty Liljestrand
might have been thinking when
moving into their much-studied
hillside home overlooking
Honolulu—a lauded Vladimir
Ossipoff with a porte-cochère, stunning
central stairwell and dramatically angled
overhangs. Did they know what we now
do?
That the Liljestrand House (now a
museum) would be named a "Pace Setter
House" by House Beautiful in 1958? That
it would be listed on National Register
of Historic Places in 2008? That many
would come to call it the Fallingwater of
Hawai'i? Certainly Betty, on board most
days as general contractor of the project,
sensed its specialness. Perhaps even
Howard. They were, after all, people who
appreciated good design and knew that
in Ossipoff they had a once-in-a-million
hire.
Although his name is less familiar to
mainlanders as it is to islanders, Vladimir
Ossipoff is celebrated the world over as
the "master of Hawaiian architecture," a
moniker not without irony. Born in Russia,
raised in Japan, and educated at UC
Berkeley, Ossipoff landed in Honolulu
in 1931, where he was at the frontlines of
Tropical Modernism. In this vernacular,
Ossipoff was brilliant, a dedicated
combatant waging what he called—
vocally and without reservation—a "war
on ugliness," brought on by dismal
architectural design and rampant over-
development in the Hawaiian Islands.
Conviction-driven and no-nonsense
46 DIGS.NET
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