FLORIDA BUILDINGS I LOVE: No. 72: Cocoon House, 1950, Siesta Key
3575 Bayou Louise Lane. Ralph Twitchell and Paul Rudolph, architects
Harold Bubil
Many an architect’s first house was for his or her mother.
In Sarasota in the late 1940s, the new architectural partnership of Ralph Twitchell and Paul Rudolph was getting a lot of attention for their progressive, experimental house designs that took International School modernism and adapted it for Sarasota’s flat, waterfront landscape and subtropical climate.
Some locals found their rectangular, flat-roofed, trim-free structures to be shocking. So to get work and advance their art and craft, they did projects for Twitchell’s secretary, Lu Andrews, as well as his new in-laws, the Healys of Siesta Key.