Perched high on a bluff above Honolulu, the Liljestrand house is regarded as one of the most beautiful examples of Vladimir Ossipoff's architecture.

I went to experience this house first-hand, in order to better grasp an understanding of Ossipoff and his approach to design. I found the house hidden from the roadway, in the middle of a dense forest atop Tantalus Ridge. Surrounded by fragrant eucalyptus trees, the low-slung house recedes into the hillside, sited to maximize views, Diamond Head to 'Ewa, and to minimize its impact on the landscape.

The long, darkened entryway creates a feeling of a Buddhist temple, which eventually pivots into a spectacular vista framed by soaring exposed rafters, floor-to-ceiling windows and 'ohi'a wood floors. With its redwood, sandstone, brick, glass and steel and attention to detail and fine craftsmanship, this house is a remarkable, tasty feast for the senses.

A leading architect in Hawai'i has described the house to me as "awesome," adding, "It took my breath away." Another simply called it "delicious." It provides a worthy example of the power of Ossipoff's vision.

The Honolulu Academy of Arts opens a much-awaited exhibition tomorrow on Ossipoff and his influence on Hawai'i. The show places Ossipoff's work within the context of modern architecture, and also explores his impact on Hawai'i, where he spent most of his life. In a broader sense, the exhibition raises larger themes related to the place of modernism and design, and the relationship between the built and natural environments in the Islands.

The show was proposed, curated and designed by Dean Sakamoto, who was born and raised in Hawai'i but now serves as architect, instructor and resident critic/director of exhibitions at the Yale School of Architecture. Sakamoto and several others, in conjunction with the Honolulu Academy of Arts, have co-authored an impressive new book that complements the exhibit, titled "Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff" (Yale University Press). It contains an extensive write-up of Ossipoff's buildings in Hawai'i, lavishly supplemented with photography and thoughtful essays by national and local architects on the context and meaning of his work.

A 20-minute documentary, "True to Form: Val Ossipoff and His Architecture," produced by the museum in partnership with KDN Films, also complements the exhibit. The exhibit will travel from Honolulu to the Yale School of Architecture Gallery in New Haven, Conn., and then on to the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany.

The exhibit, along with the book and documentary, will focus attention locally and internationally on Ossipoff and the architecture of Hawai'i.

SEVEN-DECADE CAREER

Born in Vladivostok in 1907 to a Mongolian woman who married a Russian military attache, Ossipoff was raised in Japan and educated at the University of California-Berkeley. He came to Hawai'i in 1931 and practiced until his death in 1998.

In a career that spanned seven decades, Ossipoff designed houses, apartment buildings, churches, office buildings, libraries, schools, an animal clinic and other structures. It is perhaps because of the breadth of his work that he has been called the "Frank Lloyd Wright of Hawai'i."

Museum director Stephen Little e-mailed me about the exhibit from Bhutan, where Little is working on an upcoming exhibition. "It is very unusual for an art museum to take the lead in creating a major study on a famous architect," Little noted, "and this will be the first big exhibition on architecture ever organized by the academy. Since it isn't possible to bring buildings into the museum galleries, creating exhibitions on architecture can be challenging and is a calculated risk."

However, guest curator Sakamoto not only has much knowledge of Ossipoff; as the designer of many exhibitions at Yale, he understands architecture and how to present it as art. He described his aim in setting up the show: how "similar to experiencing great architecture," an exhibition should be a "sensory experience" with "choreographed and staged movements" so that the elements of "structure and darkness" and "the layout of the exhibit" and the artifacts and displays evoke a sense of the architecture itself.

Indeed, one of the challenges in creating an exhibit that attempts to define Ossipoff's work involves situating the architect in terms of architectural style.

In some ways, Ossipoff created his own style. His work has been called "Hawaiian Modern" or "Tropical Modern," but as former University of Hawai'i architecture dean Raymond Yeh points out, "Ossipoff significantly defined subtropical architecture in the context of Hawai'i. He furthered the modernist movement on the Islands, with simplicity in the use of materials and harmonious integration with the natural site elements of the buildings he designed."

'FLUID BOUNDARIES'

Little, who as director of the museum lives in a 1952 Ossipoff-designed house donated by Marshall and Ruth Goodsill, characterizes the architecture as having "fluid boundaries between the interior and exterior, with a deceptively simple plan, which masks an amazingly sophisticated design, and obsessive attention to detail and materials (mostly redwood). It represents a dynamic mix of Japanese and mid-century modernist elements."

He praises his own house as "an excellent example of Ossipoff's genius for siting, and of his sensitivity to Hawai'i's tropical environment. It was designed, for example, with no air conditioning."

Having spent several hours in the Liljestrand house, I can see that Ossipoff's residential design was ahead of its time. The open, airy design takes advantage of natural light and makes liberal use of wood and locally available materials.

In July 1958, six years after the house was completed, House Beautiful devoted 53 pages to this home in its Pacesetter Edition. Much of the furniture, including a delightful kidney-shaped coffee table constructed of guava wood and Lucite, had been designed by the architect.

Although the house is more than 50 years old, most of the original furnishings remain intact, and it still has a fresh, contemporary feeling. Recently, it was placed on the Hawai'i's Register of Historic Places, and it has been nominated for the national register.

Ossipoff houses are appealing to certain buyers. Chris Lee, a Hollywood producer who returned to the Islands to become director of the University of Hawai'i's Academy for Creative Media, asked his real-estate agent and family to look out for one. "I was really afraid that they had all been torn down in the '80s and '90s," Lee said. He worried he would end up in "one of those air-conditioned, hermetically sealed plaster and marble and concrete McMansions," but eventually found a small Ossipoff house in Kahala originally built for a judge in 1958, which "doesn't awe, but everyone finds comfortable."

According to Lee, his home "integrates East and West in the best sense that Hawai'i has to offer. It takes advantage of the trade winds, brings outdoors inside, and lets you know you're in Hawai'i without trying too hard."

SENSE OF PLACE

Some of Ossipoff's best-loved designs, including the Outrigger Canoe Club (1963), Pacific Club (1959), Thurston Chapel at Punahou School (1967) and the open-air terminals at Honolulu International Airport (1970-1978) capture the sense of being in the Islands.

But Ossipoff also worked at making interesting architectural statements, such as the Hawaiian Life Insurance Building (1951) or the iconic IBM building (1962).

According to Sakamoto, the exterior of the IBM building is an interpretation of both Polynesian decorative patterns and computer keypunch cards.

"Ossipoff designed a geometrically complex screen comprised of 1,360 precast concrete pieces. ... His grill design was self-cleaning and pigeon-proof," Sakamoto said. "The horizontal plane of each curvilinear surface was slanted more than 45 degrees, so that they would wash clean in the rain."

Another interesting feature is the landscaped parking lot, carefully hidden with a berm.

Like other architects of his generation, Ossipoff played a critical role in defining a sense of place in Hawai'i.

His architecture was modern, yet made references to both local climate conditions and the culture of Asia and the Pacific.

It is perhaps, this trait of Ossipoff that is most enduring — the shaping of modern spaces while still retaining a sense of being in Hawai'i.

Karl Kim is professor and chairman of urban and regional planning at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.