Blackman House

Indian Hill House was designed in 1962-63 by Maurice K. Smith and built by Ralph S. Osmond & Sons.  The influence of Mid-Century modern architecture is readily discernible here although Smith moves beyond this with an elaboration of his own "Form Language" - an approach to design that he developed throughout his teaching at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. As such, it is very hard to align Smith's work with any stylistic movement per se, a fact that makes his designs all the more interesting. The house is set on seven acres at the end of Skyfields Drive in the Indian Hills of Groton, Massachusetts. The property compliments a nearly 500-acre preserve of surrounding woodland under care of the Groton Conservation Trust, Massachusetts Audubon Society, and Groton Conservation Commission.

Indian Hill House
Location	Groton, Massachusetts
Built	1962
Architect	Maurice K. Smith
Architectural style	Mid-Century modern

An extensive photographic study of the house, then only a few years old, was taken for the Winter 1967 issue of Harvard Art Review. In it, architect Smith put forth his position that the nature of a building's form follows from its use. Since that use will change over time, buildings can also evolve. In his 1989 work, Architecture and Urbanism, Henry Plummer concluded of this house that it contained "innumerable locales, of fragmentary rooms loosely interlocked, of zones both intimate and grand, created for an almost endless array of eyes, and heads and bodies and voices, an abundance which no longer bears upon the needs of a single person." Not only does the building form evolve but it is never perceived by two persons in quite the same way. In his 1967 work, World Architecture 4, John Donat described this house as "a place that prescribes nothing, an architecture that is intense without imposing itself on you." He goes on to write that this family house is "a place of real options and opportunities [that] can be richly interpreted by whoever is living in it." Indian Hill House was also and formerly known in print as 'Blackman House, Groton, Massachusetts', or 'House, Groton, Mass.', or 'A House by Maurice Smith'. It was formerly accessed from Indian Hill Road but the approach was changed from the southern to its northern side when the original, larger property was subdivided in March 2000.

References

• Donat, John. "House, Groton, Mass." World Architecture (1967) v. 4, pp. [24]-[33].
• Plummer, Henry. "Blackman House, Groton, Massachusetts, 1962-63." Architecture and Urbanism (September 1989) n.9, pp.[182]-193,276.
• Smith, Maurice K. "A House by Maurice Smith." Harvard Art Review, Winter 1967, v.2, n.1, pp. 40–45.
• Smith, Maurice K. "Not Writing on Built Form." Harvard Educational Review (1969), v.39, n.4, pp. 69–84.
• Smith, Maurice K. "Frammenti di teoria/pratica = Fragments of theory/practice." Spazio e Societa (June 1982) v.5, n.18, pp. 36–63. (as Casa/House 1).
• Smith, Maurice K. "Particular associative habitable (built) environments." Progressive Architecture (March 1982), v.63, n.3, pp. 100–103. (3 images w/o notation).