Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study of Houses

9780262192958

0262192950

Essays by Esther McCoy, Thomas S. Hines, Helen Searing, Kevin Starr, Elizabeth A. I Smith, Thomas Hine, Reyner Banham, and Dolores Hayden Southern California's Case Study houses constitute an essential chapter in the history of modern architecture in America. This book documents "Arts & Architecture magazine's sponsorship of some of the most important architects of the region and the generation - Charles Eames, Craig Ellwood, A. Quincy Jones, Pierre Koenig, Richard Neutra, Raphael Soriano, and Eero Saarinen, among others - reflecting an unprecedented commitment to reinventing the house as a way of redefining living. The program consisted of thirty-six experimental prototypes designed, and the majority built, between 1945 and 1966. The architects and the magazine shared a commitment to experimenting with materials and techniques, rationalizing plan and construction and integrating house, furnishings, and landscape into a coherent whole. Yet a number of the essayists in this book suggest that what made the houses distinctive and influential was not so much their International-Style modernism, but how that style was domesticated and scaled to the single-family home - and how it forecast what is now called the California lifestyle. Entries documenting each of the Case Study projects and many previously unpublished photographs by such well-known photographers as Julius Shulman and Marvin Rand are included. The legacy of the Case Study House program is then addresse