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

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 Entries documenting each of the Case Study projects and many previously unpublished photographs by such well-known photographers as Julius Shulman and Marvin Rand are included.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 addressed by six contemporary architects who were commissioned by The Museum of Contemporary Art to execute new designs for a decidedly different present. The book includes drawings, plans, and photographs of projects by Itsuko Hasegawa,Craig Hodgetts, Toyo Ito Robert Mangurian, Eric Owen Moss, and Adele Naude Santos, along with their statements about the work. Copublished with The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Distributed by The MIT Press.