West Coast Wave: New California Houses

Beautiful large-format photos and insightful text by California architecture critic Dirk Sutro take you on this spectacular tour of 27 houses, which opens with a Foreword by leading architectural historian David Gebhard. Together, the text and the photos make it clear that California reigns as the world's most avant-garde architectural testing ground.
Inspired by sources as diverse as California's Hispanic heritage, contemporary art and film, raw industrial materials, and settings that range from inner cities to the oceanfront and high desert, these gifted contemporary architects are redefining the word "house." Many of them also feel a deep connection to the past, as is evidenced by extended retrospective essays that explore the evolution of the Modern house in each of the state's largest metropolitan regions. These essays come alive with rare archival photos and stunning shots by master architectural photographers such as Julius Shulman, Marvin Rand, and Roger Sturtevant. West Coast Wave offers the most thorough examination yet of experimental California houses in the 20th century.
Mark Mack, Frank Israel, Fernau and Hartman, Rob Wellington Quigley, and Morphosis are among the well-known contemporary architects whose progressive houses are showcased, along with rising talents such as Melinda Gray, David Baker and Nancy Whitcombe, Rene Davids and Christine Killory, and Jeanne McCallum. The impact of this provocative new architecture is captured in more than 150 color photos by leading architectural photographers, including Richard Barnes, Alan Weintraub, Dominic Vorillon, David Hewitt/Anne Garrison, Tom Bonner, Wayne Fujii, and Christopher Irion.
The retrospective essays explain how the early California Modernists rejected international dogmas and turned instead to their regions for inspiration, from Irving Gill's spare Mission-influenced designs, to R.M. Schindler's 1920s fascination with southern California and the health movement. These essays also examine the evolution of a Bay Region attitude that began with Bernard Maybeck and continued through William Wurster and Joseph Esherick.
Through these detailed essays and more than 100 photos, West Coast Wave also explores the work of Greene and Greene, Richard Neutra, John Lautner, Raphael Soriano, Lloyd Ruocco, Homer Delawie, Charles Moore, and the Case Study architects.