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Metal-frame houses of the Modern Movement in Los Angeles:

Part 2: The Style that Nearly…1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Neil Jackson
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Extract

In 1950, the year California returned Richard Nixon to the United States Senate, Arts and Architecture put Raphael Soriano’s Case Study House on display to the public (Fig. 1). This programme, promoted during the post-war years by John Entenza’s adventurous magazine, sought to provide exemplars for contemporary living.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 33 , 1990 , pp. 167 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1990

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References

2 For a discussion of Arts and Architecture and the Case Study House programme, see Part 1, p. 159 ff.

3 Arts and Architecture, December 1949, p. 22.

4 Arts and Architecture, January 1945, p. 38.

5 For a discussion of the profession’s interest in prefabrication, see part 1, pp. 160–612. The one previous attempt to create a modern, mass-produced house had foundered. George Fred Keck had built the Crystal House at Chicago’s Century of Progress International Exposition in 1934 and here, where ‘glass and steel were chosen as the materials that go together rapidly and quickly’ it was his stated intent ‘to design a house of such qualities in such a manner and of such materials that lends itself to mass production’. See Slade, Thomas A., ‘The Crystal House of 1934’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, XXIX, no. 4, December 1970, pp. 350–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Raphael Soriano, interviewed by Neil Jackson, 11 July 1988, Claremont, California.

7 Soriano claimed that he was never paid for the Katz house and so preferred to call it the Gato house: Raphael Soriano, interviewed by Neil Jackson, 11 July 1988, Claremont, California. For the Katz house, see Architectural Forum October 1947, pp. 108–10.

8 Before the war, Soriano had built the Lee and Cady Warehouse in Ferndale, Michigan (1938), the Jewish Community Center in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles (1938) and the Hallawell Nursery in San Francisco, California (1941). For a discussion of these buildings, see part 1, pp. 157–58.

9 For All Steel Houses, Los Angeles, 1938, see Futagawa, Yukio (ed), Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph, 10.37-1941 (Tokyo, 1986), pp. 98–99.Google Scholar

10 Arts and Architecture, April 1950, p. 37. Although this passage is not actually attributed to Soriano, the tone and use of English would tend to suggest his authorship.

11 Arts and Architecture, September 1950, p. 37,

12 Ibid.

13 Arts and Architecture, December 1955, p. 8.

14 Ibid., p. 9.

15 ibid., p. 8.

16 Arts and Architecture, January 1956, p. 22.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid. p. 30.

19 Ibid.

20 Arts and Architecture, April 1955, p. 22.

21 Arts and Architecture, May 1954, pp. 16–17; Smith, Herbert L. (ed.) 25 Years of Record Houses (New York, 1981), pp. 76–79 Google Scholar; Process Architecture, no. 41 (1983), pp. 123–25.

22 Arts and Architecture, October 1956, p. 22.

23 Sunset. The Magazine of Western Living, October 1956, pp. 131–32.

24 Arts and Architecture, July 1956, p. 26.

25 Arts and Architecture, December 1956, p. 9.

26 Arts and Architecture, November 1956, p. 26.

27 Arts and Architecture, June 1950, pp. 40–44.

28 Arts and Architecture, September 1955, pp. 28–30 and January 1956, pp. 24–25.

29 Michael Brawne, in a letter to Neil Jackson, dated 22 January 1990.

30 Arts and Architecture, September 1955, p. 28.

31 Arts and Architecture, June 1951, pp. 26–27, 42.

32 Richard Neutra, Survival Through Design (New York, 1954), pp. 65–66.

33 Arts and Architecture, February 1954, p. 26.

34 Arts and Architecture, June 1950, p. 27.

35 Arts and Architecture, April 1952, p. 30.

36 Arts and Architecture, October 1954, p. 22.

37 Arts and Architecture, September 1950, pp. 32–33.

38 Arts and Architecture, October 1950, pp. 36–37; Arts and Architecture, March 1951, pp. 26–27; Arts and Architecture, July 1953, pp. 24–25.

39 Arts and Architecture, September 1952, p. 26.

40 Arts and Architecture, December 1952, p. 32, 41.

41 Arts and Architecture, May 1953, pp. 30–31.

42 The Morris Studio residence (1956) and the Murakami residence (1962): surprisingly, Morris’s innovative designs have not appeared, as these others have, in Arts and Architecture.

43 Arts and Architecture, May 1960, pp. 27–28 and August 1961, pp. 22–23, p. 28. Zimmerman’s house of c. 1962 was intended to be Case Study House 28. Designed soon after David Travers assumed the editorship of Arts and Architecture, it combined a three-storey steel-frame structure on a steeply sloping site with a single-storey steel-frame pavilion on a flat site below. It was never built.

44 Arts and Architecture, July 1961, p. 25.

45 Arts and Architecture, July 1962, pp. 12–13.

46 Neutra, Survival, p. 7$.

47 For Lamport, Cofer, Salzman, see part 1, p. 155, p. 168.

48 Craig Ellwood, interviewed by Neil Jackson, 1 March 1988, Pomona, California.

49 Arts and Architecture, October 1952, pp. 30–31.

50 Pierre Koenig, interviewed by Neil Jackson, 13 July 1988, Los Angeles, California.

51 Idem, and also Arts and Architecture, October 1953, pp. 24–25.

52 Pierre Koenig, interviewed by Neil Jackson, 13 July 1988, Los Angeles, California.

53 Idem.

54 Idem.

55 Arts and Architecture, March 1957, p. 25.

56 Ibid.

57 Arts and Architecture, June 1958, p. 20.

58 Arts and Architecture, November 1957, p. 19.

59 Ibid., pp. 19–35.

60 Pierre Koenig, interviewed by Neil Jackson, 13 July 1988, Los Angeles, California.

61 Arts and Architecture, February 1959, p. 19.

62 Arts and Architecture, December 1947, pp. 24–27.

63 Johnson, Philip, Mies van der Rohe (New York, 1947)Google Scholar and also Architectural Forum, November 1947, p. 132; Art Bulletin, June 1948, 156–57; Werk, October 1948, pp. 142–43; Art News, September 1947, pp. 20–23, 42–43.

64 Craig Ellwood, interviewed by Neil Jackson, 1 March 1988, Pomona, California.

65 Pierre Koenig, interviewed by Neil Jackson, 13 July 1988, Los Angeles, California.

66 Craig Ellwood, interviewed by Neil Jackson, 1 March 1988, Pomona, California.

67 Idem.

68 Idem.

69 Arts and Architecture, January 1961, p. 20.

70 Soriano moved from Los Angeles to Mill Valley, California, in 1953.

71 See part 1, pp. 159–62.

72 Arts and Architecture, August 1965, pp. 22–23.

73 Raphael Soriano interviewed by Neil Jackson, 11 July 1988, Claremont, California.

74 Arts and Architecture, April 1967, p. 16.

75 Ibid., p. 10. An all-aluminium house was designed for ALCOA by John I. Matthias in 1960. Called the Triennale House, it was published in Arts and Architecture, December 1960, pp. 16–17, P. 29.

76 These are styled after ‘Woodies’ which were built during the War years with a timber frame, due to the shortage of steel. See Langworth, Richard M. et al., Encyclopedia of American Cars 1940–1970 (New York, c. 1980).Google Scholar

77 Part 1, p. 170.

78 Designs by Soriano for a 7-Eleven store, a MacDonald’s Hamburger outlet and a poultry farm, all in his Aluminium Series, are among the drawings retained in the archives at the College of Environmental Design, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

79 Pierre Koenig, in conversation with Neil Jackson, 23 February 1990, Los Angeles, California.

80 Esther McCoy, ‘Arts and Architecture Case Study Houses’; Smith, Elizabeth A. T., Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses (1989), p. 33.Google Scholar

81 Brawne, Michael, ‘The Wit of Technology’, Architectural Design, September 1966, p. 449.Google Scholar

82 Peter de Bretteville, interviewed by Neil Jackson, 7 July 1988, Los Angeles, California.

83 Jurg Lang, interviewed by Neil Jackson 6 July 1988, Los Angeles, California.

84 Brawne, ‘The Wit of Technology’, pp. 451–52.