Along with San Francisco’s Bank of America Building and Ghiradelli Square, the Clark Beach House in elevation above and immortalized on PG&E’s heliodon machine left, counts among the most published and recognized of the work from the office of the architect William Wilson Wurster, one time west coast darling, and educational innovator as Dean at MIT and UC Berkeley’s re-envisioned Environmental Design Department. Known for his serious understatement and disdain for luxury and over-designing, his work remains largely disregarded today seemingly as a result. With the One Percent currently under attack, the possibility for a resurgence of modesty in home design seems better than any time since the Reign of Terror.
Pictured above Charles and Ray Eames gaze at Shaker founder Mother Ann Lee(1736-1784), believed to be the Second Appearance of Christ in female form. Below Hannah Cohoon’s gift drawing “Tree of Light, or Blazing Tree” received in a vision in 1845.
Could this design from the Housekeeping Campground Map in Yosemite Valley be the original inspiration for LA architect Rudolf Schindler’s radical home design on King’s Road? (See our post Sun-worshipers and Free-thinkers.) As Schindler describes it, the home “… fulfils the basic requirement for a camper’s shelter: a protected back, an open front, a fireplace and a roof…”( ‘A Co-operative Dwelling’ , T-Square, February 1932).
In 1921 amidst the falling oak leaves of September and October Rudolf and wife Pauline enjoyed an idyllic few weeks in camp shelters in Yosemite Valley. Having just terminated his employment with Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolf and Pauline planned their modern life and modern home in Los Angeles. Four independent and utilitarian studios conjoined in a communal relationship would provide a background for work and play. They would be joined in this experimental four-plex by housemates and friends Clyde and Marian Chace.
On September 15th, 2011, we were featured at the “Modernizing Your Space” series at Design Within Reach during San Francisco’s Architecture in the City Month. We took the opportunity to clarify what we do and value in modern design.
A sea change occured in home design and life style in mid-century California as promoted in the work of Schindler, Neutra and the Case Study House program and popularized by Eichler planned developments and ranch style homes. Providing modern and positive values of casual living and connection with the sun and outdoors, suburban home production flourished in an anti-urban, auto-based culture made concrete through asocial town planning. These mid-century modern designs were sensitive to personal comfort and environment, but they were insensitive to the environment at a community and global level with sprawling development actively replacing positive neighborhood and urban pattern.
Established commuter rail lines, like the Red Car lines in LA, were ripped up for freeway right of ways promoted by the oil and auto industry. Downtown buildings were demolished for parking lots and block-style housing projects with a misguided idea of how to re-populate urban cores.
Photographed in LA in 1931, barefoot Galka Scheyer adopts a modern attitude in the sundrenched window of Rudolf Schindler’s revolutionary Kings Road House which proposed new arrangements for living and working, defining what it means to be modern, at least in California.
