i heart modern architecture

I think it's pretty clear that I'm obsessed with architecture. I relish any chance to drive around and look at buildings, so when I saw that USC was sponsoring several tours of architecture to celebrate the school's legacy on the L.A. landscape, you bet your ass I jumped at the chance. When I saw the opportunity to roam the Hollywood Hills and see Case Study House #22 and the Julius Shulman residence, I nearly did a cartwheel. The third house on the tour was the Carl Maston Hillside Residence (I had admittedly not heard of the house or the architect before).

This was hands down the coolest architecture experience I've had. To get to see upclose Case Study #22 alone was like a domestic-architecture, Modern-lovin' girl's dream. Mrs. Stahl (the original owner with her husband) and her daughter were present. I asked Mrs. Stahl if after all these years there's anything she'd change about the design; she came up with nothing.



Conceived as part of the Case Study House Program to develop low-cost, reproducible home models and to promote Modern architecture in the immediate post-war period, the house was completed in 1960 from Pierre Koenig's design.



Oh yeah, and it comes with awesome views.



Next we tour architecture photographer Julius Shulman's home. His daughter gave us a tour. They moved into the house in 1950. It was designed by Raphael Soriano, who also participated in the Case Study House Program. In the epilogue to the $200 Taschen book on the Case Study Houses, Shulman wrote a critique of the program, which included his displeasure of John Entenza's (the program's conceiver and director) attempt to include this house in the program even though it had been designed completely separate from it. The house hasn't changed in 50+ years.





And Julius Shulman was there.



I also had my photo taken with him, after he gave us a lecture on how you shouldn't be so set on being an architect because it's hard and so few people really become known for "great buildings." He encouraged us to learn about architectural history and to write (of course I was probably the only one in the crowd that wasn't an architecture student and actually was someone who studies the history and writes about it). When he brought up Gregory Ain (as a previous example where architecture students hadn't heard of him), I think I was the only one who said that I knew who he was (and I was just in one of his buildings last week! The Avenel Cooperative in Silver Lake). Although a pioneer in low-cost housing design, Ain was excluded from the Case Study House Program. But he was a USC alum and was also an instructor in the architecture school.

It's days like this when I love that I live in L.A.