Julius Shulman’s iconic nighttime photo of Case Study House #22—with its cantilevered glass-walled living room hovering above the city lights of sprawling Los Angeles—is arguably the most famous image of residential architecture. Yet the story behind this remarkable building—how it came into being and the experience of living there—is far less known. And that’s what this book reveals. A deep and detailed account with abundant images, it’s a biography of a house and its owners—and the book’s first half, in particular, is a great read.
Shari Stahl Gronwald and Bruce Stahl, along with their late brother, grew up in Case Study House #22 and still own it. As they write in the foreword, touring visitors often ask about the family behind it. “We knew there was an untold story,” Bruce recently said, “and we set out to tell it.” In the dozen chapters that follow, Kim Cross, an Idaho-based author and journalist, weaves a narrative that portrays the family in intimate detail while placing the house within the cultural, historic, and technological-architectural contexts that made it possible. The project came at a pivotal moment and through the convergence of five key players: Buck and Carlotta Stahl, determined clients with a vision and an extraordinary piece of land; Pierre Koenig, a young architect with a background in experimental prefabricated-steel construction and a willingness to tackle a site widely deemed unbuildable; John Entenza, the inspirational editor/owner of Arts & Architecture magazine, who’d launched the Case Study Houses program in 1945; and Shulman, the photographer who portrayed the house, sparking public imagination. Completed in 1960, the project emerged from the post–World War II era, when materials and innovations previously channeled into the war effort became fodder for cutting-edge design. The Case Study program—addressing a burgeoning middle class and rising housing shortage—aspired to create affordable, easily buildable prototypes for modestly scaled yet inventive Modernist houses. (It’s ironic that many of the 20 surviving Case Study Houses have become privileged commodities.)
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