case study house documentary

Cookie banner

We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy . Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use , which became effective December 20, 2019.

By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies.

Filed under:

Creating the iconic Stahl House

Two dreamers, an architect, a photographer, and the making of America’s most famous house

In 1953 a mutual friend introduced Clarence Stahl, better known as Buck, to Carlotta Gates. They met at the popular Mike Lyman’s Flight Deck restaurant, off Century Boulevard, which overlooked the runways at Los Angeles International Airport. Buck was 41 and Carlotta 24. The couple married a year later and remained together for more than 50 years, until Buck’s death in 2005.

Working with Pierre Koenig, an independent young architect whose primary materials were glass, steel, and concrete, the couple created perhaps the most widely recognized house in Los Angeles, and one of the most iconic homes ever built. No one famous ever lived in it, nor was it the site of a Hollywood scandal or constructed for a wealthy owner. It was just the Stahls’ dream home. And it almost did not come true.

As a newlywed, Carlotta moved into the house Buck was renting—the lower half of a two-story wood-frame house on Hillside Avenue in the Hollywood Hills, just west of Crescent Heights Boulevard and north of Sunset Boulevard. From the house, Buck and Carlotta looked across a ridge toward a promontory that drew their attention every morning and evening. As Carlotta explained during an interview with USC history professor Philip Ethington, this is how the dream of building their own home started: simply and incidentally. Although they felt emotionally and psychically drawn to the promontory, they did not have the financial means to buy the lot, even if it were available.

For months they looked intently across the ridge. Then, in May 1954, the couple decided “Let’s go over and see our lot. We’d already claimed it even though we’d never been here,” Carlotta told Ethington, adding, “And when we came up that day George Beha [the owner of the lot] was in from La Jolla. He and Buck talked, then, I would say an hour, hour and [a] half later, they shook hands. We bought the lot and he agreed to carry the mortgage.” They settled on a price of $13,500. At the end of their meeting, Buck gave Beha $100 as payment to make the agreement binding.

There were no houses along the hillside near the site that would become the Stahl House on Woods Drive, although the land was getting graded in anticipation of development. Richard D. Larkin, a real estate developer, acquired the lots on the ridge in a tax sale from the city of Los Angeles around 1958 and arranged to subdivide and grade them. The city hauled away the dirt without charge to use the decomposed granite for runway construction at LAX. In the process, the city made the road for Woods Drive.

The Stahls’ chance meeting with Beha abruptly made their vision more of a reality, but building was still a long way away. After nearly four years of mortgage payments to Beha, Buck prepared the lot for construction. He did this without having building specs, but knowing it would be necessary to shape the difficult hillside lot. In the first of many do-it-yourself accomplishments, he built up the edges to make the lot flat and level. To create a larger buildable area he laid the edge of the foundation with broken concrete, which was readily available at no cost from construction sites and provided Buck with flexibility for his layout. He could also lift and move the pieces without heavy equipment. He constructed a concrete wall and terracing with broken pieces of concrete. But he was told by architects and others that his effort would not improve the buildability of the property.

The developer, Larkin, showed Buck how to lay out and stack the concrete, Buck recalled to Ethington. It was not a completely new concept, as photographer Julius Shulman, whose photograph of the Stahl House would later become internationally recognized, used broken concrete in the landscaping on his property. But Buck’s use was far more labor-intensive and consuming. On evenings and weekends he managed to pick up discarded concrete from construction sites around Los Angeles, asking the foremen if he could haul the debris away. He did this dozens of times before collecting enough for the concrete wall.

Buck used decomposed granite from the lot and surrounding area, instead of fresh cement, to fill in the gaps between the concrete pieces. The result was a solid form that remains intact and stable today, almost 60 years later. What had been the underlying layer for a man-made structure became the underlying layer for a new man-made structure—Buck’s layers of broken concrete added another facet to the topography of the house and the city, and this hands-on development of the lot connected the Stahls to the land and house.

As they completed their final monthly payments, Buck finished a scale model of their dream home, and the couple began to look for an architect. The central architectural feature of the model was a butterfly roof combined with flat-roofed areas. From the beginning, Buck and Carlotta envisioned a glass house without walls blocking the panoramic view.

Their frequent visits to the lot intensified their desire to build a home of their own design. Like an architect, Buck studied the composition of the land, the shape of the lot, the direction of light, and the best way to ensure the views. Perhaps most importantly, he considered the architectural style that would ideally highlight these qualities.

Carlotta told Ethington they decided to meet with three architects whose work they had seen in different publications: Craig Ellwood, Pierre Koenig, and one more whom she did not remember. She said Ellwood and the unidentified architect “came to the lot [and] said we were crazy. ‘You’ll never be able to build up here.’”

When Koenig visited the site with the Stahls, he and Buck “just clicked right away,” according to Carlotta. In the 1989 documentary The Case Study House Program, 1945-1966: An Anecdotal History & Commentary , Koenig recalled how Buck “wanted a 270-degree panorama view unobstructed by any exterior wall or sheer wall or anything at all, and I could do it.” The Stahls appreciated Koenig’s enthusiasm and willingness to work with them. They had a written agreement in November of 1957.

The massive spans of glass and the cantilevering of the structure, essential aspects of the design to Koenig, precluded traditional wood-frame house construction. To ensure the open floorplan, uninterrupted views, and the structure required to create those features, steel became inevitable. Steel would also offer greater stability than wood during an earthquake. The use of exposed glass, steel, and concrete was a functional and economic decision that defined the aesthetics of the house. In combination, these industrial materials were not then common choices in home construction, though they were materials Koenig used frequently. Exposing the material structure of the house illuminated its transparency as an indoor-outdoor living space.

Koenig kept the spirit of Buck’s model, but removed a key aspect: the butterfly roof. Koenig flattened the roof and removed the curves from Buck’s design, so the house consisted of two rectangular boxes that formed an L.

When he sited the house and drew his preliminary plans, Koenig aligned the house so that the roof and structural cantilever mirrored the grid-like arrangement of the streets below the lot. Once completed, the house visually extended into the Los Angeles cityscape. The symmetry enhanced the connection between the house and the land. In The Case Study House Program 1945-1966 documentary, Koenig says, “When you look out along the beams it carries your eye out right along the city streets, and the [horizontal] decking disappears into the vanishing point and takes your eye out and the house becomes one with the city below.”

With the design completed, the Stahls’ dream was closer to coming to life, but there were further obstacles. The unconventional design of the house and its hillside construction made it difficult to secure a traditional home loan; banks repeatedly turned down Buck because it was considered too risky. As Buck explained to Ethington, “Pierre [kept] looking [for financing] and he had his rounds of contacts.” Koenig was finally able to arrange financing for the Stahls through Broadway Federal Savings and Loan Association, an African-American-owned bank in Los Angeles.

Broadway Federal had one unusual condition for the construction loan: The Stahls were required to secure a second loan for the construction of a pool and would need another bank to finance it. They had had a yard in mind, but a pool would increase the overall cost of the home—for the bank, it added value to the property and made the loan less risky.

After more searching, Buck found a lender for the pool construction so both projects could proceed. Broadway Federal loaned the Stahls $34,000. The second lender financed the pool at a cost of approximately $3,800.

Broadway Federal’s loan is ironic and extraordinary. Although it was not a reflection of the Stahls’ own values, the area that included their lot had legally filed Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions from 1948 that indicated “the property shall not, nor shall any part thereof be occupied at any time by any person not of the Caucasian race, except that servants of other than the Caucasian race may be employed and kept thereon.” It was a discriminatory restriction against African Americans, and yet an African-American-owned bank made it possible for a Caucasian couple to build their home there.

When Pierre Koenig began work on the Stahl House, he was 32 years old and had built seven of the more than 40 projects he would design in his career. The Stahl House is the best known and is considered his masterwork, although Koenig considered the Gantert House (1981) in the Hollywood Hills the most challenging house he built. The long-term influence of the Stahl House is apparent in Gantert House and many of Koenig’s other projects.

Koenig built his first house in 1950—for himself—during his third year of architecture school at USC. It was a steel, glass, and cement structure. Although the architecture program had dropped its focus on Beaux Arts studies and modernism was coming to the fore, residential use of steel was not part of Koenig’s curriculum. But when he looked at the post-and-beam architecture then considered the standard of modern architecture, he felt the wood structures looked thin and fragile, and should be made of steel instead.

Koenig later told interviewer Michael LaFetra about a conversation with his instructor: “He said ‘No, you cannot use steel as an industrial material for domestic architecture. You cannot mix them up. The housewife won’t like [steel houses].’ The more he said I couldn’t do it, the more I wanted to do it. That’s my nature. He failed me. I got absolutely no help from him.”

But wartime production methods, particularly arc welding, were a source of inspiration for Koenig’s use of steel. Electric arc welding did not require bolts or rivets and instead created a rigid connection between beams and columns. Cross-bracing was not required, which opened greater possibilities: Aesthetically, it offered a streamlined look and allowed him to design a large open framework for unobstructed glass walls. The thin lines of the steel looked incidental compared to their strength.

His first house was originally designed as a wood building, but redesigned for steel construction. He commented years later that that was not the way to do it—he learned how to design for steel by taking an entirely new approach. There was little precedent to support his efforts: Such discoveries were an education for him, and he worked to resolve issues on his own. In Esther McCoy’s book Modern California Houses: Case Study Houses, 1945-1962 , Koenig declares, “Steel is not something you can put up and take down. It is a way of life.”

From then on, Koenig continued to develop his architectural vision—both pragmatic and philosophical. Prefabricated housing was a promising development following the war, but consumers found the homes’ cookie-cutter, invariable design unappealing. Koenig’s goal was to use industrialized components in different ways to create unique, innovative buildings using the same standard parts: endless variations with the core materials of glass, steel, and cement. Koenig’s intention, as captured in James Steel’s biography Pierre Koenig , “was to be part of a mechanism that could produce billions of homes, like sausages or cars in a factory.”

“The basic problem is whether the product is well designed in the first place,” Koenig further explained in a 1957 Los Angeles Times article by architectural historian Esther McCoy. “There are too many advantages to mass production to ignore it. We must accept mass production but we must insist on well-designed products.”

Reducing the number of parts and avoiding small parts were ways to reduce costs and streamline construction. In the case of the Stahl House, the efficiencies generated by the minimal-parts approach led to an inventory of fewer than 60 building components. In 1960, in an interview for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner , Koenig said:

“All I have done is to take what we know about industrial methods and bring it to people who would accept it. You can make anything beautiful given an unlimited amount of money. But to do it within the limits of economy is different. That’s why I never have steel fabricated especially to my design. I use only stock parts. That is the challenge—to take these common everyday parts and work them into an aesthetically pleasing concept.”

Although Koenig completed a plot plan for the Stahl House in January 1958, he did not submit blueprints to the city of Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety until that July. Due to the extensive use of steel and glass in a residential plan, combined with the hillside lot and dimensions and form that the department found irregular, the city did not consider the house up to code and would not approve construction. Instead they noted, “Board Action required to build on this site because of the extremely high steep slopes on the east and south sides.”

In a move typical of Koenig’s intellect and his ability to understand all details of construction, he prepared the technical drawings so he was able to discuss details with the planners. He spent several months explaining his design and material specifications to the city. Since they had not seen many plans for the extensive use of steel in home construction, the building officials asked him, “Why steel?”

In his interview with LaFetra, Koenig explained that he thought steel would last longer than wood and knew “building departments were not used to the ideas of modern architecture.” They would frown on “doing away with hip roof, shingles, you had to have a picket fence, window shutters.”

“The Building Department thought I was crazy,” Koenig said. “I can remember one of the engineers saying, ‘Why are you going to all this trouble? All you have to do is open up the code book and put down what’s in the code book. You could have a permit tomorrow.’ I asked myself, Why am I doing this?! I was motivated by some subconscious thing.” Koenig reduced the living room cantilever by 10 feet and removed the walkway around the house in order to move the plans forward.

He finally received approval in January 1959. Carlotta remembers, “One of the officials … said [there’ll] never be another house built like this ’cause they didn’t like the big windows. That was one of the things that bothered them more than anything, and the fact that we’re cantilevered.”

The city’s lengthy approval process contrasted with Koenig’s quick construction of the house. Due to its minimalist structural design and reduced number of building components compared to traditional wood construction, framing of the house was simplified. A crew of five men completed the job in one day.

The challenges of building were known, and they primarily related to the lot. “There’s very little land situated on this eagle nest high above Sunset Boulevard,” Koenig explained in the documentary film about the Case Study House Program. “So the swimming pool and the garage went on the best part, mainly because who wants to spend a lot of money supporting swimming pools and garages? And it’s very hard to support a pool on the edge of a cliff. The house it could handle. So the house is on the precarious edge.”

With the exception of the steel-frame fireplace (chimney and flue were prefabricated and brought to the site), Koenig used only two types of standard structural steel components: 12-inch beams and 4-inch H columns. The result is a profound demonstration of Koenig’s technical and aesthetic expertise with rigid-frame construction. The elimination of load-bearing walls on this scale represented the most advanced use of technology and materials for residential architecture ever.

Koenig’s success with steel-frame construction is partially due to William Porush, the structural engineer for the Stahl House. Porush engineered more than half of Koenig’s projects, beginning with Koenig’s first house in 1950.

A native of Russia, Porush emigrated to the U.S. in 1922 and graduated with a degree in civil engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1926. After working for a number of firms in Los Angeles and later with the LA Department of Building and Safety during World War II, Porush opened his own office in 1946 and eventually designed his own post-and-beam house in Pasadena in 1956.

The scale of his projects ranged from commercial buildings using concrete tilt-up construction in downtown Los Angeles to professional offices in Glendale, light industrial engineering, and a number of schools in Southern California—including traditional wood and brick, glass, and steel schools in Riverside.

Love midcentury homes?

Compare notes with other obsessives in our private Facebook group. 

When Porush retired at 89 years old, his son Ted ran the practice for several years before retiring himself. Speaking of both his and his father’s experience working with Koenig in 2012, Ted said, “Koenig was quite devoted and always had something in mind all the time without being unreasonable or obstinate, really an artist perhaps,” and added that he and his father “welcomed Koenig’s engineering challenges—whether related to innovations, materials, or budget constraints.”

General contractor Robert J. Brady was the other key member of Koenig’s Stahl House crew. Brady gained industry experience running a construction business in Ojai, California, where he was a school teacher. This was the only time Brady and Koenig worked together, as Koenig was dissatisfied, he later wrote, with Brady’s management of the Stahl House, as indicated in a letter to Brady himself in the Pierre Koenig papers at the Getty Research Institute.

In 1957, Koenig approached Bethlehem Steel about the development of a program for architects using light-steel framing in home construction. At the time, Bethlehem Steel did not see a market or need to formalize a program. Residential use of steel, while known, was still very uncommon.

“The steel house is out of the pioneering stage, but radically new technologies are long past due,” Koenig explained in an interview with Esther McCoy. “Any large-scale experiment of this nature must be conducted by industry, for the architect cannot afford it. Once it is undertaken, the steel house will cost less than the wood house.”

By 1959, Bethlehem Steel saw how quickly the market was changing and started a Pacific Coast Steel Division in Los Angeles to work specifically with architects. The division then shared their preliminary specifications with Koenig for architecturally exposed steel and solicited his comments and opinions.

To introduce Bethlehem’s new marketing effort, they published a booklet in 1960, “The Steel-Framed House: A Bethlehem Steel Report Showing How Architects and Designers Are Making Imaginative Use of Light-Steel Framing In Houses.” Koenig’s Bailey House (CSH No. 21) and the Stahl House both appeared in the booklet. Bethlehem promoted Koenig’s architecture with Shulman photographs and accompanying text: “What could be more sensible than to make this magnificent view of Los Angeles a part of the house—to ‘paper the walls’ with it?” and “Problem Sites? Not with steel framing!” The brochure showed multiple views of the Stahl House.

For architects, having work published during this time led to recognition and often translated to future projects. Arts & Architecture magazine and its publisher John Entenza played an essential role in promoting Koenig’s architecture. Entenza conceived of the Case Study House Program in the months prior to the end of World War II, in anticipation of the demand for affordable, thoughtfully designed middle-class housing, and introduced it in the magazine’s January 1945 issue. The purpose of the program was to promote new ways of living based on advances in design, construction, building methods, and materials.

After the war, an impetus to produce new forms emerged. In architecture, that meant a move away from traditionally built homes and toward modern design. The postwar availability of industrial and previously restricted materials, especially glass, steel, and cement, offered architects freedom to pursue new ideas. In addition to materials, the modern approach in home design resulted in less formal floor plans that could offer continuity, ease of flow, multipurpose spaces, fewer interior walls, sliding glass walls and doors, entryways, and carports. Homes were generally built with a flat roof, which helped define a horizontal feel. Interior finishes were simple and unadorned, and there was no disguising of materials.

The absence of traditional details became part of the new aesthetic. Both exterior and interior structures were simplified. This all contributed to perhaps the most significant appeal of postwar architecture in Southern California: indoor-outdoor living. By physically, visually, and psychologically integrating the indoors and outdoors, it offered a new, casual way of life that more actively connected people to their environment. Combined with year-round mild weather, these new houses afforded a growing sense of independence and freedom of expression.

Arts & Architecture presented works-in-progress and completed homes throughout its pages, devoting more space in the magazine to the modern movement than other publications. Trends with finishes, built-ins, and low-cost materials spread across homes in Southern California after publication in Arts & Architecture . The magazine’s modern aesthetic extended across the country, where architects developed new solutions based on what they had seen in its pages. And since it reached dozens of countries, the international influence of California modernism through Entenza’s editorial eye was profound.

The Case Study House Program provided a point of focus. As noted by Elizabeth Smith, art historian and museum curator, all 36 of the Case Study houses were featured in the magazine, although only 24 were built. With the exception of one apartment building, they were all single-family residences completed between 1945 and 1966.

“John Entenza’s idea was that people would not really understand modern architecture unless they saw it, and they weren’t going to see it unless it was built,” Koenig said in James Steel’s monograph. “[Entenza’s] talent was to promulgate ideas that many architects had at that time.”

In conjunction with the magazine, Entenza sponsored open houses at recently completed Case Study houses, giving visitors the opportunity to experience the modern aesthetic. Contemporary design pieces such as furniture, lamps, floor coverings, and decorative objects created a context for everyday living. The open houses took on a realistic dimension that generated a range of responses: “Oh, steel, glass and cement are cold.” “This is not homey.” “Could I live here?” “How would I live here?”

The program gave architects exposure and in many cases brought them credibility and a new clientele—although it was not a wealth-generating endeavor for the architects. For manufacturers and suppliers, it was a convenient way to receive publicity since people could see their products or services in use.

The Case Study House Program did not achieve Entenza’s goal: the development of affordable housing based on the design of houses in the program. None of the houses spurred duplicates or widespread construction of like-designed homes. The motivation from the building industry to apply the program’s new approaches was short-lived and not widely adopted.

Speaking many years later, Koenig stated in Steel’s monograph that “in the end the program failed because it addressed clients and architects, rather than contractors, who do 95 percent of all housing.” Instead, the known, accepted, and traditional design, methods of construction, and materials continued to prevail. Buyers still largely preferred conventional homes—a fact reinforced by the standard type of construction taught in many architecture schools during the postwar years.

However, today the program must be considered highly successful for its impact on residential architecture, and for initiating the California Modern Movement. The program influenced architects, designers, manufacturers, homeowners, and future home buyers. As McCoy reported, “The popularity of the Case Studies exceeded all expectations. The first six houses to be opened [built between 1946 and 1949] received 368,554 visitors.” The houses in the program, and their respective architects, now characterize their architectural era, representing the height of midcentury modern residential design.

The Stahl House became Case Study House No. 22 in the most informal way. With the success of Koenig’s Bailey House (CSH No. 21), Entenza told Koenig if he had another house for the program, to let him know. Koenig told him about his next project, the Stahl House.

In April 1959, months before construction started, Entenza and the Stahls signed an exclusive agreement indicating the house would become known as Case Study House No. 22 and appear in Arts & Architecture magazine. This also meant the house would be made available for public viewings over eight consecutive weekends and Entenza had the rights to publish photographs and materials in connection with the house. Additionally, he had approval of the furnishings. (He included an option for the Stahls to buy any or all of the furnishings at a discount.)

By agreeing to make their house CSH No. 22, the Stahls were making their dream home more affordable. Equipment and material suppliers sold at cost in exchange for advertising space in the magazine. The arrangement gave Koenig the opportunity to negotiate further with vendors, since he was likely to use them in the future. Buck estimated in his interview with Ethington that it “ended up saving us conservatively $10,000 or $15,000” on the construction.

The house was featured in Arts & Architecture four times between May 1959 and May 1960, in articles documenting its progress and completion.

Arts & Architecture only ended up opening the house for public viewings on four weekends, from May 7 to May 29, 1960. The showings were well attended, and the shorter schedule meant the Stahls could move into the house sooner.

The Stahl House is a 2,200-square-foot home with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, built on an approximately 12,000-square-foot lot.

Construction began in May 1959 and was completed a year later, in May 1960. The pre-construction built estimate was $25,000, with Koenig to receive his usual 10 percent architect’s fee. His agreement with the Stahls additionally provided him 10 percent of any savings he secured on construction materials. The budget for the house was revised to $34,000, but Koenig’s fee of $2,500 did not change.

The final cost was over $15 per square foot—notably more than the average cost per square foot of $10 to $12 in Southern California at the time.

During its lifetime, the Stahl House has had very few modifications. For a short time, AstroTurf surrounded the pool area to serve as a lawn and make the area less slippery for the Stahls’ three children. There have been minor kitchen remodels with necessary updates to appliances. The kitchen cabinets, which were originally dark mahogany, were replaced with matched-grain white-oak cabinets due to fading caused by heavy exposure to sunlight. A catwalk along the outside of the living room, on the west side, was added to make it easier to wash the windows. Stones were applied to the fireplace, which was originally white-painted gypsum board with a stone base. A stone planter was also added to match the base. The pool was converted to solar heat.

These changes maintain the spirit of the house. Perhaps without effort, Koenig activated what architect William Krisel termed “defensive architecture”: building to preempt alterations and keep a structure as originally designed. Koenig's original steel design, comprehending potential earthquake risk, remains superior to traditional building materials.

The Stahl House has served as the setting for dozens of films, television shows, music videos, and commercials. Its appearances in print advertisements number in the hundreds. By Koenig’s count, the house can be seen in more than 1,200 books.

At times, the house has played a leading role. Its first commercial use was in 1962, when the Stahls made the house available for the Italian film Smog not long after they moved in.

Movies featuring the Stahl House

The First Power (1990)

The Marrying Man (1991)

Corina Corina (1994)

Playing By Heart (1998)

Why Do Fools Fall In Love (1998)

Galaxy Quest (1999)

The Thirteenth Floor (1999)

Nurse Betty (2000)

Where the Truth Lies (2005)

In Los Angeles magazine, years later, Carlotta recalled the production: “One of the days they were shooting, the view was too clear, so they got spray and smogged the windows.” The Stahls grew to accept such requests, and the result has been decades of commercial use.

Koenig explained its attraction in the New York Times : “The relationship of the house to the city below is very photogenic … the house is open and has simple lines, so it foregrounds the action. And it’s malleable. With a little color change or different furniture, you can modify its emotional content, which you can’t do in houses with a fixed mood and image.”

This versatility offers a wide range of settings, from kitsch to urbane, comedy to drama. The house has also been rendered in 3D software for various architectural studies and appears in the game The Sims 3 , perhaps the most revealing proof of its demographic reach.

In nearly all appearances, the Stahl House conveys a sense of livability that is aspirational while remaining accessible. It reflects Koenig’s skillful architectural purpose. The architect is invisible by design. Understandably, Koenig was very pleased to see the frequent and varied use of the Stahl House. However, as he said in the New York Times , “My gripe is the movies use [houses] as props but never list the architect in the credits.” He added, “Architects, of course, get no residuals from it. The Stahls paid off the original $35,000 mortgage for the house and pool in a couple of years through location rentals, and now the house is their entire income.”

Once Buck retired in 1978, renting the house for commercial use became an especially helpful way to supplement their income. Today the family offers tours and rents the house for events and media activities. They also honor Carlotta’s restriction, noted in a 2001 interview with Los Angeles magazine: “I will not allow nudity. My Case Study House is not going to be associated with that.”

“Julius Shulman called. ... He’ll be there tonight. Call him at 6 p.m. and make arrangements for tonite. By then he’d appreciate it if you would know if Stahl could put off moving in until pictures are shot.”

This ordinary call logged in Koenig’s office journal eventually led to the creation of one of the most iconic photographs of the postwar modern era.

However, delays with completing interior details almost prevented Shulman from photographing the house and meeting his publication deadline, even after he negotiated with his editor to change it several times. The potential of missing an opportunity to promote the house frustrated Koenig. “As you know we were supposed to shoot Monday [April 18, 1960],” he wrote to his general contractor, Robert Brady:

“The deadline has been changed once but it is impossible to change it again. The die is set. Mr. Van Keppel is waiting to move furniture in. Shulman comes by the job every day to see when he can shoot. Mr. Entenza is shouting for photos so he can print the next issue. The president of Bethlehem is supposed to visit the finished house this Friday [April 22]. There is to be a press conference this week-end. Not to mention Mr. Stahl. This will give you some idea of the pressure being put on.”

After Brady completed the finishing work, and months after it was originally scheduled, Shulman photographed the house over the course of a week. There was still construction material in the carport, and the master bathroom was not complete.

The color image of the two women sitting in the house with the city lights at night first appeared on the cover of the July 17, 1960, Los Angeles Examiner Pictorial Living section, a pull-out section in the Sunday edition of the newspaper. The article about the house, “Milestone on a Hilltop,” also included additional Shulman photographs.

By the time Shulman photographed the Stahl House he was an internationally recognized photographer. He was indirectly becoming a documentarian, historian, participant, witness, and promulgator of modern architecture and design in Los Angeles.

The Stahl House photograph, taken Monday, May 9, 1960, has the feel of a Saturday night, projecting enjoyment and life in a modern home. Shulman reinforces the open but private space by minimizing the separation of indoor and outdoor. The photograph achieves a visual balance through lighting that is both conventional and dramatic. As with much of Shulman’s signature work, horizontal and vertical lines and corners appear in the frame to create depth and direct the viewer’s eye, creating a dimensional perspective instead of a flat, straightforward position. The effect is a narrative that emphasizes Koenig’s architecture.

“What’s so amazing is that the house is completely ethereal,” architect Leo Marmol said in an interview with LaFetra in 2007. “It’s almost as though it’s not there. We talk about it as though it’s a photograph of an architectural expression but really, there’s very little architecture and space. It’s a view. It’s two people. It’s a relationship.”

Shulman recalled how the image came about in an interview with Taina Rikala De Noriega for the Archives of American Art:

So we worked, and it got dark and the lights came on and I think somebody had brought sandwiches. We ate in the kitchen, coffee, and we had a nice pleasant time. My assistant and I were setting up lights and taking pictures all along. I was outside looking at the view. And suddenly I perceived a composition. Here are the elements. I set up the furniture and I called the girls. I said, “Girls. Come over sit down on those chairs, the sofa in the background there.” And I planted them there, and I said, “You sit down and talk. I'm going outside and look at the view.” And I called my assistant and I said, “Hey, let's set some lights.” Because we used flash in those days. We didn't use floodlights. We set up lights, and I set up my camera and created this composition in which I assembled a statement. It was not an architectural quote-unquote “photograph.” It was a picture of a mood.

The two girls in the photograph were Ann Lightbody, a 21-year-old UCLA student, and her friend, Cynthia Murfee (now Tindle), a senior at Pasadena High School. At Shulman’s suggestion, Koenig told his assistant Jim Jennings, a USC architecture student, and his friend, fellow architecture student Don Murphy, to bring their girlfriends to the house. Shulman liked to include people in his photographs and intuitively felt the girls’ presence would offer more options. As for their white dresses, Tindle explains, “… in 1960, you didn't go out without wearing a dress. You would never have gone out wearing jeans or pants.”

In a rare explanation of the mechanics of his photography published in Los Angeles Magazine , Shulman described how he created the photograph: a double-exposure with two images captured on one negative with his Sinar 4x5 camera. He took the first image, a 7.5-minute exposure of the cityscape, while the girls sat still inside the house with the lights off. To ensure deep focus, he used a smaller lens opening (F/32) for the long exposure. After the exposure, Leland Lee, Shulman’s assistant, replaced the light bulbs in the globe-shaped ceiling lights with flash bulbs. Shulman then captured the second exposure, triggering the flash bulbs as the girls posed. The composite image belies Shulman’s technical and aesthetic achievement.

The same technique was applied when he photographed the man wearing the light-blue sport coat looking out over the city with his back to the camera. This photograph creates its own mystique around the man’s identity: perhaps a bachelor in repose, or homeowner Buck Stahl. But in fact, he was neither. The photograph was a pragmatic solution.

“We had been working all day photographing the house,” Shulman explained. “The representative from Bethlehem Steel was at the house. Bethlehem Steel provided the steel, and he was there to select certain areas they wanted to show for advertising. Pierre [Koenig] suggested we photograph the representative in the house, but the man from Bethlehem Steel could not be photographed as an employee of the company, so he stood in the doorway with his back to the camera.”

Shulman routinely staged interiors using furniture from his own home, particularly when a house was just completed or vacant. He believed realistic settings created warmth and helped viewers imagine scale. Placement of furniture could convey a clearer sense of life in a particular house and highlight the architecture. Although the Stahl House was vacant, Shulman did not bring in his own furniture. Instead, designer Hendrik Van Keppel of the firm Van Keppel-Green furnished the interiors in keeping with Koenig’s feeling that “everything in the house should be designed consistently with the same design throughout.”

Keppel-Green’s popular outdoor furniture, made with anodized metal frames and wrapped with nylon marine cord, are seen around the pool of the Stahl House. Although VKG sold “architectural pottery” in their design gallery, many of the large white planters both inside and outside the house were Koenig’s, which he brought over from his own house along with several outdoor pieces. For the interior, Van Keppel selected a different line of metal VKG pieces to parallel the thin lines of Koenig’s architecture. The furniture and other household goods made of steel and aluminum reflected the materials used in the construction.

Other pieces included a couch; a coffee table; side tables by Greta Grossman, made by Brown Saltman; and a chair, ottoman, and chaise by Stanley Young, made by Glenn of California. For the kitchen, Van Keppel arranged a set of Scandinavian pieces: Herbert Krenchel’s Krenit bowls made by Normann Copenhagen, Kobenstyle cookware by Jens Quistgaard for Dansk, and Descoware pans from Belgium.

Van Keppel placed the high-fidelity audio player in the dining area. The unit was from the A.E. Rediger Furniture Company, which also provided the kitchen appliances. The Prescolite lighting company, whose products ranged from commercial and industrial products down to desk lamps, provided the three large white-glass hanging globe lights: two inside, one outside (more than 55 years later, only the outside globe has been replaced).

The Stahls had the option to buy the furnishings, but as their daughter later said in a Los Angeles Times story about the house, “My mother always said she wished they would have left it, but my parents didn't have the money at the time.”

The popularity of Shulman’s photograph with the two girls speaks to the era’s postwar optimism and could be said to represent aspirational middle class ideals. Shulman received a variety of accolades for the photograph beginning in 1960, when he won first prize in the color category for architectural photography from the Architects Institute of America—the first time the AIA gave an award for a color photograph. As part of a traveling program arranged through the Smithsonian Institution, hundreds of people saw the photograph at nearly a dozen museums and university art galleries across the country from 1962 to 1964.

Then, as now, the photograph with the two girls is more often associated with its photographer than with the architect. “People request the photograph, or an editor or publisher writing to me or calling me says, ‘I want the picture of the two girls,’” Shulman explains. “They don’t say the Pierre Koenig house. All they ask is the picture of the two girls. That’s what creates an impact. This picture is now the most widely published architectural picture in the world since it was taken in 1960.”

That was not always the case. After the photograph first appeared as the cover for the Los Angeles Examiner Pictorial Living section, it virtually disappeared. Koenig told LaFetra: “That was the last of it until Reyner Banham was going through Julius’s file and he saw the picture of the two girls and he said ‘Oh, I like this. Can I use this?’ and Julius said, ‘Sure.’ [Banham] used it in one of his articles and it took off, it just caught on like crazy.” The photograph resurfaced in Banham’s essential 1971 book, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies .

Smog , the first Italian film produced in the United States, as noted by the New York Times , was shot entirely in Los Angeles.

The story’s central character is a formal, class-conscious, wealthy Italian lawyer played by Enrico Maria Salerno. En route to Mexico for a divorce case, he arrives at LAX for an extended layover. A representative from the airline encourages him to leave the airport and return later for his flight. He begins a 24-hour odyssey that involves meeting several Italians making new lives for themselves, having left Italy and its postwar political and economic struggles.

One of the expatriates Salerno meets in Hollywood is a woman, played by Annie Girardot, who is conflicted by her independence. The Stahl House features prominently as Girardot’s home. To varying degrees, the characters, especially Salerno and Girardot, struggle with the contradictions of modern life and tradition, resulting in feelings of alienation, hope, and despair. Emotionally, Smog is an Italian story transplanted to Los Angeles, where the characters’ psychological landscape parallels the topography of the city, incorporating the city’s air pollution as a character.

Curiously, the film credits an entirely different residence—the Geodesic Dome House designed by Bernard Judge—and that property’s owner, industrial designer Hendrik de Kanter. Neither the Stahls, their home, nor Koenig are acknowledged. Along with Judge’s appearance in a party scene, the error perpetuates the misidentification of the Stahl House in the film.

CSH No. 22 remains virtually unchanged since Smog was released. Its countless media appearances since then continue to convey the ideals and lifestyle represented by the house. Its influence is cross-generational and international: Instead of perpetuating an architectural cliche of residential living, the house is symbolic and inspirational; its identity and feeling are unmistakable. Rarely has a combination of client and architect, minimal use of materials, and uncomplicated design created such lasting dramatic impact.

Editor: Adrian Glick Kudler

How to Avert the Next Housing Crisis

The neighbors issue, can a neighborhood become a network, loading comments..., share this story.

PODCAST: Inside LA’s Most Iconic Modernist Home, Case Study House #22

The story of an awe-inspiring building and the family that grew up there.

November 24, 2021 | 39:00

Subscribe to Art + Ideas:

“Buck wanted to stand in every room from his house, turn his head, and see every view. Even the bathroom. And so that was kind of what inspired the design of the house.”

Among the most famous photographs of modern architecture is Julius Shulman’s picture of Case Study House #22, also known as the Stahl House after the family that commissioned it. Two girls in white dresses sit inside a glass cube that seems to float atop a cliff over the illuminated grid of Los Angeles at night. Built by a family with a “beer budget and champagne tastes,” the two-bedroom home designed by architect Pierre Koenig changed residential design in LA. While Shulman’s image and others of the building have appeared in countless publications, advertisements, films, and TV shows, the story of how the house came to be and what it was like to live there is less well known.

MANAGEMENT &

DESIGN  CONSULTING

• Jun 15, 2021

The Legacy of the Stahl House

Updated: Aug 31, 2021

By Rachel Lehmann-Haupt

Over the weekend of May 22 and 23rd, MOCA+ worked with Palm Springs Art Museum to host a first look at a major exhibition, slated to open in November 2022, celebrating the legacy of Swiss-born architect Albert Frey , who has been called the “father of Desert Modernism.” The two-day event included a VIP tour of Frey House II , a screening of a film by Jake Gorst about Frey’s all-metal Aluminaire House, and a viewing of drawings and artifacts from Frey’s archives in the Palm Springs Art Museum Architecture and Design Center.

The Weekend of Architecture also featured a first look at a new book about Case Study House #22 , the most famous of the Case Study Houses and the only one still in the care of its original owners. The Stahl House: Case Study House #22: The Making of a Modernist Icon , to be released by Chronicle Books this fall, is the official biography of the Stahl House and the family who made it their home. On our panel, author Kim Cross interviewed siblings Shari Stahl Gronwald and Bruce Stahl, who grew up in Case Study House #22 and serve as stewards and hosts for the 7,000 people who tour the house each year.

MOCA+ recently sat down with Kim Cross , a New York Times Best-Selling author, journalist, and historian known for meticulously reported narrative nonfiction. Kim offered her perspective on the value of design, preservation (See: What Would Albert Frey Do? The Value of Preservation and Good Design ) and working with Bruce and Shari on the book.

There's this magical interaction between humans and built spaces—I call it “the geometry of home.” An empty house is a structure, but when you put people in it, it becomes a home.

MOCA+: Tell us about the panel you were part of ?

The first panel was about architectural preservation. Filmmaker Jake Gorst talked about his documentary on the Aluminaire House, the first all-metal prefab house, which debuted in New York City in 1931. Much like the Case Study House Program, it was an experiment in affordable housing and modern design with new materials—in this case, aluminum. The iconic house was forgotten and vandalized on a college campus for years, and two architects spent decades trying to rescue it and find a new home for it. It was disassembled and transported to Palm Springs, where it will be rebuilt as part of the museum’s permanent campus. Bruce Stahl and I talked about how tours really allow people to connect with architecture in a way that’s not possible in photos or films. When people visit the Stahl House, they’re often moved to tears. Storytelling and tours are an important part of preservation, because you can’t save what you don’t love. No one understands this better than our moderator, George Smart, founder of the US Modernist Archive , a not-for-profit through which he has set out to assemble the largest open digital archive of 20th century U.S. architecture magazines.

MOCA+: What was the highlight of the conversation?

Bruce Stahl focused on the importance of letting people go inside a house and experience the architecture for themselves. His and Shari’s parents, Buck and Carlotta Stahl, opened their doors to strangers for five decades, and Julius Shulman called Carlotta the ultimate ambassador for modernist architecture. Being in that house is so different from seeing photos or reading about it in a book. There's this magical interaction between humans and built spaces—I call it “the geometry of home.” An empty house is a structure, but when you put people in it, it becomes a home. Bruce talked about this moment when visitors walk into the Stahl house, and look out of the windows. The city of LA opens up and rolls out like a carpet to the sea in front of them. People gasp and Bruce calls it “the wow moment.” That's what our book is really about: the intersection of people and architecture.

MOCA+: Is that why the family story is such an important part of the book?

Yes. Bruce has said that if you ask visitors to the house why they loved it, they always say they love the family story. The number one question for tour guides is, “What about the family who lived here? What were they like?” Many people assume that it was home to someone rich and famous, but the Stahls were just a regular middle-class family. They raised three kids in a 2-bedroom, 2,300-square-foot house. For a long time, they struggled financially. When Buck lost his job, they had to move in with Carlotta’s mom and rent their house out to cover the mortgage. It's the only mid-century Case Study house that is still in the hands of the original owners. Bruce and Shari talk about being the stewards of the house. No one knows who they are, but the house they grew up in is famous. Shari books all of the tours and manages the photoshoots and filming days. She jokes that she sometimes feels like the personal assistant of a high-maintenance celebrity.

MOCA+: Why do you think visitors become so enamored by the story of the house?

It's the story of a blue-collar family with a white-collar dream. The Stahls were living in a little apartment in the Hollywood Hills, which were relatively undeveloped in the early 1950s. There were a lot of empty lots. From their apartment they could see a ridge that was being graded for development. On its nose was this one tiny lot that looked like an island in the sky. They’d look at it and say “We’re going to live there one day!“ They started calling it “our lot.” One day, they drove up there to visit it, and they were standing there, drinking in the view, and all of a sudden, they heard tires crunching on gravel and this car drove up. By total chance, it was the owner of the lot who lived in La Jolla. They bought it on a handshake for $12,500, and the owner agreed to carry the mortgage. It took them four years to pay it off. During that time, Buck graded the lot by hand and built a model of the house he dreamed about. Several architects told him the lot and his dream house were unbuildable. Then he found Pierre Koenig, who was just finishing Case Study House #21 . Koenig knew how to build with steel, and he knew how to take off-the-shelf parts and combine them in a way that was not only economical, but beautiful. He took Buck’s ideas and elevated them into a masterpiece.

People love the house because they can relate to Buck and Carlotta—regular folks who worked really hard to build their dream house. I think their story makes people feel like they can chase their own crazy dream.

Rachel Lehmann-Haupt is the founder of StoryMade Studio , a boutique storytelling studio that works with brands and thought leaders.

Recent Posts

Function and Form

USModernist Appoints Michela O’Connor Abrams as Chief Advancement Officer

The Stahl House—As You've Never Seen It

• explore more
• icons at risk
• icons for sale
• video lectures
• members login
• contact & info

news restoration conferences meet the experts IH on tour friends

City icons: amsterdam - don't miss, festive city icons kick off with talk by linda vlassenrood, more mies - pure architecture in haus lange haus esters, an elementalist and mediterranean architecture, through a bauhaus lens: edith tudor-hart and isokon, modernism week lecture: 10 years of iconic houses, aluminaire house grand opening, exhibition icons of the czech avant-garde, icon for sale - loos villa: haus horner, special – iconic dreams europe - sleep in an iconic house, special – german greats, special - vacances en france, special - casas icónicas en españa, special – dutch delights, special – iconic artist residencies, special – northern (high)lights, special – iconic housing, special – women & iconic houses, winy wants a world wonder, welcome atelier volten, public screenings and private streaming of pioneers of the dutch modern house, sleep in a modernist gem – huis billiet in bruges, iconic houses in the netherlands - 100 years van zessen house, exclusive tour and film screening package, the last house designed by adolf loos will be built in prague, icons of the czech avantgarde, icon for sale - casa legorreta, rietveld day: 200 enthusiasts explored 3 utrecht icons, hurray 10 years iconic houses, 7th international iconic houses conference a huge success, meet conference co-chair iveta černá, meet conference co-chair maria szadkowska, eighteen iconic houses under one roof, 17 june - 'pioneers-film' screening amersfoort, iconic houses in the netherlands - van eesteren house museum, welcome margarete schütte-lihotzky zentrum in vienna, welcome vila volman jewel of czech functionalism, movie night: adolf loos- revolutionary among architects, 'inside iconic houses' case study house #26 webcast in webshop, inside iconic houses at taut’s home in berlin, rediscovering forgotten loos interiors in pilsen, 'inside iconic houses' - online tour program, iconic houses in the netherlands - the diagoon house, iconic houses in the netherlands - rietveld schröder house, rietveld houses owners association, corberó space: new life for hidden jewel, iconic houses in the netherlands - pierre cuypers' house and workshops, reeuwijk celebrates completion of restoration rietveld homes, iconic houses in the netherlands - van doesburg rinsema house, welcome rietveld's van daalen house, architect harry gessner passed away at 97, watch pioneers of the dutch modern house now on demand, icon saved: dorchester drive house, welcome umbrella house, iconic houses in the netherlands – berlage’s masterpiece, iconic houses in the netherlands - het schip, inside iconic houses - tour of maison cazenave, inside iconic houses tours vizcaya museum & gardens in miami, casa masó celebrates 10 year anniversary, inside iconic houses tours roland reisley's usonian frank lloyd wright house, rietveld’s experimental housing in reeuwijk saved, serralves villa after restoration, portraits of the architect - interview with gennaro postiglione, test labs for new ideas - interview with natascha drabbe, inside iconic houses - isokon building, inside iconic houses - 16 december: sunnylands with janice lyle, bcn-bxl coderch-de koninck - beyond time, new chairman architect nanne de ru on the perfect platform, health and home - interview with beatriz colomina, a life less ordinary – interview with valentijn carbo, invisible women - interview with alice t. friedman, winy maas on the green dip, anita blom on experimental housing of the 1970s, women’s worlds - interview with natalie dubois, the culture of living - interview with robert von der nahmer, hetty berens: a fresh take on modernism, niek smit on supporting modern heritage, alice roegholt on amsterdam’s working-class palaces, july is iconic houses month, hans van heeswijk on the pioneers of the dutch modern house, wessel de jonge on dutch icons at risk, save maison zilveli - sign the petition, how a building tells a story - recorded event, toolkit for owners of a modern house, 13 aalto sites nominated for unesco world heritage, villa beer at risk - sign the petition, business cards of stone, timber and concrete in the brussels region 1830-1970, exhibiting & visiting modernist monuments, fostering well-researched responsible design, icons at risk, enjoy a virtual visit to the california house and a q&a with architect peter gluck, exhibition 'modernism and refuge', a hidden gem of postmodernism, new centre for historic houses of india, an online chronicle of the douglas house, villa henny, geometric style icon in the netherlands, a mendini temple in amsterdam, ih-lectures usa & canada feb 2020 on melnikov house, sponsors and friends, an afternoon with the glucks, chandler mccoy on making modern houses sustainable, catherine croft: getting away from the demolition mentality in the uk, patrick weber on discovering an unknown icon, fiona fisher on iconic interiors, jocelyn bouraly on villa cavrois, mireia massagué on finding success through a new kind of partnership, danish moderns – looking back at our mini-seminar, venturo house complements exhibition centre weegee’s offering, lecture report: remembering richard neutra, hôtel mezzara and the guimard museum project, we welcome 13 new members, breaking news: 8 wright sites inscribed on unesco world heritage list, lecture 29 august - raymond neutra: my father and frank lloyd wright, iconic reads, our badge of honour, iconic houses end year message, city-ordered rebuild of landmark house stirs debate: appropriate or overreach, kohlberg house restoration in progress, planned demolition of rietveld homes in reeuwijk, renovation gili house in crisis, an iconic saga, restoring eileen gray’s villa e-1027 and clarifying the controversies, modernism on the east coast, iconic houses in latin america, conference testimonials, house tours may 2018 , expert meetings, natascha drabbe - iconic houses: the next chapter, terence riley -keynote speaker- on philip johnson, new era for villa e-1027 and cap moderne, hilary lewis on philip johnson and his glass house, john arbuckle on great house tours, william d. earls on the harvard five in new canaan, stover jenkins on working for philip johnson, frederick noyes on his father’s house, scott fellows and craig bassam on their passion for preservation, jorge liernur -keynote speaker- on latin american modernism(s), fabio grementieri on modernism in argentina, catalina corcuera cabezut on casa luis barragán, renato anelli on lina bo bardi’s casa de vidro, tim mcclimon on corporate preservation, amanda nelson on building donor relationships, john bacon on planned giving, jean-paul warmoes on the art of fundraising in america, chandler mccoy on why less is more, katherine malone-france on moving with the times, anne mette rahbæk on philanthropic investments and preservation, peter mcmahon on saving modern houses on cape cod, toshiko kinoshita on japanese modern heritage houses, roland reisley on life in a frank lloyd wright house, 5th iconic houses conference may 2018, kristin stone, pasadena tour company, restoring the past: the diego rivera and frida kahlo home studio, behind the scenes: hendrick de keyser association, crosby doe, architecture for sale, latin america special – focus on mexico, de stijl in drachten, preserving the nancarrow house-studio, meet the friends - nanne de ru, latin america special – focus on brazil, jan de jong’s house is latest hendrick de keyser acquisition, stay in a belgian modernist masterpiece, in berlin’s modernist network, rietveld-schröder house celebrates de stijl anniversary, meet our new foundation board members, maintaining aalto's studio – linoleum conservation, virtual tour of a papaverhof home in 3d, getty grant for villa e-1027, plečnik house in ljubljana, iconic dacha, iconic houses: a bohemian road trip, work in progress: capricho de gaudí, 11 le corbusier homes now on unesco world heritage list, at home with le corbusier, henry van de velde’s study in haus hohe pappeln restored, lynda waggoner reports, a conference to remember, 4th international iconic houses conference, guest of honor - harry gesner, fallingwater: european lecture tour, wright plus 2016 walk, susan macdonald, getty conservation institute, john mcllwee, garcia house, meet the friends – elisabeth tostrup, iconic houses: the story so far, willie van burgsteden, designer iconic houses, buff kavelman, philanthropic advisor, meet the friends - frederick noyes, sheridan burke, gml heritage, meet the friends - raymond neutra, sidney williams, frey house, franklin vagnone and deborah ryan, museum anarchists, meet the friends - james haefner, toshiko mori, architect, malachi connolly, cape cod modern house trust, meet the friends - penny sparke, lucia dewey atwood, eames house, cory buckner, mutual housing site office, jeffrey herr, hollyhock house, speaking volumes: building the iconic houses library, sarah lorenzen, neutra vdl studio and residences, ted bosley, gamble house, keeping it modern - getty conservation grants, meet the friends - thomas schönauer, wim de wit, stanford university, linda dishman, los angeles conservancy, jesse lattig, pasadena heritage, join us in los angeles update, work in progress: casa vicens, work in progress: van wassenhove house, work in progress: villa cavrois, work in progress: the pearlroth house, conference calls, third iconic houses conference a huge success, conference house tours barcelona, marta lacambra, fundació catalunya-la pedrera, natascha drabbe, iconic houses foundation, special speaker oscar tusquets, jordi tresserras, unesco network ‘culture, tourism and development’, christen obel, utzon foundation, elena ruiz sastre, casa broner, fernando alvarez prozorovich, la ricarda, tim benton, professor of art history (emeritus), susana landrove, docomomo spain, rossend casanova, casa bloc, conference program 25 november 2014, jordi falgàs, casa rafael masó, documentary la ricarda, marga viza, casa míla/la pedrera, celeste adams, frank lloyd wright trust, conference 25 november 2014 at la pedrera, henry urbach, the glass house, victoria & albert museum london november 12, tommi lindh, new director of the alvar aalto foundation and museum, iveta černá, villa tugendhat, lynda waggoner, fallingwater, kimberli meyer, mak center, rent a house designed by gerrit rietveld, barragán house on screen, gesamtkunstwerk – an icon on the move, triennale der moderne 27 september - 13 october 2013, prestigious art nouveau mansions in brussels open, september 14 + 15: heritage days in paris, june's new arrivals: museum apartments, iconic houses is now on twitter and facebook, corbu’s cabanon: reconstruction and lecture, projekt mies in krefeld: life-sized model of the krefeld clubhouse, new arrivals: spain special, mamo: le corbu’s ‘park in the sky’ open 12 june, taut's home wins europa nostra award, annual wright architectural housewalk: 18 may, frank lloyd wright homes on screen, message from the editor, neutra’s house on screen, michel richard, fondation le corbusier, symposium the public and the modern house, melnikov house on screen, iconic houses in the media, round table review, eileen gray house on screen, copy culture, at home in the 20th century, new 20th century iconic houses website launches, philippe bélaval, centre des monuments nationaux.

Case Study House #26 was built in San Rafael (near San Francisco) in 1962, on a design by Beverley Thorne. Intended as the residence of Bethlehem Steel CEO Harrison Fuller, after his death, a TWA pilot/flight attendant couple lived in this home until it was sold in 2015. Commemorating the 60th anniversary of CSH#26, the next episode of ‘Inside Iconic Houses’ will be streaming on November 17, followed by a live Q&A session with the current Case Study House owners and residents Alfonso Cordon and Cord Struckmann. Tickets to the event can be purchased in our webshop .

The design is based on a simple concept: A shoebox comprised of 8 identical bays, steel-framed and covered with a flat roof. The social spaces are accentuated by a double height space, whose dramatic roof follows the slope of the lot. Using a steel structure allowed the ultimate indoor/outdoor living experience: All typical exterior walls are fully glazed; also allowing panoramic views over the nearby State Park and golf course. Landscape designer Garrett Eckbo (EDAW, now Aecom) designed the landscape. Recent renovation and preservation work was conducted by Cord Struckmann, AIA.

Both past and current owners have been taking great care to preserve the home for future generations.

Architect Beverley (David) Thorne (1924 - 2017) liked the challenge to design houses for hillsides, typically shunned by regular developers. His preferred medium was steel. It allowed him large spans, boldly cantilevered structures, while reducing earthwork and number of foundations to the absolute minimum.

He himself helped welding the steel members for Case Study House, which is his only Case Study House project.

A graduate of UC Berkeley, David Thorne gained early fame for his spectacular 1954 Oakland home for jazz musician Dave Brubeck. Working later under his given name Beverley and out of the limelight of architecture circles, he completed more than 100 homes throughout California and Hawaii, where he spent his last years. He was the last living architect of the Case Study House program.

The Case Study House Program ran from 1944 to 1967 and was sponsored by the ‘Arts and Architecture’ magazine. The idea of editor John Entanza, with support from the Eames, Richard Neutra, and others, was to show the American public how families can live in modern times: with modern layouts, good connection to the outdoors, with modern amenities like cars, electric and appliances, and using industrial materials to allow for efficient, inexpensive construction.

Under the program, about 30 homes were designed; and about 20 were built; with almost all of them in the Los Angeles area. The 1949 Eames House (#8) and the 1960 Stahl House (#22) are the most well-known ones. After construction, each Case Study House was open to the public for tours. For the Case Study House 26’s Open Houses in 1962, helicopters landed on the roof - aka helipad - ; one of the house’s innovative features.

The program represented the optimistic, innovative character of post-war Californian architecture. Only few of the Case Study Houses - with #26 among them - are still in their original condition.

More info on www.casestudyhouse.com and Instagram at @casestudyhouse26.

Publication date 10 November 2022

• Arts & Photography
• Architecture

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Case Study Houses Hardcover – Download: Adobe Reader, June 1, 2009

The Case Study House program (1945–66) was an exceptional, innovative event in the history of American architecture and remains to this day unique. The program, which concentrated on the Los Angeles area and oversaw the design of 36 prototype homes, sought to make available plans for modern residences that could be easily and cheaply constructed during the postwar building boom.

The program’s chief motivating force was Arts & Architecture editor John Entenza, a champion of modernism who had all the right connections to attract some of architecture’s greatest talents, such as Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eero Saarinen. Highly experimental, the program generated houses that were designed to redefine the modern home, and thus had a pronounced influence on architecture—American and international—both during the program’s existence and even to this day.

TASCHEN brings you a monumental retrospective of the entire program with comprehensive documentation, brilliant photographs from the period and, for the houses still in existence, contemporary photos, as well as extensive floor plans and sketches.

• Print length 440 pages
• Language Multilingual
• Publisher Taschen America Llc
• Publication date June 1, 2009
• Dimensions 10.5 x 1.75 x 13.5 inches
• ISBN-10 9783836510219
• See all details

Similar items that may ship from close to you

Editorial Reviews

About the author, product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ 3836510219
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Taschen America Llc (June 1, 2009)
• Language ‏ : ‎ Multilingual
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 440 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9783836510219
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.51 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 10.5 x 1.75 x 13.5 inches
• #162 in Architectural History
• #178 in Residential Architecture
• #2,414 in U.S. State & Local History

Videos for this product

Click to play video

Case Study Houses is the ultimate coffee table book

✅ minimalgoods

About the author

Elizabeth a. t. smith.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Reviews with images

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Start Selling with Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

Find anything you save across the site in your account

Must-See Design Documentaries

By architecturaldigest.com

dam-images-resources-2012-04-documentary-films-architecture-design-documentaries-01-eames.jpg

Charles & Ray Eames: The Architect and the Painter (2011)

Together Charles and Ray Eames helped to revolutionize 20th-century design—and not just with the chairs, tables, and storage units that have become synonymous with their name. What began as a desire to create quality yet mass-produced home furnishings—“the best for the most for the least” in their words—the Eames office, run a bit like a Renaissance studio, grew into one of the most creative firms in midcentury America. This film, directed by Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey, is a frank portrayal of the pair’s professional and personal relationship, at times riddled with tension, and their tremendous contribution not only to furniture design but also film, photography, art, branding, and graphics. There’s a reason why their work continues to resonate so strongly today. Shown as part of PBS’s “American Masters” series, the film currently can be watched in its entirety at pbs.org . firstrunfeatures.com

Charles and Ray Eames at home, circa 1970.

dam-images-resources-2012-04-documentary-films-architecture-design-documentaries-02-norman-foster.jpg

How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? (2010)

Born on the wrong side of the tracks in Manchester, England, Norman Foster rose from humble beginnings to become one of the world’s most famous architects and a British Lord. How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? is an unsentimental look at the Pritzker Prize winner’s career, narrated by Deyan Sudjic, director of London’s Design Museum. Touching on Foster’s days at Yale under Paul Rudolph and tutelage under Buckminster Fuller—whose question to the impressionable up-and-coming architect gives the documentary its name—the film uses breathtaking cinematography to capture Foster’s best-known works: HSBC’s Hong Kong headquarters, the reconstruction of Berlin’s Reichstag, and the Millau Viaduct in France. A pilot himself, he transformed airport architecture with Stansted and, more recently, Beijing’s mammoth Capital International Airport. Guided by a work ethic instilled in him by his blue-collar parents, Foster—well into his seventies—continues to cycle and compete in cross-country skiing marathons, while running a global practice that reached 1,400 employees before the market crash. He is a man who expects no less of himself than he does from his buildings. mrfostermovie.com

Sir Norman Foster at his London office.

dam-images-resources-2012-04-documentary-films-architecture-design-documentaries-03-objectified.jpg

Objectified (2009)

The second film in Gary Hustwit’s design trilogy (which includes 2007’s Helvetica and last year’s Urbanized ), Objectified delves into the stories behind everyday products, ranging from vegetable peelers to iMacs, and examines the process from concept to finished item and the relationship between objects and their owners. Innovators such as Dieter Rams, Hella Jongerius, Marc Newson, and Apple’s Jonathan Ive discuss their philosophies on design and the driving forces behind their work—whether they are making an existing item better, creating a sustainable alternative, or inventing something completely novel. The film is a must-see for anyone interested in the often invisible hand of design in our daily lives. objectifiedfilm.com

From left: The film’s poster, and Tim Brown of IDEO.

dam-images-resources-2012-04-documentary-films-architecture-design-documentaries-04-pruitt-igoe-myth.jpg

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (2011)

This quietly devastating film begins with an architectural dream fulfilled: In the early 1950s, federal funding helped the city of St. Louis build the most ambitious public housing development in its history. Designed by George Hellmuth and Minoru Yamasaki (the architect of the World Trade Center), the 33 Pruitt-Igoe towers were radiant examples of Corbusian rationalism, houses in the sky for lower- and middle-income families. Two decades later they were literally in ruins, destroyed by the city in a radical move to stem the violence and crime that had turned them into prisons. What went wrong? Were modernist ideals to blame, as some critics suggested at the time? The Pruitt-Igoe Myth unpacks the story by looking at the complex relationship between issues of class, race, and public policy that influenced both the failure of Pruitt-Igoe and the fate of the post-World-War-II American city. Director Chad Freidrichs wisely gives former residents a voice here, too, and their stories are at the heart of the film. pruitt-igoe.com

A half-demolished building in the Pruitt-Igoe complex.

By Katherine McLaughlin

By Perri Ormont Blumberg

By John Wogan

dam-images-resources-2012-04-documentary-films-architecture-design-documentaries-06-sketches-frank-gehry.jpg

Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005)

There’s no doubting the star power of this widely seen documentary’s subject, whose twin masterpieces, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, are among the world’s most recognizable buildings. The film also had a famous director, the late Sydney Pollack, best known for movies such as Tootsie and The Way We Were, who asks at the outset, “What’s so hot about Frank Gehry? What’s all the fuss about?” But it’s clear that the mutual admiration between these giants of their fields ran deep. Wielding a handheld camera and disarming average-joe questions, Pollack constructs an engrossing, candid portrait of Gehry’s career and creative process, how his sketches and models become buildings—“a living thing,” as the architect puts it. The film’s talking heads include Gehry’s rich and powerful clients—Eisner, Ovitz, Diller—a gushing Philip Johnson, even his therapist. Julian Schnabel, hamming it up in full caricature mode, wearing a robe and holding a snifter, delivers one of the best lines. Addressing a criticism often leveled at the Bilbao museum, he says that if the architecture “does compete with the art, maybe that art isn’t good enough.” sonyclassics.com/sketchesoffrankgehry

Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

dam-images-resources-2012-04-documentary-films-architecture-design-documentaries-07-unfinished-spaces.jpg

Unfinished Spaces (2011)

Commissioned by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in 1961, Cuba’s National Art Schools in Havana were conceived as world-class training centers for artists, dancers, musicians, and actors. Though construction was halted in 1965, the complex has hosted young talents from across Cuba for 50 years, even as the modernist structures have fallen into ruin and buildings have become overgrown with vegetation. Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray’s documentary examines the schools’ creation and decay, offering a revealing portrait of architecture in post-revolution Cuba. Most poignantly, the filmmakers chronicle the efforts of the schools’ architects—Roberto Gottardi, Ricardo Porro, and Vittorio Garatti, all now in their 80s—to restore and complete the campus after years of neglect and criticism. unfinishedspaces.com

Havana’s School of Ballet, designed by Vittorio Garatti.

dam-images-resources-2012-04-documentary-films-architecture-design-documentaries-05-my-architect.jpg

My Architect: A Son’s Journey (2003)

Nominated for an Academy Award in 2004, Nathaniel Kahn’s documentary traces his quest to learn about the father he knew only fleetingly by examining his works of architecture. Louis Kahn is described in the film by his friends and peers—including Philip Johnson, Vincent Scully, I.M. Pei, and Robert A.M. Stern—as short, ugly, willful, obsessive, and impatient. But there is more than meets the eye with Kahn. He led a secret life that included two illegitimate children with different women—both of whom had worked in his office. Nathaniel, the youngest, was 11 when Kahn died bankrupt and alone at 73 in New York’s Penn Station on his way back from Bangladesh, where he traveled to create the kind of timeless, monumental buildings he found too difficult to realize in this country. It’s a touching, sometimes heartbreaking look at one of modernism’s most rigorous and complex masters. myarchitectfilm.com

From left: The film’s poster and Louis Kahn with his son Nathaniel, circa 1970.

dam-images-resources-2012-04-documentary-films-architecture-design-documentaries-09-mies-van-der-rohe.jpg

Regular or Super: Views on Mies van der Rohe (2005)

The German-born architect Mies van der Rohe was prone to long silences. Between sips on martinis and puffs of his beloved cigars—habits his colleagues remember well—the legendary modernist would sit for hours, staring out the window. Once when his grandson, also an architect, asked what he was doing, he simply replied, “I’m working.” Regular or Super explores, as Mies did, every detail of how people perceive his thoughtful buildings, supplemented by interviews with former students, scholars, and architects such as Elizabeth Diller and Rem Koolhaas. It is a terrific primer on his career, from his work in Germany (including a stint as director of the Bauhaus) to his stately masterpiece, the Seagram Building, to his final great work, Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie. Not to be forgotten: a lowly, but no less ingenious, Montreal gas station he designed in 1968, now a community center. The project makes a resolute argument for Mies’s most enduring dictum, “less is more.” It also inspired the movie’s titular question—one whose answer, the filmmakers suggest, is far from simple. icarusfilms.com

Mies van der Rohe in his Chicago apartment, 1964.

dam-images-resources-2012-04-documentary-films-architecture-design-documentaries-10-julius-shulman.jpg

Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman (2008)

The celebrated architectural photographer Julius Shulman got his start, essentially by chance, shooting a Richard Neutra house for a friend. The architect admired Shulman’s photo and took him under his wing, later introducing him to fellow modernists such as Rudolph Schindler, John Lautner, and Raphael Soriano. Shulman’s career took off, and he ended up working around the world—though he will always be most closely associated with the midcentury Southern California houses at the heart of this documentary, which is narrated by Dustin Hoffman and features interviews with Frank Gehry, Benedikt Taschen, and an articulately passionate Tom Ford. The irrepressible Shulman, who celebrated his 95th birthday during the making of the film and died a year after it premiered, demonstrates an impressive memory of decades-old episodes. He recalls how Lautner tried to stop him from shooting his famous twilight picture of the Kaufmann House and its pool in Palm Springs, only to take credit for it years later. The film’s longest segment is devoted to Shulman’s nighttime photograph of Pierre Koenig’s glass-walled Case Study House #22, cantilevered above the lights of Los Angeles, with two women (girlfriends of architects in Koenig’s office, Shulman reveals) seated inside. Veteran cinematographer Dante Spinotti even films a segment re-creating Shulman’s iconic image, putting the photographer inside his own masterpiece. juliusshulmanfilm.com

From left: The film’s poster, featuring Shulman’s 1960 photo of Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House #22, and his 1964 image of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

dam-images-resources-2012-04-documentary-films-architecture-design-documentaries-08-rem-koolhaas.jpg

Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect (2008)

Pritzker Prize and starchitect label notwithstanding, Rem Koolhaas enjoys a renown that reaches far beyond his field. Approaching his craft differently than most, the Dutchman sees architecture as a way of bringing creativity to the urban landscape while critically addressing conflicting ideas—rationality versus irrationality, order versus chaos, transparency versus privacy—that exist in today’s developed world. This engaging documentary examines the groundbreaking work of Koolhaas’s Rotterdam-based firm OMA and looks at how his theories are manifested in physical spaces, from the Casa da Música in Porto, Portugal, to the China Central Television headquarters in Beijing, China. It’s a compelling portrait of a man who defies simple labels: writer, filmmaker, philosopher, and visionary. arthousefilmsonline.com

Rem Koolhaas.

By Gabriela Ulloa

By Jessica Cherner

By Elizabeth Fazzare

Case Study House Program

The case study house program: origins, meanings, and protagonists, on the participation of northern california architects to the case study house program.

________________________________________

Case Study House #3

Information Description Plan Photos Architect’s Biography

Case Study House #19

Case study house #26.

Information Description Plans Photos Architect’s Biography

Case Study House #27

References & further reading, bay area architects’ designs for the, case study house program, 1949 – 1963.

By Pierluigi Serraino

The Case Study House program and the magazine Arts and Architecture are two inseparable twins in the historical narratives of California Modernism in its post-war phase. Common denominator of both was John Entenza (1905-1984), as editor from 1940 to 1962 of the magazine California Arts and Architecture, a title he changed in 1945 to Arts and Architecture, gave an international manner — both in terms of its compellingly lanky graphics and its cerebral content — to what had been mostly a regional periodical of limited distribution. Both the magazine and the Case Study House Program he masterminded hinged upon the recognition that the architecture of his time was rooted in technology, a symbolic source of its outer expression in the public realm.  

The long span, steel, joinery, plywood, modularity, open plan, car mobility, aluminum, and glazing systems, were the tools and the lexicon of the post-war architect and the citizen of a technological society. For Entenza, the environmental habitat of California had to arise from the civilian application of the radical innovations in mechanical systems, new materials, and building science advancements gained during the World War II, especially because of the military industry’s major presence in California.

The Case Study House program started as Entenza’s personal project, partially financed through his own resources, that lasted two decades. This initiative was the game-changer in the authoritative aura that California Modernism acquired worldwide. Entenza led the program from 1945 to 1962 till he moved to Chicago to head the Graham Foundation. David Travers continued it from 1962 until its end in 1966. They both handpicked the architects that were going to be included in the program, absent of a truly objective criteria or checklist. While Entenza wrote the program’s manifesto himself and published it, the houses and architects chosen for inclusion are an eclectic mix of design expressions.

While most of the built (and unbuilt) residential projects of the Case Study House program are located in Southern California, the design community behind this renown cultural initiative is far from regional. In fact, the roaster of architects Entenza and Travers selected during their respective tenure offers a revealing picture of both the composite nature of signatures called to fulfill the promises of the January 1st , 1945, manifesto and of what flavor of modernism was being disseminated for the post-war home.

Some household names are from California- William Wurster from Stockton, Ray Kaiser from Sacramento, Pierre Koenig from San Francisco- as well as some lesser-known, such as Ed Killingsworth. John Rex, Worley Wong, and Calvin Straub, among others. A sizeable group of CSH architects was from out of state and had a cultural connection with the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, the legendary design school founded by Eliel Saarinen. From that milieu, the list is truly impressive: Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen, Ralph Rapson, Don Knorr. Others were from other parts of the country and landed either for family reasons or for college to Southern California. Additionally, others

came from Europe, most notably Richard Neutra from Vienna, Julius Ralph Davidson from Berlin, and Raphael Soriano from Rhodes, Greece. In this eclectic mix, various gradations of common themes- relationship with WWII technology, and material, open planning, one-level single-family homes, and an overall permeable relationship between indoor and outdoor, found specific manifestations in the talent of these creatives. These prototypes for living were conceived as models to shape much of post-war living for present and future generations.

Four teams of Bay Area architects were involved in the CSH Program. Under the Entenza’s era, there was the now-demolished CSH #3 in Los Angeles designed and built in 1945 by William Wurster and Theodore Bernardi and the unbuilt CSH #19 by Don Knorr for a site in the San Francisco South Bay in 1957. During the Traver’s lead, Beverley David Thorne’s CSH #26 was realized in 1962 in San Rafael, whereas CSH #27 by Campbell & Wong, in association with Don Allen Fong, of 1963 for a site in Smoke Rise, New Jersey, remained on paper. These Bay Area contributions have been intermittently acknowledged in the publications surrounding this one-of-a-kind initiative.

Yet, they provide documentary evidence of the commitment of the local community of designers to offering updated architectural propositions consistent with the changing needs of the California, and American, post-war society.

Past Exhibitions

Architecture + the City Festival

Whitney Young Jr.

Cookie banner

We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy . Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use , which became effective December 20, 2019.

By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies.

Site search

• Los Angeles
• San Francisco
• Archive.curbed.com
• For Sale
 in LA
• For Rent in LA
• Curbed Comparisons
• Neighborhoods
• Real Estate Market Reports
• Rental Market Reports
• Homelessness
• Development
 News
• Transportation
• Architecture


Case Study Houses

Filed under:

• The beginner’s guide to Los Angeles

The Case Study houses that made LA a modernist mecca

Mapping the homes that helped to define an era.

Case Study House No. 21 in Laurel Canyon returns asking $3.6M

Also known as the Bailey House, the steel and glass residence was designed by Pierre Koenig.

Case Study House No. 18 asking $10M in Pacific Palisades

Called West House, the 1948 residence was designed by influential modernist Rodney Walker.

Kristen Wiig picks up Pasadena’s Case Study House No. 10 for $3M

Built in 1947, the house was designed by Kemper Nomland and Kemper Nomland Jr. for Arts & Architecture’s influential design series.

Long Beach's midcentury modern tour will showcase 9 era-defining homes

On October 15, nine homes will open their doors to the public in an event to benefit an upcoming exhibition on influential furniture dealer Frank Bros. The store’s sophisticated offerings made it a magnet for architects and decorators.

Stahl House at the Center of an Ugly Legal Battle

The owners of Pierre Koenig's midcentury masterpiece are suing the producer of an abandoned documentary about the house. Previously, the filmmaker had filed a lawsuit alleging they had derailed the film because of its portrayal of their family.

Late Simpsons Co-Creator's Pac Pal Compound Comes With Case Study House #20, Wants $18M

Case Study House #18, On National Register, For Sale as Possible Teardown

Case study house #25 is for sale on the long beach canals, la's most famous house finally makes the national register, mapping 10 iconic la buildings up for state landmarking, see pasadena's case study house #10 start its big restoration, architect a. quincy jones's old brentwood home, designed by case study architect rodney walker, buy nomland & nomland's case study house #10 in pasadena, wouldja believe this hollywood hills house is a case study by buff & hensman yeah, us neither, simpsons co-creator selling rustic canyon house designed by and for architect thornton abell, the case study house map of los angeles, case study designer rodney walker's ojai shangri-la, entire eames house living room being moved into lacma, big drop for case study no 9 estate in the pacific palisades, mid-century modernist and case study architect kemper nomland, jr. dies.

Julius Shulman’s Case Study House #22

The Greatest American Architectural Photographer of the 20th Century

Julius Shulman is often considered the greatest American architectural photographer of the 20th century. His photography shaped the image of South Californian lifestyle of midcentury America. For 70 years, he created on of the most comprehensive visual archives of modern architecture, especially focusing on the development of the Los Angeles region. The designs of some of the world’s most noted architectures including Richard Neutra, Ray Eames and Frank Lloyd Wright came to life though his photographs. To this day, it is through Shulman’s photography that we witness the beauty of modern architecture and the allure of Californian living.

Neutra and Beyond

Born in 1910 in Brooklyn, Julius Shulman grew up in a small farm in Connecticut before his family moved to Los Angeles at the age of ten. While in Los Angeles, Shulman was introduced to Boy Scouts and often went hiking in Mount Wilson. This allowed him to organically study light and shadow, and be immersed in the outdoors. While in college between UCLA and Berkeley, he was offered to photograph the newly designed Kun House by Richard Neutra. Upon photographing, Shulman sent the six images to the draftsman who then showed them to Neutra. Impressed, Richard Neutra asked Shulman to photograph his other houses and went on to introduce him to other architectures.

The Case Study Houses

Julius Shulman’s photographs revealed the true essence of the architect’s vision. He did not merely document the structures, but interpreted them in his unique way which presented the casual residential elegance of the West Coast. The buildings became studies of light and shadow set against breathtaking vistas. One of the most significant series in Shulman’s portfolio is without a doubt his documentation of the Case Study Houses. The Case Study House Program was established under the patronage of the Arts & Architectue magazine in 1945 in an effort to produce model houses for efficient and affordable living during the housing boom generated after the Second World War. Southern California was used as the location for the prototypes and the program commissioned top architects of the day to design the houses. Julius Shulman was chosen to document the designs and throughout the course of the program he photographed the majority of the 36 houses. Shulman’s photography gave new meaning to the structures, elevating them to a status of international recognition in the realm of architecture and design. His way of composition rendered the structures as inviting places for modern living, reflecting a sense of optimism of modern living.

Case Study House #22

Case Study House #22, also known as the Stahl House was one of the designs Julius Shulman photographed which later become one of the most iconic of his images. Designed by architect Pierre Koenig in 1959, the Stahl House was the residential home of American football player C.H Buck Stahl located in the Hollywood Hills. The property was initially regarded as undevelopable due to its hillside location, but became an icon of modern Californian architecture. Regarded as one of the most interesting masterpieces of contemporary architecture, Pierre Koenig preferred merging unconventional materials for its time such as steel with a simple, ethereal, indoor-outdoor feel. Julius’s dramatic image, taking in a warm evening in the May of 1960, shows two young ladies dressed in white party dresses lounging and chatting. The lights of the city shimmer in the distant horizon matching the grid of the city, while the ladies sit above the distant bustle and chaos. Pierre Koenig further explains in the documentary titled Case Study Houses 1945-1966 saying;

“When you look out along the beam it carries your eye right along the city streets, and the (horizontal) decking disappears into the vanishing point and takes your eye out and the house becomes one with the city below.”

The Los Angeles Good Life

The image presents a fantasy and is a true embodiment of the Los Angeles good life. By situating two models in the scene, Shulman creates warmth, helping the viewer to imagine scale as well as how life would be like living in this very house. In an interview with Taina Rikala De Noriega for the Archives of American Art Shulman recalls the making of the photograph;

“ So we worked, and it got dark and the lights came on and I think somebody had brought sandwiches. We ate in the kitchen, coffee, and we had a nice pleasant time. My assistant and I were setting up lights and taking pictures all along. I was outside looking at the view. And suddenly I perceived a composition. Here are the elements. I set up the furniture and I called the girls. I said, ‘Girls. Come over sit down on those chairs, the sofa in the background there.’ And I planted them there, and I said, ‘You sit down and talk. I’m going outside and look at the view.’ And I called my assistant and I said, ‘Hey, let’s set some lights.’ Because we used flash in those days. We didn’t use floodlights. We set up lights, and I set up my camera and created this composition in which I assembled a statement. It was not an architectural quote-unquote “photograph.” It was a picture of a mood.”

Purity in Line and Design to Perfection

Shulman’s preference to shoot in black and white reduces the subject to its geometrical essence allowing the viewer to observe the reflections, shadows and forms. A Shulman signature, horizontal and vertical lines appear throughout the image to create depth and dimensional perspective. A mastery in composition, the photograph catches purity in line and design to perfection.

A Lifetime of Achievements

Julius Shulman retired from active architectural work in 1989, leaving behind an incredibly rich archive chronicling the development of modern living in Southern California. A large part of his archive resides at the Getty Museum in California. For the next twenty years he participated in major museum and gallery exhibitions around the world, and created numerous books by publishers such as Taschen and Nazraeli Press. Among his honors, Shulman is the only photographer to have been granted honorary lifetime membership in the American Institute of Architects. In 1998 he was given a lifetime achievement award by ICP. Julius passed away in 2009 in his home in Los Angeles.

Milton Greene's Marilyn Monroe – Ballerina Sitting

Simple pleasures: seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses, join our newsletter.

We will process the personal data you have supplied in accordance with our privacy policy. You can unsubscribe or change your preferences at any time by clicking the link in any emails.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Passion project: the passive house that raised the roof on sustainable living

A family home constructed on derelict land in Melbourne sets new standards for a hard-working eco house

T he overlooked plot that Marc and Felicity Bernstein-Hussmann ended up building a house on was deemed unfit for construction use by their local council in Melbourne , Australia, and so they faced extreme hesitancy from any bank to lend for development. Despite this, they pushed on with plans, even moving into a motorhome for four years while they went through the planning and saving process for their new home. Their tenacity was rewarded when both the council and bank U-turned, and their dream became a reality.

But what started life as a wedge-shaped piece of derelict wasteland – situated next to a 10-storey apartment block, double-storey housing site and a busy train line in Coburg, Melbourne – has been transformed by the couple into a modern passive house.

The Passivhaus was originally developed in Germany in the 1980s by Dr Wolfgang Feist, a physicist, and Professor Bo Adamson, a construction expert, who were inspired by medieval dwellings built in Iceland. The concept is underpinned by five guiding principles: airtightness; thermal insulation; mechanical-ventilation heat recovery; high-performance glazing; and thermal-bridge free construction. These eliminate the need for artificial heating or cooling systems. Taken together, the guiding principles meet the rigorous requirements of the International Passive House Association .

German-born Marc and Felicity, who studied architecture before moving to Australia, have created a working prototype for a new generation of passive house – Hütt 01 Coburg – to be created under their brand Home by Hütt . Designed as both an experimental case study and a home for the couple and their three children Anna-Lena, 16, Leon, 12, and Joshua, 10, the house showcases their passion for sustainable and contemporary design and for regenerating smaller spaces of derelict urban land. The idea of the passive house has been gaining traction in Europe and the UK, but in Australia it is still relatively new, with fewer than 50 houses certified.

“Passive houses offer a new way of living with incredible environmental benefits and substantially reduced power costs,” says Felicity. A constant 19C to 21C is maintained indoors despite temperatures that drop in Victoria to below 5C. “We are passionate that innovation is combined seamlessly with luxury, wellbeing and beauty. There does not need to be a visual compromise.”

The all-electric house, accessed via a blue stone laneway, was modelled initially in 3D to consider the impact of every detail: the orientation to the sun to maximise solar-heating gain; cross-ventilation to flush out heat in the summer; the introduction of cooling through-breezes from the moist, shaded rainwater garden that connects to the main living area, and staircase skylights to act as a chimney against overheating.

The house is built on a concrete slab that’s continuously insulated to prevent heat transfer (thermal bridging) where the slab meets the walls. Wood-fibre insulation stores carbon, mitigates thermal bridging and is breathable – unlike conventional polystyrene insulation that can collect mould and condensation. The walls and roof are built with prefabricated cross-laminated timber (CLT) and take a week to erect, with noise-reducing, carbon-storing and insulating properties a given.

The small internal footprint works incredibly hard, and the steep pitched roof creates space in the children’s bedrooms, with mezzanine beds above areas for play, study and relaxation. The capacious feel is embellished by heavy-duty nets just above head height in the bedrooms and at the top of the stairs, which optimise space.

On the ground floor, thoughtful spatial planning has created distinctive zones for cooking, eating and relaxing – neutral, calm spaces that have a timeless appeal. The sunken-lounge flooring is a bespoke concrete mixed with recycled aggregate. Like terrazzo, it adds a refined touch and complements the marble and wood used in the kitchen – another bespoke design by Marc and Felicity. All storage is located on the ground floor, hidden behind black-stained American oak units and artfully worked into wardrobes, cupboards, a study nook and under-seat cavities.

The laundry room and bathrooms feature bespoke detail: curved surfaces, a brass washstand designed by Felicity and high-end sanitaryware.

Unexpected design touches delight at every turn – light-induced patterns streaming into the stairwell from west-facing open exterior brickwork that offers a low-level sneak peek into the house; a garden window handpainted by Anna-Lena, and secret doors and passageways connecting the children’s bedroom spaces.

“A connection with nature inside and out is important to us,” says Marc. “Living biophilic walls enhance the ventilated air quality, eliminating allergens and increasing a sense of wellbeing.” A quirky bridge suspended over the courtyard connects to the roof garden planted with native grasses and dichondra, and a quiet rain garden which collects water that runs off the green roof. In the main garden stepping stones lead you to a wood-fired barbecue area, a goldfish pond – which irrigates a vertical kitchen garden – and a circular wooden deck area.

This house is living proof that building a sustainable home can be compatible with an urban location and a small footprint. As climate change intensifies, quality over quantity will become an ever-important design goal. With Passivhaus technology supporting sustainable choices and enhancing a sense of comfort and luxury, one can’t help but feel that this new generation of architecturally designed homes is the only way forward for building a better future.

hutt.com.au

• The Observer

Most viewed

• Entertainment
• The Heartbreaking Story Behind Netflix’s Documentary Series <i>The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez</i>

The Heartbreaking Story Behind Netflix’s Documentary Series The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez

The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez is a thorough and heartbreaking examination of the systemic forces that allow child abuse to flourish undetected in the United States. At the center of the series is Gabriel Fernandez, an eight-year-old boy who died in May 2013 after being severely abused and tortured by his mother and her boyfriend, both of whom were arrested and convicted for his death. Through interviews with members of Gabriel’s family, courtroom testimony, and insight from experts on psychology and family relationships, documentarian Brian Knappenberger attempts to answer some key questions: What, exactly, happened to Gabriel, and why didn’t anyone step in to save him?

“Nobody listened to Gabriel when he was alive,” Knappenberger tells TIME. “A lot of people failed him, and there’s a lot of reasons that this happened. But when you get to the end, it’s about: how do you want to treat kids?”

Here’s what to know about the true story behind the series, out on Netflix on Feb. 26.

Who was Gabriel Fernandez?

By all accounts, based on interviews in the series and news reports following his death, Gabriel was — like most kids — a sweet child who liked to be helpful and sought the love of his family. Prior to moving in with his mother, Pearl Fernandez, her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, and two siblings in Palmdale, located north of Los Angeles, Gabriel was shuffled between the homes of his relatives. As the documentary depicts, Gabriel lived with an uncle and his partner for a time, and also lived with his grandparents before going to live with his mother. Footage of his time with his uncles shows an apparently happy and healthy child. Gabriel’s well-being took a devastating turn in 2012, when Pearl Fernandez took him in, reportedly to gain welfare benefits , despite concerns from her family that she was neglectful toward her other children.

After joining his mother and Aguirre, Gabriel landed at a new school. Shortly after starting there, his teacher, Jennifer Garcia, sensed that things were not okay at home. Garcia, who appears throughout the six-part series, says that a couple weeks after he started in her classroom, Gabriel asked her, “Is it normal for moms to hit their kids?” When she pressed him, Gabriel asked if it was normal to be hit with a belt buckle. “Is it normal for you to bleed?” he asked, according to Garcia.

Garcia reported the exchange to the Los Angeles County child abuse hotline and the case ended up with a social worker, Stefanie Rodriguez. According to the documentary, Rodriguez never adequately made the inquiries needed to determine the condition of Gabriel’s home life. A 2018 investigation into Gabriel’s case published in The Atlantic by the journalist Garrett Therolf, who also appears throughout the series, cites L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) records to show that Rodriguez never received information that showed Pearl Fernandez had a history of abusing or neglecting her other children. And although Rodriguez and other representatives from agencies designed to protect children visited Gabriel’s home multiple times, the social workers never found signs of abuse strong enough to warrant removing him from his home. Prosecutors would later charge Rodriguez and three other social workers with child abuse and falsifying records in Gabriel’s case. In a brief statement to The Atlantic , Rodriguez said that at the time she was responsible for Gabriel, she was overseeing other children whose conditions she felt were equally or more dangerous.

As the school year went on, the abuse Gabriel endured worsened. He began coming to class with patches of hair missing, scabs on his scalp, injured lips from being punched in the face and bruises all over his face after his mother shot him with a BB gun. According to grand jury testimony obtained by the Los Angeles Times , Gabriel’s siblings said he was forced to eat cat litter and was kept locked in a cabinet in his mother’s room. They said Fernandez and Aguirre called him “gay” and punished him for exhibiting feminine qualities, like playing with dolls.

After Pearl Fernandez called 911 on May 22, 2013 to report that Gabriel was not breathing, the paramedics who responded found him with broken ribs, a cracked skull and BB pellets stuck in his body. In the documentary, one paramedic who arrived at the scene says Gabriel’s case was the worst she ever encountered in her career. The severe abuse was immediately obvious to first responders.

Gabriel was taken to the hospital and later declared brain-dead. He died on May 24, 2013.

Why wasn’t Gabriel’s death prevented?

In making The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez , Knappenberger says he wanted to explore all the factors that contributed to Gabriel’s death.

Witness testimony included in the series and court documents show that Fernandez and Aguirre undoubtedly abused Gabriel during the time he was in their care, and eventually tortured him until he stopped breathing. Aguirre was sentenced to death in 2018 following a conviction for first-degree murder with the special circumstance of intentional murder by torture in Gabriel’s death. Pearl Fernandez pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and received a life sentence in prison without parole.

It’s clear that, despite the existence of government agencies whose mission is to protect all children, Gabriel’s case fell through some gaping cracks. For Knappenberger, the story began coming together after he received permission to film Aguirre’s murder trial and had a chance to hear firsthand testimony from witnesses about how Gabriel was abused.

“It was gut-wrenching, to say the least,” he says of the trial. “The responses started right away. You realized how much pain is out there.”

The series debuts at a high point of popularity for true crime stories , which have found large audiences through podcasts, books, and now, an influx of documentaries on streaming services. Critics have noted that obsession over true crime stories can lead to a risk of sensationalism of violence, with victims’ stories exploited for entertainment. Knappenberger acknowledges that The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez plays into the phenomenon, though he says he’s taking a slightly different approach to “really look at systemic problems,” and take the story beyond the facts of the tragic case at its core. The series includes a sizable amount of research on ways to combat child abuse, and details how child protective systems often fail because of a lack of transparency.

In Gabriel’s case, the four case workers who were supposed to look out for him faced criminal charges after they were fired — a rare turn of events for caseworkers, who are not typically charged for failing to prevent abuse. Rodriguez and Patricia Clement, another social worker, along with their supervisors, Gregory Merritt and Kevin Bom, were charged with felony counts of child abuse and falsifying public records. An appellate panel ruled in January 2020 that the workers should not face criminal charges in Gabriel’s death.

The social workers were accused of minimizing the evidence that Gabriel was abused and of falsely reporting that safety programs for Gabriel were working, when the abuse was only worsening, the documentary shows. Knappenberger says that as he further investigated the story, he came to believe the workers had made “clear mistakes.”

“The social workers took a lot of heat. To some degree, it’s warranted,” he says. “But that’s not the end of the story. There were clear problems with the system they were operating in.”

In a statement to The Wrap published March 2, the Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services said “a new era of reform” began in the wake of Gabriel’s death and that the department has implemented several new policies to ensure child safety. The department has hired more than 3,000 new social workers since 2013 in an effort to lower caseloads for workers and retrained workers on how to interview witnesses and detect physical injuries, according to the statement.

“It should never take the death of a child to address weaknesses and make investments in improvements for child protection,” DCFS said. “It is in his memory and in pursuit of the safety of Los Angeles County’s two million children that we have reformed how child protection work is done.”

Following Gabriel’s story brought to light for Knappenberger the host of challenges faced by child protective services, including overloaded caseworkers managing in a larger system that also brought in third-party companies and outside contractors to provide government services for a profit. He also notes a culture of silence permeating the Department of Child and Family Services. Ultimately, The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez becomes a referendum on how we treat society’s most vulnerable people.

“How do we protect them?” Knappenberger asks. “And what does that say about us?”

More Must-Reads From TIME

• Jane Fonda Champions Climate Action for Every Generation
• Passengers Are Flying up to 30 Hours to See Four Minutes of the Eclipse
• Biden’s Campaign Is In Trouble. Will the Turnaround Plan Work?
• Essay: The Complicated Dread of Early Spring
• Why Walking Isn’t Enough When It Comes to Exercise
• The Financial Influencers Women Actually Want to Listen To
• The Best TV Shows to Watch on Peacock
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Write to Mahita Gajanan at [email protected]

You May Also Like

• Eames Foundation

find us on:

• Eames House
• Charles and Ray
• Eames House and the CSH program
• Case Study House Bluff
• Photo Gallery
• How to Visit
• Covid-19 Safety Protocols
• Guided Exterior Tour
• Group Guided Exterior Tour
• Interior Tour
• Members Appreciation Day
• Small Wedding
• Specialty Events
• Visitors Submissions
• Memberships
• Corporate Sponsorship
• 250 Year Project
• Collections
• On-going Studies
• Conservation Management Plan
• Team Thanks

Volume 2 of the Eames Films

Volume 2 of the Eames Films contains two films that allow you to see the Eames House through Charles and Ray’s eyes: House: after 5 years of living and Lucia Chase Vignette . These, along with the remaining films, touch on critical issues in the Eameses’ body of work: the honest use of materials, the uncommon beauty of common things, and more.

Eames: The Architect and the Painter

From 1941 to 1978, this husband-and-wife team brought unique talents to their partnership. He was an architect by training, she was a painter and sculptor. Their work helped shape the second half of the 20th century and remains culturally vital and commercially popular today. A film by Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey, part of American Masters .

Help us share the Eameses’ joy and rigor with future visitors, so they may have a direct experience of Charles and Ray’s approach to life and work.

Documentary & Independent Media

• Documentary Power Research Institute
• State of the Documentary Field
• Documentary Representation

Participatory & Civic Media

• Story Movements
• Civic Leadership

Entertainment & Popular Culture

• Yes, and Laughter Lab
• Comedy ThinkTanks

Fair Use Library

• Codes of Best Practices
• Fair Use Blog
• Newsletters

Case Study: Changing the World, One Documentary at a Time

By Gary Weimberg

On September 10, 1999 Dylcia Pagan walked out of her prison cell in the Federal Correctional Institute in Dublin, California. Her incarceration as a political prisoner in the United States was over. She had served 19 years of her 55 year sentence. She had been set free by an act of Executive Clemency from then President Bill Clinton.

The documentary  The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez  that we had made about her, her son Ernesto, her years as a political prisoner, and her political struggle for the independence of Puerto Rico, had aired on the PBS series P.O.V just 8 weeks before.

For over 6 years my wife, Catherine Ryan and myself and worked on this documentary as part of an international grassroots campaign to achieve this very thing: freedom for Dylcia and 11 other Puerto Rican nationalists who were serving lengthy prison terms for their political belief in the independence of Puerto Rico.

I have never had a more profoundly emotional and beautiful moment in my life than there outside the prison, when Dylcia took her first free steps and was finally reunited with her son in freedom. Then we all drove off to the airport together, to go to Puerto Rico to begin her new life.

Arriving in Puerto Rico, 10,000 cheering people greeted her at the airport.

The experience was unforgettable, seared into my memory, and it remains to this day a high point of my life and of my lifelong commitment to activism and media. We had begun this work with hope, but without a real expectation of victory. We had begun as a matter of principle, to fight the good fight: for the rights of political prisoners, for the rights of prisoners victimized by injustice in general, for the principle of self-determination of peoples, causes so noble and worthwhile that we never believed with certainty that we would achieve a victory.

That it came to be makes it all the more worthwhile to look at the reasons why.

How it began

In the early 1980’s a small group of us worked together to make a series of documentaries about El Salvador in opposition to the US funded war there. We tried many different styles and techniques in a search to be effective, from “objective journalist” to “strident advocate.”

The most effective of these was  Maria’s Story , a personal biography of a peasant woman, mother, leader, and revolutionary, broadcast on P.O.V in 1992. What worked so well was the program’s specificity: one woman’s life story. Inside of her life, we could explore the truth of the general injustice of the situation of El Salvador. Viewers might disagree with Maria, but they couldn’t disagree with the reality of her life.

The second and even more important reason for the effective nature of  Maria’s Story  is that we made it in conjunction with  CISPES (Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) . The grassroots usefulness of the project was tested and reviewed at screenings and fundraisers from day one. The documentary was not made by us as outsiders, nor advanced as a “top down” solution. It was made hand in hand with the people doing the work, who knew what was needed, who held work-in-progress screenings at countless political events and fielded the questions and the praise, and who never failed to be passionate about the importance of the documentary we were producing.

That became our road map for our other political film work and as that work continued, eventually in 1994, we met Dylcia’s son, Ernesto Gomez-Gomez.

Ernesto was 15 years old when we met. As a child he had been raised under another identity in Mexico because Dylcia wanted to protect him from political harassment. In Mexico, when he turned 10, his Mexican family finally told him the truth: that he was adopted, that his mother was in prison in the United States. So at age 15, he had come to the US to live in San Francisco, near to the prison where his mother was being held, to visit her and to build a mother-son relationship.

His guardian was a dedicated woman, a Puerto Rican nationalist and activist. She moved to San Francisco just to be his guardian and it was she who realized how lonely he was. At that time Ernesto did not speak English and he found no one in his high school who could relate to the issues of his life, or of the lives of political prisoners.

Because of our past work, his guardian suggested that we take him out to a meal and a movie. We got along immediately. He borrowed a copy of  Maria’s Story  to watch. The next day he came by and asked, “Could we make a movie that would help free my mom from prison?”

And so it began.

The grassroots plan

We were 4 months into it when Ernesto told us he was invited to go to a conference in Puerto Rico on the nationalist political prisoners and asked if we wanted to come. We did and got introduced to some brilliant activists (Jan Sussler, Luis Nieves Falcon, and others) who had a plan.

In 1992, shortly after Clinton was elected for his first term, these activists anticipated that Clinton would win a second term and so in 7 years time, at the end of the 2nd term, he would be a lame duck President with nothing to lose. That was the optimum moment, they reasoned, to achieve for executive clemency for the Puerto Rican political prisoners. They began an international campaign, planned to culminate in 7 years, to create the strongest possible petitions for clemency, and with petitions and demonstrations and the written support of Nobel Peace Prize winners from around the world, convince the President of the injustice of the lengthy prison sentences.

Two years later, 1994, we show up with Ernesto and our still-unformed documentary and they immediately promoted us to be the media wing of the campaign. Our goal and theirs would share a strategic vision and timeline, planned to coincide with 1999.

The use of the video by the movement

It took 5 years to complete the documentary, but through out the entire time, just as we had with  Maria’s Story , we used clips and fundraising reels at events. Portions of  The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez  were shown at nearly 100 events and helped to raise thousands of dollars for the movement. We never refused an activist request to show the video, in fact we never even wanted to refuse. Those screenings became our psychic re-charger when faced with the often dismal reality of political film making.

In return, the movement came to our aid when we were challenged by James Yee Executive Director of ITVS to prove that there would be national interest in a Puerto Rican issue. With in a few weeks the movement was able to generate a couple hundred letters from people around the country who had seen portions of the video and could testify to what it meant to them.

We also promised ourselves and others never to raise money for the video that would take away support for the movement. Video is so expensive that we were concerned it would become a drag on the direct organizing needs. So we tried to use the video as a tool to create new support, new dollars. In the end, I can only wish we were more successful in this regard. The truth is that we raised a limited amount of money and mostly supported the project ourselves, around other jobs. But in an era of inexpensive camcorders and home computer editing systems, everything is possible.

Another important benefit of this true and active collaboration was that whenever the valid question came up of “who are these white people?” we were never compelled to defend ourselves. Puerto Rican activists with years in the movement could speak of the real collaboration that was occurring. We ourselves have always been sensitive to the issue of cultural imperialism, the story of Puerto Rican nationalism is not ours to tell. It was incumbent on us to demonstrate that we could be faithful to other people’s story, and contribute by helping them to tell their own story for themselves.

In a small way, this collaboration was wonderfully illustrated in the final translation/voice over session, where people from California, New York, Illinois, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, El Salvador all worked and argued together over the correct way to translate the English in the video into a trans-national Spanish.

The results

Most amazing of all, was that it worked.

The timeline, the strategy, and the response was exactly as those brilliant activists had planned 7 years before. The additional component of a national broadcast of  The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez  in the P.O.V series on PBS was helpful both inside the movement, gearing up for the final push; and also it was helpful in discussions with the White House Chief Counsel, Charles Ruff who watched it the week before he made his recommendation for clemency.

Besides the broadcast, the documentary won a number of film festival awards: Best Documentary at the Big Muddy Film Festival, Best Documentary at the San Antonio Cine Festival, Grand Jury Prize (for best film overall) at the Image (Atlanta) Film & Video Festival, Documentary Competition Winner at the Athens International Film & Video Festival, Award of Merit from LASA 2000 (Latin American Studies Association), and a nomination from the Director’s Guild of America for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary, 1999. The film was screened at the Berlin Film Festival and 21 others.

The lessons

For political activists and advocacy film makers, these then are the things I come away with as lessons:

• Don’t focus on the issue. Focus on a person. It is the individual human experience (or small group) that illustrates the truth of larger societal issues. But our human compassion and understanding is best reached by the stories of people, not by generalizations. If your issue is real, find the human face that exemplifies it.
• Collaborate actively with existing grass roots organizations. Don’t go it alone, don’t think you know it all, don’t re-invent the wheel. Someone out there is already doing what you think needs to be done.
• Have a strategic goal. Don’t just shoot. Think about what it is you wish to accomplish, or find others who have already thought about it. Make every minute, every dollar, every effort count.
• Small is beautiful. Don’t get caught up in expensive gear / crew / production. Don’t get caught up in endless fundraising. Embrace your limitations, start shooting and create your path one step at time.
• Si se puede! Most importantly of all, the lesson of  The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez-Gomez  is simply this:  si se puede . Yes it can be done.

Teen, reported kidnapped, was killed by deputies as she followed their instructions, video shows

• Show more sharing options
• Copy Link URL Copied!

Savannah Graziano, a 15-year-old who was abducted by her father in September 2022, was shot and killed by sheriff’s deputies as she followed their instructions and walked toward them on the side of a California highway, according to newly released video and audio.

The video, obtained through a California Public Records Act request by an independent journalist, contradicts statements made by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in the aftermath of the shooting. It also walked back statements made by the department at the time that Savannah had fired shots at deputies before her death.

Savannah was fatally shot on Highway 15 in the San Bernardino County city of Hesperia nearly 24 hours after the California Highway Patrol had issued an Amber Alert about her abduction. Authorities found her mother, Tracy Martinez, shot to death in the street near her Fontana home, and the girl was missing. Her father, Anthony Graziano, was described as the main suspect behind the killing and the girl’s abduction. Authorities said he also fired at another person and a child at a nearby school around the same time.

His truck was described in the alert and was spotted by a civilian who saw the girl and her father Sept. 27, a day after her disappearance, authorities revealed Friday in a 15-minute video. The footage, which summarizes the shooting, was first published in The Guardian .

Following up on the civilian’s call, sheriff’s deputies found the father and daughter near the neighborhood of Lenwood but came under fire shortly before 11 a.m. when they tried to pull the truck over, San Bernardino County sheriff’s officials said. A 70-mile pursuit followed, with Graziano shooting outside the truck with a semiautomatic weapon. The pursuit came to an end on the side of the highway when he tried to drive up a steep embankment.

Devastating bodycam video shows the moment deputies opened fire on 15-year-old with autism

Law enforcement responded five times this year to the Apple Valley home of a 15-year-old with autism who was fatally shot by deputies over the weekend, San Bernardino County Sheriff officials said.

March 14, 2024

As seen in footage from a Sheriff’s Department helicopter, the truck reverses toward several law enforcement vehicles, and Graziano fires his weapon, kicking up puffs of dirt.

After the truck stops, Savannah can be seen getting out of the passenger side of the vehicle and crouching low to the ground as she moves toward a nearby sheriff’s deputy, who instructs her to walk toward him. She seems to hesitate, crouches and continues to walk forward. That’s when she is struck by a deputy’s bullet.

After the shooting, her body is blurred out in the video.

Someone can be heard saying over the radio, “Oh no,” after she is shot.

Deputies on the ground were not wearing body cameras, but the department released audio from a microphone on the belt of a deputy who was near the girl when she got out of her father’s truck.

“Passenger, get out,” the deputy repeatedly yells as gunfire erupts in the background.

He instructs the girl, “Come here! Come to me! Come, come, come … walk, walk, walk.”

The deputy pleads with his fellow officers to stop shooting as she falls to the ground.

“Stop shooting her! He’s in the car! Stop!” the deputy shouts. “She’s OK! He’s in the car! ... Stop!”

Police tried to provide medical aid to the girl, but she was gravely wounded and later died from her injuries at a hospital, according to authorities. Her father also died at the scene.

Girl grabs deputy’s gun, fatally shoots herself in lobby of L.A. County sheriff’s station, officials say

A girl in her late teens died in the lobby of the L.A. County sheriff’s station in City of Industry late Sunday.

March 25, 2024

Savannah was shot by deputies who had a different view of the truck, according to the Sheriff’s Department. The department did not provide the names of deputies involved in the shooting but said they were at a distance and on a higher elevation than where the truck ultimately stopped. Those deputies shot at her because they saw a person get out of the truck and walk toward the nearest deputy, unaware he was calling to her, according to authorities.

The shooting is under investigation by the California Department of Justice. The Sheriff’s Department declined to provide additional comments or details.

Savannah’s uncle, CJ Wyatt, told the Guardian that the teen was living with her father in his truck while he was separating from his estranged wife. He called Graziano “abusive and manipulative” and blamed him for Savannah’s death.

“She was a really sweet girl at her core, and she didn’t deserve this,” Wyatt said.

At the time of the shooting, San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus said it appeared that the girl ran toward deputies during the shooting and that she was wearing “tactical gear.” But in aerial footage, Savannah is seen cautiously approaching deputies shortly before she is killed.

A day after the shooting, Dicus asked the California Department of Justice to take over the investigation. In a statement, Dicus added that sheriff’s investigators determined that Savannah “was a participant in shooting at our deputies.”

A deputy and a civilian driver reported seeing someone shooting from the passenger side of the truck during the pursuit, according to the incident video.

The Sheriff’s Department clarifies in the video that it hadn’t confirmed whether Savannah was shooting at deputies; that issue is still under investigation.

3-year-old injured in gang-related shooting while riding in back seat of car, police say

Santa Ana police are searching for a suspect in a gang-related shooting that left a 3-year-old girl critically injured while riding in the back seat of her parents’ car.

Feb. 26, 2024

Authorities did find multiple weapons, ammunition, flash-bang and smoke grenades, along with body armor and tactical helmets at the scene of the incident.

Ed Obayashi is an expert who investigates use-of-force incidents for California law enforcement departments but is not involved in the investigation of the Graziano shooting. He told The Times that he believed the deputies who shot Savannah probably had a different point of view from what’s seen on video.

“What did he perceive? Did he not see her hands? Did he for some reason assume — girl or not — that the subject was shooting at the deputies?” Obayashi said. “We don’t even know if he might have thought this was the suspect.”

Typically, when a California law enforcement agency is involved in a shooting, the department will release an incident video within a few weeks or months. The video, which summarizes the events that led to the shooting, may be issued before the official investigation report.

But in Graziano’s case, the Sheriff’s Department released its summary of the shooting nearly two years later and only after a lengthy legal fight over the records.

The gap between the shooting and the release of the video is uncommon, said Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, a nonprofit organization under the National Lawyers Guild. In addition, she said, someone in a leadership position should come out and try to explain the discrepancy between “what was originally provided at the press conference, and what the video clearly shows.”

The incident video marks the first time the Sheriff’s Department admitted that a deputy’s bullet fatally struck Savannah.

But these types of videos provided by law enforcement agencies are not a neutral account of a shooting, says civil rights attorney Christopher Bou Saeed, who has represented victims of police abuse in Southern California. He is not involved in the case, but is familiar with incident videos released by law enforcement agencies.

“They’re generally curated public relations pieces by the government agency,” Bou Saeed said. “They’re not going to throw themselves under the bus.”

Police PR machine under scrutiny for inaccurate reporting, alleged pro-cop bias

Amid calls to defund police, the public relations machine within law enforcement is coming under scrutiny.

Aug. 30, 2020

Journalist Joey Scott received the video and audio from the Sheriff’s Department 18 months after he filed his first request under the California Public Records Act in September 2022. The footage and his reporting first appeared in the Guardian.

“I believe in accountability. I believe in transparency. This is one of the efforts in which to do so,” said Scott, who received assistance from the nonprofit First Amendment Coalition in his efforts to obtain the video from the Sheriff’s Department.

“This type of footage can exonerate cops and it can also show what really happened. Even in watching these videos, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered,” Scott said. “But it’s clear from the footage in this case that she did not need to die.”

More to Read

Deputy kills 15-year-old wielding a ‘bladed’ garden tool, officials say

March 10, 2024

Toddler was shot as she rode in car’s back seat. Santa Ana man now under arrest

March 4, 2024

Lies, homicides, a getaway plan: Gripping details emerge in case of cop who catfished Riverside teen

Feb. 2, 2024

Start your day right

Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Nathan Solis is a Metro reporter covering breaking news at the Los Angeles Times. He previously worked for Courthouse News Service, where he wrote both breaking news and enterprise stories ranging from criminal justice to homelessness and politics. Before that, Solis was at the Redding Record Searchlight as a multimedia journalist, where he anchored coverage of the destructive 2017 fires in Northern California. Earlier in his career, he worked for Eastsider L.A.

More From the Los Angeles Times

This Bay Area airport wants to change its name. The San Francisco airport hates the idea

Entertainment & Arts

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ ex slams feds, posts dramatic footage of L.A. raid where his sons were detained

L.A. Metro’s D Line hits a milestone: Tunneling is complete for expansion to the Westside

Orange County doctor charged with poisoning her husband with Drano faces new allegations

What we know about Diddy’s sex trafficking allegations

Before federal agents raided sean combs’s homes on monday, the famed producer had been accused of sex trafficking in several recent lawsuits.

Armored trucks, helicopters, and swarms of federal agents and police descended upon Sean “Diddy” Combs’s Los Angeles home on Monday — part of a bicoastal raid carried out by the Department of Homeland Security, which also searched his Miami residence. A law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said the searches are part of a sex trafficking investigation.

Combs has long been considered one of the most influential people in the music industry: a Grammy-winning producer and artist with a reputation for throwing lavish, star-studded parties. But over the last four months, the hip-hop mogul, who also has gone by the stage names Puff Daddy, Puffy and P. Diddy, has been the focus of five lawsuits alleging physical abuse, sexual violence and sex trafficking. The accusations span more than 30 years, from 2023 back to the start of Combs’s career in the early ’90s, when he was a wunderkind producer at Uptown Records. Combs has denied all the allegations against him.

Combs attorney Aaron Dyer called the searches a “a gross overuse of military-level force” and “a witch hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits.” He noted that his client has not been arrested, and he added: “Mr. Combs is innocent and will continue to fight every single day to clear his name.”

But some experts think Diddy could soon face even more trouble.

“For them to actually go this far to a raid on property, they have to have some really clear reason for that. It has to be justified,” said Ann Olivarius, an attorney with more than 30 years experience with sexual harassment cases.

Here’s what we know about the sex trafficking allegations against Combs.

Lawsuits accuse Combs of drugging and sex trafficking people

Five lawsuits alleging sexual assault have been filed against Combs in the last four months. Two were filed in the New York County court, with both complainants alleging that Combs had raped them in the early ’90s, when he was still an up-and-coming producer at Uptown Records.

Three were filed with the Southern District of New York’s federal court, alleging that Combs not only sexually assaulted the plaintiffs, but also trafficked them or forced them to traffic others.

Cassie, an R&B singer who was once signed to Combs’s Bad Boy label, said she endured more than a decade of “abuse, violence and sex trafficking” in a lawsuit filed on Nov. 16, 2023. She said she and Combs met when she was 19 and he was 37, and they dated from 2007 to 2018. As the head of the record company to which she was signed, Combs was also Cassie’s boss.

In her lawsuit, Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, accused Combs of forcing her to participate in sex parties, which he referred to as “freak-offs.” For these events, Cassie alleged that Combs would make her and his employees fly male sex workers to him “in multiple cities in the United States as well as abroad.”

According to the lawsuit, Combs would give Cassie ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine, marijuana, alcohol and other drugs in “excessive amounts” during these parties. For Cassie to recover from these encounters, “it became commonplace to get IV fluids in the days after,” the lawsuit says.

Combs also physically abused Cassie at these parties, the lawsuit alleges. One party in a Los Angeles hotel in 2016 allegedly ended in a fight that was caught on hotel cameras; Cassie claims that Combs paid the hotel $50,000 afterward for its security footage.

Combs vehemently denied Cassie’s allegations, calling them “offensive” and “outrageous” and accusing the singer of “seeking a payday.” Combs and Cassie reached a settlement the next day, the details of which have not been disclosed. Other suits are ongoing.

The Style section

A month later, a woman identified only as Jane Doe filed a lawsuit alleging that Combs and others coerced her into flying from Detroit to New York City to hang out with him at his studio in 2003, when she was 17.

At the time, Combs was already an established hip-hop mogul and media personality — his reality show, “Making the Band,” had debuted three years earlier, and he was credited with helping launch the careers of hip-hop legends such as the Notorious B.I.G., Mary J. Blige and Lil’ Kim.

According to the lawsuit, once the young woman arrived at the studio, Combs, Harve Pierre, who later became the president of Bad Boy Records, and a third unnamed assailant got her inebriated “to the point that she could not possibly have consented to having sex with anyone,” and took turns raping her. Afterward, she was taken to an airport and flown back to Michigan, the lawsuit says.

“Let me absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged,” Combs said in a statement in December, which called the accusations “sickening.” His attorneys have moved to have the lawsuit dismissed.

Pierre also denied the woman’s accusations, calling them “a tale of fiction.”

Another suit was filed in February by Rodney Jones, a music producer who worked on Combs’s most recent project, “The Love Album.” The lawsuit claims that he was forced to “solicit sex workers and perform sex acts to the pleasure of Mr. Combs” from 2022 to 2023. According to the lawsuit, Jones believes that Combs drugged him before some of these sexual encounters. Jones alleges that Combs coerced him into recruiting sex workers by promising money, property and career advancement, as well as by threatening physical harm: “[Combs] threatened to eat Mr. Jones face.”

In a statement shared with CNN, Combs’s attorney Shawn Holley denied the allegations: “We have overwhelming, indisputable proof that his claims are complete lies,” he said.

According to Jones’s lawsuit, underage girls were present at these sex parties, which took place in Combs’s homes in New York, Miami and Los Angeles, as well as a yacht he had rented in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Trafficking victims were filmed, some lawsuits claim

Several lawsuits allege that Combs had a penchant for filming sexual encounters and sharing them with others. Cassie and Jones claim that recordings were made at his sex parties and that practice was part of Combs’s attempt to control those involved.

According to Cassie’s lawsuit, Combs would film her with male sex workers and gave her explicit directions on what to wear, do and say. These encounters were allegedly filmed on Combs’s phone, laptop and tablets, and occasionally on Cassie’s phone. When Cassie deleted photographs and videos of these acts, Combs “made clear that he retained many videos” of these encounters , according to the suit.

“On one occasion, he sat next to her on a flight and made her watch a video she thought she had deleted, reinforcing her inability to escape and the immense power he held over her,” the lawsuit reads.

In his lawsuit, Jones alleges that Combs had hidden cameras “in every room of his homes.” (According to the lawsuit, Jones lived with Combs for months at a time while he was working for Combs.)

Jones believes that those working for Combs were filmed without their knowledge and consent, as were those who participated in Combs’s sex parties, the lawsuit says.

These recordings, if they exist, would be of particular interest to federal investigators, said Deborah Tuerkheimer, a law professor at Northwestern University. If the DHS investigation goes to trial, “that’s powerful corroborative evidence that depicts the kind of abuse that the accusers are describing.”

Many people were knowledgeable or involved in trafficking rings, lawsuits say

The lawsuits against Combs claim that many people in his circle helped facilitate his abusive behavior.

In Jane Doe’s suit, she alleges that it was Pierre, Combs’s right-hand man at Bad Boy, who first approached her at a Detroit-area lounge. Pierre introduced the woman to Combs over the phone and coerced her into flying out to meet him, she claims.

Cassie alleges that Combs’s employees witnessed him beating her and would attend to her afterward. He also required Cassie and his staff to help him arrange sex workers for his parties, her lawsuit says.

Jones also alleges that Combs ordered his staff to recruit sex workers for parties, and that some were responsible for supplying illicit drugs. According to the lawsuit, Combs’s chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, required all his employees — including chefs, butlers and housekeepers — to walk around with a pouch or fanny pack filled with drugs so Combs could have his “drug of choice” whenever he wanted.

Khorram is one of nearly 30 co-defendants in Jones’s lawsuit, a list that includes Universal Music CEO Lucian Grainge, Motown Records CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam and Combs’s eldest son, Justin Combs.

A rep for Justin Combs told the Los Angeles Times, “Justin Combs categorically denies these absurd allegations.” Khorram, Grainge, Habtemariam and Pierre did not respond to requests for comment.

Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.

• The hero March 16, 2024 The hero March 16, 2024
• Your hair looks gorgeous. It cost ... what?! March 19, 2024 Your hair looks gorgeous. It cost ... what?! March 19, 2024
• On Fox News, Steve Doocy has become the unexpected voice of dissent March 22, 2024 On Fox News, Steve Doocy has become the unexpected voice of dissent March 22, 2024

An official website of the United States government

Here’s how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

JavaScript appears to be disabled on this computer. Please click here to see any active alerts .

Final Rule: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles – Phase 3

• 42 U.S.C. §7401 - 7671q
• 40 CFR Parts 86, 1036, 1037, 1039, 1054, 1065
• EPA-HQ-OAR-2022-0985

On this page:

Rule summary, rule history, additional resources.

• Regulations for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Commercial Trucks & Buses
• Regulations for Smog, Soot, and Other Air Pollution from Commercial Trucks & Buses

Para información en español, haga clic aquí .

On March 29, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a final rule, “Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles – Phase 3,” that sets stronger standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from heavy-duty (HD) vehicles beginning in model year (MY) 2027. The new standards will be applicable to HD vocational vehicles (such as delivery trucks, refuse haulers, public utility trucks, transit, shuttle, school buses, etc.) and tractors (such as day cabs and sleeper cabs on tractor-trailer trucks).

The final “Phase 3” standards build on EPA’s Heavy-Duty Phase 2 program from 2016 and maintain that program’s flexible structure, which is designed to reflect the diverse nature of the heavy-duty vehicle industry. The standards are technology-neutral and performance-based, allowing each manufacturer to choose what set of emissions control technologies is best suited for them and the needs of their customers.

• Final Rule: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles -Phase 3 (pdf) (8.5 MB, pre-publication, signed March 2024)
• Proposed Rule: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles – Phase 3
• Fact Sheet: Final Standards to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Heavy-Duty Vehicles for Model Year 2027 and Beyond (pdf) (185.2 KB, March 2024, EPA-420-F-24-018)
• Fact sheet in Spanish: Normas finales para reducir las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero de los vehículos pesados modelos del año 2027 y posteriores (pdf) (191.6 KB, March 2024, EPA-420-F-24-019)
• Regulatory Impact Analysis: Control of Air Pollution from New Motor Vehicles: Heavy-Duty Engine and Vehicle Standards Regulatory Impact Analysis (pdf) (14.2 MB, March 2024, EPA-420-R-24-006)
• Response to Comments: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles: Phase 3 (pdf) (16 MB, March 2024, EPA-420-R-24-007)
• Regulations for Emissions from Vehicles and Engines Home
• Greenhouse Gas