LOS ANGELES: Housing for families during and post WWII
Architecture and its Representations : Exiled in Paradise. California Modernism Lecturer: Sina BrĂźckner-Amin Technical University of Munich Summer Semester 2018-2019
Deniz BOZDAÄž denizbozdagd@gmail.com
INDEX
Introduction: Los Angeles, the city of Dreams
1
Three Houses for Three Families
1
Planning
3
Materiality
6
Imagined Context
8
Conclusion
10
Image Index
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Works Cited
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LOS ANGELES: THE CITY OF DREAMS Los Angeles: the city where the American Dream comes to life. Thousands of people coming to live the dream of a white picket fence house with a big yard to settle in and form a family. A family made up of a loving spouse, kids that look up to them and the occasional guests: fun friends and sometimes parents. Although Los Angeles has no more than two centuries of history of settlements within itself, it would be a great understatement to call it a young city. LA is a city that had been overflown by incomers starting in the late 19th century and quickly but surely becoming a metropolis. Today; locals, new comers and by passers are living in a great chaos of diversity in LA. And all of them has just one more common issue other than the traffic jams during the rush hours, high priced living, and the over heating summer days: it is housing designed for their families. It has been an issue since the first working people migrated there and settled down, an also came up as a huge struggle after the second World War for returning soldiers and their newly forming families. Architecture of housing for families has always been in constant change. With ever changing types of families and ways of living, architects have to confide in the users’ needs and create an environment for what they envision for these families. Whether the supposed families are an extended family with more than five members or a nuclear one consisting of 2 people, with houses designed for them the architects must aim for the ultimate comfort of the families. In this paper, three houses designed for different understandings of families in a time period of 10 years including the last and post years of second World War, will be examined thoroughly in terms of the organization of the programs within, materiality used and the imagined context for the targeted families and attempt to summarise how the psychological affects of the war might have affected the demands of the commissioners and also the architects.
THREE HOUSES FOR THREE FAMILIES
A new home for a life in Exile Thomas Mann House, Julius Ralph Davidson, 1941 The Thomas Mann House is a commissioned design by Julius Ralph Davidson, built in 1941 for the acclaimed German author Thomas Mann and his family. Thomas Mann, being an outspoken author during the Nazi oppression in Germany, had decided to leave his home country in the 1930’s with his wife Katia, and fled to Switzerland. As the second World War broke they moved to the 1
United States where they resided until moving back to Switzerland in 1952. After spending a few years in Princeton, New Jersey; the Manns decided to settle in the Los Angeles area which might have spoken to the creative side of the author and also lured the couple into its large expatriate community. Julius Ralph Davidson, being one of the European émigrés himself, was commissioned by the Mann couple in 1941 to build a five bedroom family house. Davidson, born in Berlin in 1889 and a resident of Los Angeles since 1923, is considered one of the main representatives of California Modernism. The Thomas Mann House is an example of Davidson’s vision for a modern way of living for a unique family that would have unique needs and demands to be fulfilled.
Case Study of a Family Model Case Study House No.1, Julius Ralph Davidson, 1948 Case Study House Program was announced and sponsored by the renowned magazine Arts & Architecture in 1945. It was an experimental program that would challenge the invited Californian, though most of them had European roots, architects in an attempt to design and build inexpensive and efficient model homes for the new US families. By the end of the second World War, thousands of soldiers came back home and started forming families. After almost a decade of soldiers being away in the war, the dynamics of the families most definitely changed after the war. The inevitable social and economic changes brought by the war years affected the living standards of both the new and existing families. The need for affordable residential housing was urgent and faced several issues. The designed homes had to be suitable for adapting into different settings, with low constructional and maintenance costs, and on a rather small site most of the time. Case Study House Program tried to find solutions for these issues and to set model prototypes to be built in mass production later. In total, 36 houses were designed by the most demanded architects at the time in California including Richard Neutra, Pierre Koenig, Craig Ellwood, and J.R. Davidson. Not all proposed projects were built, and some have been demolished, but many still stand today in different districts of LA. Case Study House #1, designed by J.R. Davidson in 1948, addresses “a fairly typical American Family”
[1]
consisting of a working husband and wife with mutual business interests, a
teen-aged daughter who is away at school and an occasional guest mother in law.
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An Affordable Home for a Young Couple Case Study House No.20, Richard Neutra, 1948 Arts & Architecture invited another one of the most wanted architects of the time Richard Joseph Neutra, to design the Case Study House No.20, later known as the Bailey House. Neutra, born in Vienna, Austria in 1892, had been a resident of the US since 1923. Like his colleague Davidson, whom he has also been an acquaintance with, Neutra was known for introducing the International Style into American Architecture and was one of the most commissioned architects in Los Angeles. His attention to defining the real needs of his clients, regardless of the size of the project, in contrast to some other architects eager to impose their artistic vision on a client was one of the things that made him very popular for commissions. The family model Neutra was targeting for the Case Study House No.20 was a young couple. He faced, as all other designers designing for young families after the war, two very common issues: a limited square footage and a low budget. The house had to be an affordable two bedrooms only house, keeping the size and the budget as low as possible. However the abundance of land surrounding this particular house allowed for future additions.
PLANNING Floor plans, often the first thing to be examined while trying to understand a project, tell a lot about both the architect’s vision for the way of living intended in the house and also the requests of the commissioners.
J.R. Davidson, designed a two floor house for the Mann Family in 1941. The two floor plans, with 5 bedrooms and spacious common living areas, tell the observer that the budget was not much of an issue for the Mann Family. So while some other projects of the time might have been dealing with a small square footage and low budget, Davidson had no such restrictions with this project. The floor plan of the five-bedroom house separates the service areas from the living areas by placing the service elements in places that will be used only for circulation or away from sight. There is a clear distinction of what is private and what is more open to common use. The maid’s room is placed next to the garage and is separated from the family’s private living areas but still logically connected with a passage through the kitchen. The emphasis of the plan is on the Study that was going to be used as Thomas Mann’s office. The plan rotates out of the axis leading to this room and it is as if this room had been placed most out of the reach to prevent guests, the maid and other people from walking in to the most 3
[i] The Thomas Mann House, Ground Floor Plan, J.R. Davidson, 1941
intimate space of the Mann House. The Study is connected to the living room with a small hallway which also contains an extra private set of stairs connected to Mann’s bedroom on the second floor. On the second floor, drawings show that Thomas and Katia Mann had their own private bedrooms with bathrooms. Mrs. M’s Bedroom, as Davidson labeled it in his drawings, is more on the common area and connected to the rest of the house; being reached by the main staircase and sharing a corridor with the other 3 bedrooms. However Dr. M’s Bedroom has its own circulation directly leading up from his study. The second floor also has an extensive amount of outdoor space in forms of a balcony connecting Katia Mann’s and two of the other bedrooms and a roof terrace connected to Thomas Mann’s bedroom privately.
[ii] The Thomas Mann House, Second Floor Plan, J.R. Davidson, 1941
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J.R. Davidson’s design for the Case Study House #1 however is a case study of a smaller family model. It is not commissioned by an actual family which makes Davidson, to some extent, more free to design according to his architectural vision as there are no actual consultations with the clients. Arts and Architecture in its 1945 February issue announces the project as follows: “Let us then presuppose a Mr. and Mrs. X both of whom are professional people with mutual business interests, the family consisting of one teen-aged daughter away at school and a mother-inlaw who is an occasional welcome guest in the house.� [2]
[iii] Case Study House No.1 Floor Plan, J.R. Davidson, 1948
Although the first design was announced in 1945, only the second revision was built and not until 1948. Davidson uses an open floor plan, which is an innovative approach of the time, multipurpose rooms, keeps the number of hallways minimum and allows immediate access to gardens from all major rooms. He again has in his mind to separate the privacy of the permanent residents from the guests. Therefore the guest quarters are separated by an outdoor passage and an outdoor eating area to achieve the feel of a separate living space for Mr. and Mrs. X. Sectioned off from the main garden by a high fence, a private garden is located just outside the master bedroom for maximum privacy.
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Richard Neutra, in his design for the Case Study House No. 20, addresses “a young couple who find they can afford just that much, although their land is large enough to add later when the evolution of their lives may require it.� [3] The space limitation was a problem Neutra tried solving by designing flexible spaces, furnishing with multi-purpose pieces and also borrowing space from the outdoors. For example the kitchen opens to the backyard which can be used as the dining area or for outside activities. Even the garage can be eventually closed and roofed to gain an extra room.
[iv] Case Study House No.20 Floor Plan, Richard Neutra, 1948
The living room is placed on the southern facade and it contains an entrance into the house. There is a secondary entrance in the kitchen available from the garage area and probably for the permanent residents rather than the guest. The social patio, as Neutra labels it in his drawing, seems to be separated from the child patio with landscape elements such as trees.
MATERIALITY Materiality was another issue of the post war housing projects. The materials used had to be innovative to allow low constructional and maintenance costs and be suitable for replication in the future for mass production.
The Thomas Mann House, although built during the war years, did not face as big financial funding problems. On the facade the floor to ceiling glasses were not used commonly in the design, 6
[v] The Thomas Mann House, From the living room looking out to the patio, 1941
only in the living area looking over to the southern terrace. This extreme focus on privacy might hint at the Mann’s desire to have a secluded and safe place to live.
Being the essence of the Case Study House Program, with CSH No.1, J.R. Davidson had to keep in mind being innovative and sensitive with the materiality as to keep the cost and need of maintenance to the minimum. He is first of the Case Study House Program architects to introduce key elements that later came to characterise the program as well; a flat roof line, floor to ceiling glass, plywood as a material for wall. “The structure is standard wood frame on a reinforced foundation with water-proofed reinforced concrete slab floor. Exterior is of the new aluminum siding,” the original 1948 publication states.
[4]
The flooring is carpeting for the living areas and
bedrooms while the bathrooms, laundry, and kitchen areas are covered with asphalt tiles. Davidson uses standardised materials such as concrete blocks, plywood panels and industrial glass. The south facade, in order to get the maximum efficiency from the Californian sun is an almost all glass facade. The high fence separating the main garden from the private bedroom garden is wood panels, letting just a minimum level of sight possible in order to give the two separate gardens privacy if needed. This shows how much Davidson valued privacy, the efficient intake of light and air and minimum maintenance for this modal family.
Richard Neutra’s Case Study House No. 20 has a simple approach on the materiality as well. With a simple front facade that looks over the street, and an almost full glass facade opening up in the backyard, Neutra keeps the front facade private and uses sliding glass doors in the back facade connecting private rooms and common areas directly. Another widely used solution of the time was 7
to use natural materials to panel the walls and ceilings which Neutra used in his case study house as well. Different types of wood decorate each room, creating a subtle but apparent separation between private and common areas for the residents of the Bailey House.
IMAGINED CONTEXT Architects, designing for especially family housing, has a huge impact on the way of living that will be offered to the families in that house. The Thomas Mann House was designed for a life in exile for the Mann Family by an architect who also had fled his home because of the struggles the war had brought. Both parties being German speaking; the result was, as the architecture historian Thomas Hines calls it, a “more gemütlich version of the International Style.”
[5]
and stayed loyal to the commissioners’ desires.
And according to Heinrich Wefing, the house on San Remo Drive was the embodiment of the two principles of exile: From the outside, “Seven Palms”, as the house was known at the time, was a symbol of assimilation to the California environment, whereas on the inside, it became the “inhabited museum devoted to a lost homeland”.
[6]
It is either Davidson’s vision for the way of
living in this household or the family’s request to have the focus on Thomas Mann’s study and his maximum level of comfort. The extra staircase, private roof terrace and the separate bedroom indicate the house was built for his use and then the rest was added for his family.
[vi] Thomas and Katia Mann with two of their kids, 1941
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Case Study House No.1, addresses “a fairly typical American Family”
[1]
consisting of a
working husband and wife, a teen-aged daughter and occasional guests. Davidson plans the inner organization while valuing the privacy of the parents, the kid and the guests all at the same time. The bedroom of the teen-age daughter, who will in time be a less frequent guest, is thought to allow a different use for the permanent residents of the house in the future. Although there is an apparent attempt to protect privacy, the common areas like the outdoor eating area, the terrace and the dining and living room are located in the middle acting as a core for the household to allow social gatherings.
[vii] Illustration of the Master bedroom’s sliding glass door facade with access to private garden, CSH1, 1948
Case Study House No.20, addresses a relatively more modest way of living. Richard Neutra’s modal family is a young couple with kids, who can afford just as much at the moment but will have the ability for future additions thanks to the big land the house is located on. To get the most out of the plans, Neutra uses the indoor-outdoor relations very efficiently. The children’s bedroom is located closer to the social patio, in order to both keep them in eye-sight of the parents for security reasons and also keeping the parents’ quarters as further away from the common areas as possible to maintain privacy.
[viii] Master Bedroom, CSH20, 1948
[ix] Children’s Bedroom, CSH20, 1948
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Conclusion
Architecture, specifically for family housing, has always been in change; depending on the time’s constructional and financial restrictions, the commissioners’ desires and also the architect’s background. Especially during the last years and after the Second World War, the need for modern housing for the newly forming and changing families required fast, efficient and modern solutions in the world. Los Angeles, being one of the recipient of many immigrants from Europe was already a demographically diverse society. During the war years, authors, designers and many other people from different economical backgrounds migrated to LA, adding to the large diverse population. These families were sometimes the exiled authors fleeing their countries in Europe, looking for a new home and sometimes the newly forming modern families consisting of the soldiers coming back from war. In any case, most of the time, the designs were well thought out and done in relation to the commissioner families’ genuine needs. J.R. Davidson in his two examined projects targeted one real and one hypothetical family. In both cases his attention to the privacy of the users was essential. After such a devastating experience of something like a world war, the intent of high privacy achieved by separating the common and private living areas in the household providing privacy for the permanent residents from the guests and also individually from each other, seems appropriate. Both architects Davidson and Neutra valued the indoor-outdoor living and designed in such a way that would allow for future logical additions and expansions. Using floor to ceiling glass in most of the facades and allowing access to the gardens from the major rooms of the Case Study Houses they designed, it is clear that they both wanted to give the residents a life connected to the nature. Implementing modern elements and innovations was also fundamental in their work and an obligation to be able to fit into the low budget, low maintenance prompt they had. Although discussible how successful their attempt was on designing family houses for mass production in the future, Davidson and Neutra both took a step forward in the design world and expressed their idea of living as a post-war family and left their work into the hopefully brighter future.
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Image Index [i, ii] Julius Ralph Davidson papers, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara. [iii] Davidson, Julius Ralph. “Case Study House #1.” Arts & Architecture, Feb. 1948. [iv] Neutra, Richard. “Case Study House #20.” Arts & Architecture, Dec. 1948. [v, vi] Hawthorne, Christopher. “Commentary: Thomas Mann House by Midcentury Great J.R. Davidson: L.A.'s next Big Teardown?” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 16 Aug. 2016, www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-thomas-mann-house-20160815-snap-story.html. [vii] Davidson, Julius Ralph. “Case Study House #1.” Arts & Architecture, Feb. 1948. [viii, ix] Neutra, Richard. “Case Study House #20.” Arts & Architecture, Dec. 1948.
Works Cited [1, 2] Davidson, Julius Ralph. “Case Study House #1.” Arts & Architecture, Feb. 1945. [3] Neutra, Richard. “Case Study House #20.” Arts & Architecture, Dec. 1948. [4] Davidson, Julius Ralph. “Case Study House #1.” Arts & Architecture, Feb. 1948. [5] Hines, Thomas S., Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles Modernism, 1900-1970, Rizzoli International Publications, 2010, p. 518 [6] Wefing, Heinrich, “We are at home wherever the desk stands”, in: Building Paradise: Exile Architecture in California. Villa Aurora Edition, Berlin 2004, p. 83.
- Smith, Elizabeth A. T., and Gössel Peter. Case Study Houses: 1945-1966: the Californian Impetus. Taschen, 2006.
- Clemoes, Charlie. “The Case Study Houses Program: Richard Neutra's Bailey House.” Mid Century Home, 23 Oct. 2017, www.midcenturyhome.com/case-study-houses-richard-neutrabailey-house/.
- Hawthorne, Christopher. “Commentary: Thomas Mann House by Midcentury Great J.R. Davidson: L.A.'s next Big Teardown?” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 16 Aug. 2016, www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-thomas-mann-house-20160815-snap-story.html.
- “Case Study House #1 and JR Davidson.” Mid Century Modern Groovy, 24 Oct. 2017, www.midcenturymoderngroovy.com/?p=7496.
- “Case Study House Series: House No. 1.” Home, 16 Jan. 2018, www.atomic-ranch.com/ architecture-design/case-study-house-series-house-no-1/.
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