Case Study Program
Modernism of Julius Shulman: The perception of Southern California landscape through architectural photography, Slav Zatoka
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John Entenza initiated the Case Study Program in his Arts & Architecture magazine in Los Angeles. Until the present day it remains one of the most significant contributions to mid-century modern architecture. It began with the idea of creating new, affordable single-family housing that could accommodate young, post World World II generation. The idea of breaking up with the old and adapting the new excited many young architects of that time. Despite the fact that the program never really achieved its original goals and many of the designs were never built, it still produced a good number of residential buildings that became icons of modernist architecture. It is important that we see Case Study Program not as an isolated and local experiment but as a part of a larger architectural movement that influenced not only the history of Los Angles but echoed internationally as well. (Smith 8)
Figure 5 Case Study House #21, Los Angeles, 1958 Pierre Koenig, Architect Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust.
John Entenza, the father, or as Thomas S. Hines puts it, quoting one of Richard Neutra’s clients, Stuart Bailey: “the high priest of Case Study cult” (Hines 507) was born in Niles, Michigan in 1903. He was a son of a Spanish attorney who often took cases of veterans and migrant workers. His mother was a Scottish mining heiress. Entenza’s inheritance helped him with his early career. He studied at Stanford and at Tulane. After graduating with a BA degree from the University of Virginia he relocated to Los Angeles and worked at MGM Studios on film sets. With a passion for architecture he got a job as editor at California Arts & Architecture magazine. In 1938 Entenza bought the magazine with his inheritance and changed its image dramatically, from a regional publication praising local eclecticism to an internationally acclaimed platform supporting the ideas of modernism in architecture, paintings, film, photography and graphic design. In 1940 Arts & Architecture was born. As critic Esther McCoy put it:
No single event raised the level of taste in Los Angeles as did the magazine; certainly nothing could have put the city on the international scene so quickly (…) a magazine as flat as a tortilla and as sleek as a Bugatti with little advertising and no financial backing became the greatest force in the dissemination of information, architectural and cultural, about California. (Hines 508)
As a result of his passionate interest in architecture Entenza began forming an idea of a curated program that would bring about new ideas in the post war environment, which was a good time for experimenting with new ideas and a suitable moment to break up with the past, but also with the recession coming to an end it was a prosperous time for new construction in Los Angeles. Entenza was genuinely concerned that if no modern architectural idea was put forward, soon, the uncreative construction companies would populate the hungry postwar housing market with boring, conventional and unprogressive homes that would forever change the landscape of the city of Angels. What’s more, Entenza thought it was important to come up with designs that would utilize the new building materials and building techniques brought about by the wartime emergency to construct postwar housing that would not only be revolutionary in design but also extremely easy to build and therefore very affordable. In January of 1945 Entenza announced Case Study Program in Arts & Architecture and became the official sponsor of designs of modernist houses by selected architects. It was believed that
Figure 6 Cover of Arts & Architecture Case Study House Program, issue, Case Study Houses, 25th Anniversary ed. edition. TASCHEN America LLC, 2009. Print.
Arts & Architecture would actually be able to commission all the designs and construction and then later put it up for sale but it proved logistically and financially impossible and individuals who would choose an architect from Entenza’s approved list commissioned all of the projects. The incentive was that the manufacturers and vendors involved in the project would offer significant discounts in return for publicity, not to mention the general excitement to be part of a ground breaking building experiment. Between 1945 and 1966 there were thirty four houses designed out of which twenty six were built. After Entenza moved to Chicago in late 1960s an additional part of the Case Study Project called Case Study Apartments was realized by Entenza’s successor, David Travers. Under Travers two multiple-units Case Study apartments were commissioned out of which one was built in Phoenix. Rachel Stevenson comments on Case Study Program in her ‘At home’ with the Eameses, one of the chapters of Camera Constructs, a book of essays on architecture and photography we discussed in the previous chapter. Stevenson argues that Case Study house was mostly about the Eameses and that coincidently their commercial successes and closeness to Entenza contributed to the program’s success. She also presents an argument, stressing the importance of Julius Shulman’s photography in being instrumental to Case Study’s popularity across the world. Julius Shulman photographed the famous Eames House on a number of occasions. The one Stevenson concentrates on the most is the one commissioned by Life Magazine, 9 years after the program was completed. Stevenson further argues that Life commissioned the photograph not because of the Case Study House but because of the Eameses. She presents a very interesting portrayal of Charles and Ray Eames as clever image-makers who used images of their house to market their products. The Eameses designed and produced furniture for mass production and saw Case Study Program as excellent opportunity for advertising their products. We must remember that Eames chairs for example, were immensely popular at the time. They were unlike any other design seen before and they were everywhere, from private houses to government offices and universities. Eames chairs gained international fame and became objects of desire that never faded away. (Higgott 67) Julius Shulman not only had an eye for photography but also was a skillful businessman and succeeded, as I mentioned before, not only as an architectural photographer, as a perfect conspirator in enterprises like that of Charles and Ray Eames. Stevenson interviewed Shulman in 2001:
Shulman, who photographed almost all of the Case Study Houses, says that when photographing a house, he would generally take two sets of photographs: one in color with people for the popular press, and another black and white set for architectural publications, without occupants or belongings and very little in the way of furniture save for a few carefully placed items. (Higgott 65)
Stevenson also comments on the so called: additive process. The design of a building is a process that develops over years and sometimes even during the their entire life. Shulman often travelled with multiple props and furniture to his film sets in order to stage the interiors to make them look like they were inhabited. Sometimes who would radically rearrange the interiors as it often happened when photographing for Neutra. When we compare two images
Figure 7 Job 3000: Location "Portraits," Los Angeles, 1960 Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust.
Figure 8 Julius Shulman (photographer) living room of Case Study House #8 1950 Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust.
Figure 9 Julius Shulman (photographer) Charles and Ray Eames in their living room of Case Study House #8 1958 Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust.
of Eames House taken 8 years apart we can clearly see many differences. The first one, taken at the time Case Study Program was in progress shows the living room of Case Study House #8 with no inhabitants. It is black and white and seems to be focused on the structure of the house, while showing very limited house décor and furniture. One may argue that when Shulman photographed it he arranged the interior to emphasize its architectural values, but as stated above Shulman would often remove the furniture of an already inhabited house, that conflicted with his vision or idea of the interior he was photographing. He often explained he had to do that because the inhabitants would junk it with unnecessary artifacts and furniture style or house arrangement that would be in conflict with modernist ideas and style (Visual Acoustics). The other one is color and focuses on the Eameses, sitting casually on the floor in the center of the picture, surrounded by their belongings. It also clearly exhibits the famous Herman Miller Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman in the foreground as well as one of the other Eames chair in the far background. This difference between lifestyle and architectural approach may suggest that the occupants are only an addition to the building. Shulman throughout his career kept a balance between these two different approaches to photography. Even if stated before, that he would often take two different sets of photograph for different publications, his iconic use of people in purely architectural work seems to be his signature style. Shulman, a great advocate of Modernism communicates its ideas through his photography by showing that the modernist architecture can be both comfortable and livable. Stevenson also argues that Shulman color representation of Case Study houses served the program better than his purely architectural representations in black and white. It was the occupant that was suppose to be the most important in this program, not the buildings themselves. Some, including Stevenson, argue that in some respects the program failed. It did not fulfill its promise of delivering a low cost solution for the postwar housing problem, but instead it produced a significantly smaller than anticipated number of not-so-cheap design houses commissioned by individual clients. Mainstream developers adopted neither the designs, nor the ideas. Instead, the program reached the audience far greater than the one originally targeted by Entenza and thanks to Shulman’s photography it turned out to be highly successful and hugely influential. Through Shulman’s photography the idea of modern architecture was delivered to millions across the world, who could experience Case Study House first hand. Shulman’s careful use of human models in his architectural photography gives us another dimension to study his work. Thanks to his photography we learn about urban anthropology of Los Angeles by being introduced not only to the buildings but also to the occupants and their daily activities. It also important to mention that Case Study Program was not an isolated phenomenon but a part of a larger architectural trend in Los Angeles and worldwide. In 1927 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe invited such big names as J.J.P Oud, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Mart Stam to participate with him in Weissenhofsiedlung, an architectural exhibition of minimal housing in Stuttgart. There were also similar projects in mid 1920s in Frankfurt, designed by Ernst May and 1931 Berlin Building Exposition by Mies van der Rohe, Lilly Reich and Marcel Bauer (Case Study Houses 8). When evaluating the work of contemporary architects we continue to find influence and inspiration coming from Case Study Program, whether in materials used or the simplicity and modesty in size this project continues to echo in architecture after so many years. Some of the characteristic features of modernist architecture like organicism, modular components and integration with site are not unique to Case Study Houses. One of the architects Shulman worked extensively was R. M. Schindler, who never participated in the Case Study Program but continued experimenting with the idea and the modernist design and was probably one of the most influential architects of the most recent past.
