Case Study Houses: The Complete CSH Program 1945–1966 is the definitive retrospective of one of American architecture's most ambitious experiments — a postwar program that commissioned 36 prototype homes and reshaped the modern residential tradition on both sides of the Pacific.
About This Book
Between 1945 and 1966, Arts & Architecture editor John Entenza ran one of the most consequential patronage programs in twentieth-century residential architecture. By commissioning leading architects — among them Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eero Saarinen — to design buildable, affordable modern homes for postwar Los Angeles, Entenza turned a magazine brief into a body of work that permanently altered how architects think about domestic space. This complete documentation of all 36 Case Study Houses brings together period photographs, contemporary images of surviving structures, floor plans, and sketches, making it the most thorough single resource on a program whose influence on modernist residential design has never fully receded.
Key Features
- 512 pages of period and contemporary photography, floor plans, and architectural sketches
- Edited by Peter Gössel and Elizabeth A. T. Smith; photographs by Julius Shulman
- Comprehensive coverage of all 36 prototype homes in the CSH program, including works by Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eero Saarinen
- Published by Taschen, 40th anniversary edition
What You'll Discover
- How John Entenza used Arts & Architecture magazine as both platform and patron, mobilising the era's most progressive architectural talent toward a single social and aesthetic agenda
- The tension between the program's idealistic mission — affordable, replicable modern housing — and the highly experimental formal language its architects actually produced
- Julius Shulman's photographs as interpretive documents in their own right, shaping how the Case Study Houses entered architectural consciousness internationally
- The program's lasting influence on American and international architecture, traceable through the floor plans and spatial strategies that reappear across decades of residential design
About the Author
Peter Gössel is an editor and architectural historian whose work with Taschen spans numerous landmark surveys of twentieth-century architecture and design. Elizabeth A. T. Smith is a curator and architectural scholar with deep expertise in postwar American modernism. Julius Shulman, whose photographs appear throughout, is widely regarded as the defining architectural photographer of the Case Study era.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 512
- Dimensions: 164 x 225 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783836587877
- Publisher: Taschen
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects and students of modernism, residential design researchers, Julius Shulman collectors, and anyone tracing the roots of California modernism and its global afterlife.