California Modern House

2261 Words5 Pages

The modern homes that emerged in California in the mid-20th Century used sleek horizontal lines and glass walls to connect with nature, and to project a glamorous modern lifestyle as defined by the utopian notions of modern Americans. By inspecting both Pierre Koenig’s Stahl House in Los Angeles, and Neil Clerehan and Guilford Bell’s Simon House in Victoria we can observe where Bell and Clerehan have been influenced by the California modern style, and how Koenig’s Stahl House is an exemplary example of it. Both the Stahl House and Simon House uniquely use their glass walls to connect with the landscape, to blur the boundaries and create spaces designed to cater to the modern Californian hopes of a free and glamorous social lifestyle. The Stahl …show more content…

The natural finishes to the timber, concrete and plaster give this home some of the honest textural and organic feel for which the California modern homes were known. Simon House has a timber post-and-beam structural system with the beams expressed throughout the centre of the house, unhidden and continuous from the pool terrace to the lounge and out to the garden terrace, where the beams cantilever and continue beyond the eaves of the flat steel-deck roof (Figure 5). These cantilevering beams, though less dramatic than the steel ones of Stahl House, project towards to hopeful horizon, pushing beyond the sheltered boundaries of the garden terrace and framing pieces of the daring Australian sky. The use of timbers instead of steel tie Simon House to the landscape more solidly, emphasising the low profile of the house. When coupled with the clean horizontal lines of the concrete blockwork and the clad eaves (Figure 5) emphasise the sleek horizontality of this building in the style of the Californian modern home. The clever materiality of Simon House does not end with its external elements, however. The freedom of the open plan of the living-dining wing of the house is interrupted by the single wall of the dining ‘room’. Instead of enclosing the space completely- a stifling of freedom contrary to everything that was the utopian ideal of mid-20th century modern living- the space is elegantly defined by a single wall that displays a change in materiality. The room becomes defined by an invisible threshold with this elegant move- indeed, even the wall does not completely enclose any space as it does not reach the ceiling, only the bottom of the expressed beams, similar to Koenig’s walls in Stahl House. The minimalism in this move comes from Bell’s architectural style, with his penchant for ancient Japanese vernacular, and is one

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