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| TOP LEFT Case Study Houses 1945-1962 by Esther McCoy (ISBN 0912158719) BELOW Blueprints for modern living by Elizabeth AT Smith (ISBN 0262692139) TOP RIGHT Case Study Houses by Elizabeth AT Smith (ISBN 3822864129) BELOW The presence of the Case Study Houses by Ethel Buisson / Thomas Billard (ISBN 3764371188) |
In 2008 Taschen published a same-size reprint of Arts & Architecture 1945-1954 (6156 pages, 118 magazines in 10 file boxes). This book uses 623 pages from that reprint to show off the various Case Study Houses but I was very disappointed with the result because as well as the CSH there are other pages from the magazine, other house designs, covers, John Entenza editorials, furniture, ceramics and ads. The book should really have just had the CSH pages.
Another disappointment is that the magazine was a very amateurish production. There seemed to be no copy editors, the magazine's text could run for hundreds of words in one paragraph, the headlines were dull ('drive-in restaurant john lautner designer' or 'the architect's studio HARRY SEIDER architect'). No art editor either, the page layouts followed no formula, columns and line lengths varied from page to page as did the type sizes. Julius Schulman's great photos of the various CSH ended up butted together or small surrounded by plenty of white space.
For readers who really want to know about the fascinating CSH program, the best book is Case Study Houses by Elizabeth AT Smith (also published by Taschen in 2002, ISBN 3822864129) a massive 440-page landscape book that looks at each house with text, plans, photos and it's beautifully designed. (There is a 2021 small-size version from Taschen ISBN 978-3836587877).
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