page_title: Calvin C. Straub
section_title: Professorship at USC, ASU
hierarchical_section_title: Calvin C. Straub / Biography / Professorship at USC, ASU
caption_attribution_description: English: Saul Bass House:Case Study House #21
context_page_description: Calvin Chester Straub FAIA was an American architect who had significant impact on architecture as both a designer and an educator. His modesty, confidence, passion for life, and no-nonsense approach resonated with a generation that, like himself, came of age in the World War II era. His influence extended through four subsequent generations as a popular professor of Architecture.
  Straub was a professor of architecture at University of Southern California and Arizona State University. As a senior partner at Buff, Straub and Hensman, he joined forces with his former students and USC alumni to produce an important body of work. The lifestyle magazine Sunset often featured his accomplishments, which were considered influential in shaping a post-World War II contemporary Southern California style. His enthusiasm for architecture inspired generations of students, including Frank O. Gehry, Pierre Koenig, and many others — common among gifted and committed instructors, some reached pinnacles of success, wealth, or fame that eluded him.
  Straub lived and worked at the epicentre of the evolving Southern California architecture of his day. He knew Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Mather Green, R.M.
context_section_description: In 1946, after his tour of duty, Straub arrived back in Pasadena, California, intent on resuming his architectural career. At USC, he visited Arthur Gallion, who offered him a teaching position there  At the time, USC was a hotbed of new ideas brought about by the aftermath of the war. Straub would eventually become dean of the College of Architecture.  He and the school became focused on architectural responses to social issues, such as the population boom in Los Angeles and the need for low-cost housing with limited resources. "Employment in hand, Straub still faced the problem so common to millions of other returning veterans; the lack of housing ... Straub's circle of friends included a number of individuals that had never had any construction experience, but, who concluded that if they helped each other, they could solve their housing dilemma. To Straub fell the responsibly of the design of several very low-cost houses"[5].  After borrowing a set of plans as an example from Richard Neutra he began to design. He built his cottage in 1947. He developed for them a post and beam structural system. Experimenting by trial and error, the final product was lightweight, yet ridge utilizing large expanses of glass. This system was disseminated through the nation by its publication and Julius Shulman's photography. It measured 16'x24', and had been built by war-surplus materials, "the cost was $800.00 plus our own labor and bruised thumbs." said Straub. For this invention, Esther McCoy dubbed Calvin. C. Straub the "Father of California Post and Beam Architecture"
  Straub's early design's were most influential in the era recognized as mid century modernism. A design vocabulary birthed in the LA Basin in the late forties through early sixties of the twentieth century. Straub became an "heir of the 'woodsy' Arts and Crafts tradition" being  "acquainted with the modernist movement led in the west by Nuetra but initiated by  Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe," and, because of his own interests, “accepted it with enthusiasm."
   
  In his book, The Man-made Environment: An Introduction to World Architecture and Design, Straub himself refers to Arts and Crafts architecture only obliquely, focusing instead on "the small-scale buildings and houses" designed by the Bay Region architects "who were continuing to evolve forms of modern architecture in the tradition of Maybeck, Gill, and the Greene Brothers." This created a synthesis of strongly divergent influences. This synthesis was informed by a principle based design philosophy rather than aesthetics or technological advancements.
  "Using building materials expressive of the naturalist philosophy of the West, the design theories of the 'Arts and Crafts' Movement, and the functional traditions of the Chicago School, they carried on the development of an 'American architecture' ... Although functional in planning and concept, their designs were not overly concerned with expressing technology or mechanical functionalism as in the European 'international style'. It was more committed to humanism, the natural landscape, and the life styles of people than to abstract principles of theory."
  Calvin C. Straub created an artisan architecture. His designs were born of craft, not technology, inspired by natural materials, informed by a personal artistic expression yet firmly committed to principles of humanism, function, responsive to the patron, context and climate; for the pleasure of use.
  
  "Straub was committed to a humanist architecture. Like other regional modernists, he adopted a pragmatic approach, eschewing the dogmatic rigidity found in the purest forms of both the Arts and Crafts and Modernist movements. The Bay Region Style was, after all, about fusion, what Gwendolyn Wright calls “a joyful Modernism that freely mixed local vernaculars with Japanese and European influences, native redwood with industrial materials, compositional order with quirky details."  This was architecture as a means to an end, not the end itself. As architect William Wurster suggested, "Archite
caption: Case Study House #20 Street Elevation
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