Case Study Houses

The Case Study Houses were experiments in American residential architecture sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine, which commissioned major architects of the day to design and build inexpensive and efficient model homes for the United States residential housing boom caused by the end of World War II and the return of millions of soldiers. The program yielded 36 designs and 25 constructed homes, concentrated in Southern California.
The "Case Study" House program, spearheaded by Arts & Architecture editor John Entenza, was announced in the January 1945 issue of the magazine. The magazine initially commissioned eight nationally known architects to create contemporary single-family homes within a specified budget, with the magazine itself serving as the "client" for each project.
The program was envisioned as a creative response to the impending building boom expected to follow the housing shortages of the Great Depression and World War II. The initial program announcement stated that "each house must be capable of duplication and in no sense be an individual performance" and that "the overall program will be general enough to be of practical assistance to the average American in search of a home in which he can afford to live." Entenza encouraged participating architects to use donated materials from industry and manufacturers to create low-cost, modern housing prototypes that might foster a dialogue between architectural professionals and laymen.
The first eight architects commissioned and profiled in the January 1945 announcement of the program were JR Davidson, Sumner Spaulding, Richard Neutra, Eero Saarinen, William Wilson Wurster, Charles Eames, and Ralph Rapson. The program employed a "design-build-publish" model, publishing the prototypes alongside the architects' comments. JR Davidson's design was the first feature of the series, with the exteriors and interiors appearing in the February and March 1945 edition of Arts & Architecture, respectively. Davidson's design was labeled Case Study House #1, thus inaugurating the numbering convention, which refers to the order in which designs were published, rather than constructed.
As outlined in the program announcement, construction was intended to commence immediately following the World War II moratorium on domestic housing construction. Case Study House #11, also designed by Davidson, was the first house constructed, and was permitted in December 1945. Construction on Case Study House #11 began on January 9, 1946, prompting the design for the home to precede the publication of Case Study House #10.
The program announcement called for each house to be open to the public for a six to eight weeks upon the conclusion of construction. Houses were to be furnished "under a working arrangement between the architect, the designer, and the furniture manufacturer". By January 1949, the magazine had published designs, models, for 19 houses. Of the 19 profiled, nine houses were complete and five were "in various stages of construction." Several houses were not constructed for unspecified reasons beyond the control of the magazine and architects.
In January 1949, the magazine announced "having come this far with it, we feel that we have proved our point to the extent that we need no longer be so ambitious as to numbers," and pivoted to sponsoring one house each year, starting with Case Study House 1949. By July 1954, the program had yielded 16 constructed houses.
In total, the program commissioned 36 prototypes, including single-family homes, multi-family homes, and apartments, of which 25 were constructed. The majority of the constructed houses were built in Los Angeles County. Additional case study houses were built in San Rafael, California; San Diego, California; and Phoenix, Arizona. Of the unbuilt houses, #19 was to have been built in Atherton, California, while #27 was to have been built in Smoke Rise, New Jersey.
The Eames House was added as a stand-alone site to the National Register in 2006. In 2013, a group of 10 case study houses, all located in Southern California, were added to the National Register of Historic Places, while House #23A was determined eligible for the registry, but not officially listed due to an objection by the owner.
A number of the houses appeared in the magazine in iconic black-and-white photographs by architectural photographer Julius Shulman. Schulman's May 1960 photo of the Stahl House is widely regarded as one of the most famous architectural photos of Los Angeles, and is one of Schulman's most reproduced photos.
In 1989 Shulman's photographs of the Case Study Houses were exhibited at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in an exhibit titled "Blueprints for Modern Living."
Houses in the program shared common design elements, including open floor plans, clean lines, floor to ceiling glass, steel framing, and a flat roof. Most of the houses were "predominately modular in design," featuring exposed structures. Virtually all of the homes featured open floor plans.