Sat, 02 Sep 2006
Case Study Houses
Elizabeth A.T. Smith, Case Study Houses,
Taschen
For those interested in modernist architecture, Taschen
have had a very large, quite expensive book of this title out
for a while. Now there's a much smaller version in one of their
inexpensive lines that's also quite cheap and much easier to
store as well. The Case Study houses in question were all
built in California after WWII and were an experiment in
modernism and also, in many cases, in low cost building to
house a burgeoning population. The "form follows function"
saying of Mies van der Rowe is very much in operation with
these houses and the result is sometimes quite beautiful.
Here is not the place to discuss the problem of function
definition which makes a lot of this style of place
unliked. Anyway, if you do like, you'll certainly like the
book.
The small version doesn't have complete floor plans for each
house but it's still nice, with a mixture of colour and black
and white photos and a writeup for each house.
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pre Dec 04 reviews are here