koenig nov9

K O E N I G

N E I L J A C K S O N

T A S C H E N

K O E N I G

L I V I N G W I T H S T E E L

P I E R R E K O E N I GN E I L J A C K S O N / T A S C H E N / L A C A

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Dedicated to my teacher Kidwell, who will probably think this is funny.

6 .…………….…………………………………………………………………… Inroduction

16 …………..……………………………………………………………….. Keong House #1

20 .………………………………………………………………………………..Lamel House

26 ………….………………………………………. Bailey House (Case Study House #21)

34 ...................….………………………………………………………………..Seidel House

42 ……………..…………………………………….. stahl House (Case Study House #22)

50 ….................……………………………………………………………… Johnson House

56 .……………………………………………………………………………Oberman House

62 .……………………………………………………………………………….. Iwata House

66 .…………….……………………………………………………………….. Beagles House

70 ……………..………………………………. Chemehuevi Prefabricated Housing Tract

74 .……………………………………………………………………….. Burton Pole-House

76 ………………………………………………………………………………Gantert House

80 ……………………………………………………………………………Koenig HOuse #2

86 ....………………………………………………………………………..…Schwartz HouseLife and Work………………..……………………92

Map…………...……………………………………95

Bibliography….……………………………………96

The Author…...……………………………………96

Credits………..……………………………………96

C O N T E N T S

I N T R O D U C T I O N

t h e s e v e n - m i n u t e e x p o s u r e • l u l i u s s r u l m a n ’ s p h o t o g r a p h o f c a s e s t u d y • h o u s e # 2 2

started with so much hope but ended in so much chaos. Perhaps that is the lasting significance of this house; it will be an enduring statement of hope and expectation. Pierre Koenig was born in San Francisco on 17 Oc-tober 1925; his parents were both second-generation immigrants, his mother of French descent and his fa-ther of Cerman, the European name. In 1939, while still at high school, he moved while his family to Los Ange-les, to the San Gabriel valley just south of Pasadena, where he found everything, in contrast to San Francis-co, to be "warm, sunny and colorful ... new and bright and clean, especially the architecture." 1 Soon after, in 1941, the United States entered the War and Koenig, then aged just seventeen, enlisted in the US Army Ad-vanced Special Training Program, which promised an accelerated college education. But in 1943, after just a few months at the University of Utah, the program was cancelled and Koenig was sent to Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. Active service in France and Germany—as a flash ranging observer with the duty to spot enemy gunfire and calculate, through triangula-tion, their position—kept him in Europe until well after

Few images of twentieth-century architecture are more iconic than the nighttime view of Pierre Koenig's Case Study House #22 set on its eagle's-nest site high above the lights of Los Angeles. Yet neither the house, nor the photograph which captured it, were in fact as they appear. The house was unfinished and full of plaster dust, the furniture, including Koenig's own ar-chitectural pottery, was borrowed for the day, and the landscaping was contrived, consisting of cut branches held by clamps or by hand. The photograph was also a construct, a seven-minute exposure to bring out the city lights and the pop of a flash-bulb to catch the two young women, one a ucla undergraduate and the oth-er a senior at Pasadena High School, poised in conver-sation inside; in fact, the city lights can actually be read through their white evening dresses. But the picture, which first appeared on the front cover of the ‘Sunday Pictorial’ section of the Los Angeles Examiner on 17 July 1960, was symbolic. Like so much popular music, it caught the spirit of the moment, the Zeitgeist: Los An-geles, the city of angels at the dawn of the 1960s and the Kennedy era. It was a decade which, for America,

1 Pierre Koenig, quoted

in James Steele and

David jenkins, Pierre

Koenig, Phaidon Press,

London,1998, p. 9

11


VE Day, and it was not until 1946 that he was shipped back to the United States on the Cunard Liner Queen Mary. On that journey he shunned the squalor of the troops' quarters below decks for a bedroll in a lifeboat. The Gl Bill granted Koenig the financial support to undertake college training and, after two years at Pasadena City College, he finally gained admittance to the architecture program at the University of Southern California. Although progressive in many ways, the pro-gram's adherence to timber framing frustrated Koenig, and as a third-year student he proceeded to build his first house using the industrial material steel. "It oc-curred to me," he later recalled, "that houses that were very slender were meant to be in steel, not wood."2 It was not surprising then, that rather than seeking work with Richard Neutra, at that time probably the doyen of southern California architects, Koenig should turn in-stead to another USC graduate, Raphael Soriano. As he later said, "I needed a summer job so I naturally went to him. And because I had something to offer him and he to me, I worked for him for that summer."3 It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

in Chicago, used the magazine Arts & Architecture, of which he was both proprietor and editor, to promote a modern, affordable architecture for the post-war years. By publishing selected houses month by month, as they were being designed and then built, he provided publicity for the architect and advertising for the con-tractors and manufacturers. The benefit to the client was that the materials were supplied at a substantial-ly reduced cost but, in return, the clients had to open their houses to the public for viewing. The houses were not commissioned by the magazine, but selected by Entenza. As Koenig later said, "John Entenza asked me to come in one day and he said to me, 'Pierre, if you ever have a pool house with some good clients tell me and we'll make it a Case Study House'. Well I did and that was Case Study House 21."4

With his two Case Study Houses, Koenig com-pleted the run of eight steel-framed buildings which, in a period of just over ten years, gave the Case Study House Program its reputation. First was the Eames House (CSH#8), by Charles and Ray Eames, and then its neighbor, the Entenza House (CSH#9) by Charles

In that summer of 1950, while Koenig was build-ing his own house in Glendale, Soriano had four light-weight steel-framed houses underway on site or in the design stage: the Shulman House and the Curtis House were almost complete, and the Olds House and the Krause House were in process. Here Koenig recog-nized a rational, industrial architecture which reflected his own beliefs and thus confirmed, for him, the cor-rectness of his direction. Soriano's drawings, often in crayon and pencil, rarely caught the crispness which so characterized these buildings, so Koenig prepared for him the perspective drawings of the Olds House which were published in John Entenza's magazine Arts & Architecture that August as the Case Study House for 1950. Even at this early stage, Koenig's drawings are instantly recognizable. Constructed in black line and two-point perspective, they are as spare and brittle as the houses they portrayed. The Case Study House Program was the single most significant initiative in post- war Californian ar-chitecture and had world wide influence. John Entenza, who later became director of the Graham Foundation

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Eames and Eero Saarinen. They were both complet-ed in 1549. Soriano's Olds House was the Case Study House for 1950- The next three were by Craig Ellwood: the Saizman House (CSH #6) in 1953, the Hoffman House (CSH#7) in 1956,and the Fields House (CSH# 8) in 1958. Case Study House #21 .was opened to the pub-lic is January of the following year and then, as Koenig recalled, "John said we'll do another one. We did Case Study House #22, which is on a eagle's-nest site in the Hollywood hills."5 The Case Study House Program promised so much but ultimately it delivered so little: it was, as Pe-ter Reyner Banham wrote in Los Angeles, The Archi-tecture of Four Ecologies, The Style That Nearly ...' But Koenig was not interested in style. That his architec-ture is seen as having a recognizable style was the re-sult of his rational single- mindedness and the product of later critical readings. When he built his first house in Glendale, he was simply following what he thought was a logical course. As he later said, "This was the same time Charles Eames was doing his building in the Palisades and the same time, so far as I know, Mies was


4 Pierre Koenig interviewed

by Neil Jackson, 13 July 1988

5 Ibid.

t h e a x i a l e n t r a n c e w a y s e p a r a t e s t h e c a r p o r t f r o m t h e w e i m m i n g p o o l .

9 1 2 S U M M I T P L A C E , M O N T E R E Y P A R K , C A L I F O R N I A1 9 6 3 I W A T A H O U S E

t h e a x i a l e n t r a n c e w a y s e p a r a t e s t h e c a r p o r t f r o m t h e w e i m m i n g p o o l .

The house which Koenig built for Richard and Vicki Iwata and their fice children suggests, at first appear-ance, a major departure from the transparent steel box which, by 1963, had become almost a trade mark. But what it actually shows is the Koenig was not bound to such limitations and that every design was adjusted to meet the client's requirements. Now here were clients with very different demands and so a noticebly differ-ent solution emerged. The site in Monterey Park, an inland community on the edge of the San Gabriel Mountains, was wedge-shaped, narrowest by the access road and vroadest at the far end where the land fell away steeply. Koenig's options, therefore were either to build a long, thin house on the narrow, flat land nearest the road, or to take up the width of the site and perch his building on the sloe. It was the latter which he chose, for to build on a slope allowed him to design in cross-section as well as in plan. The entry to the house was processional, a long straight pathway which flanked the pool and passed throuhng the entry pavilion, which contained the changing rooms and the carport, before crossing a

slender bridge into the house, where it terminated at the central point of the stars. Here the living spaces spread out to either side, the dining room, kitchen and family room to the left and the living room to the right, with the music room and den beyond. This whole area, excluding the valconies at either end, measured about 70 × 20 feet, proportions which leave the space seem-ing pinched and in need of the fully glazed walls which are denied. Instead, fins are added to the long external wall which, while controllling solar gain, obscure cross-views of the landscape beyond. From this central level, the stairs went up to the bedroom floor, where there was also a library, study, sewing room and radio room, and down to the chil-dren's play floor which included a workshop. A sense of hierachy ran through the levels, from the most flex-ible spaces at the bottom to the most cellular at the top. This was reflected across the rear elevation in the

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f i n s c o m b a t s o l a r g a i n a s w e l l a s s u g g e s t i n g t h e r e l a t i v e p r i v a c y o f t h e s p a c e s w i t h i n .

f l o o r p l a n : b e d r o o m l e v e l

f l o o r p l a n : f a m i l y l e v e l w i t h e n t r a n c e b r i d g e s

f l o o r p l a n : b a s e m e n t l e v e l w i t h p l a y r o o m a n d w o r k s h o p

f l o o r p l a n : c a r p o r t a n d p o o l - h o u s e

t h e p e r s p e c t i v e d r a w i n g e m p h a s i s e s t h e s t r u c t u r a l c o n c e p t b e h i n d t h e d e s i g n .

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repetition of fins at each level, the greatest number at the top and the least at the bottom. Thus while the specific function of each level, and of certain elements, could be recognised from the outside, the relatice need for privacy was retained. This was most noticeable, for example, at the top level, where the multitude of fins made it difficult to distinguish one bedroom from the next, although the blank panels in two of the bays do suggest a different function. Other features, such as the stair shaft, stand out clearly as does the protrud-ing bay to one side, bvut only a knowledge of the plan would allow this to be identified as the pantry. The Carious contemporary descriptions of the building refer to 'a tree-like, cantilevered steel frame with a secondary wood system integrated". This, no doubt, was Koenig's termin ology in a way, but it was not a helful description, for this tree would have six trunks. The steel frame, in fact, was arranged in the same way as that at the Oberman HOuse, the princi-pal structural beams running in parallel for the length, rather than the width, of the house. Set about 14 feet from the other, each beam was supported by three 8

× 8-inch square section columns at 35-foot centres. The top floor, which demanded the largest cantilever, was supported on 27-inch deep I-sections; the middle floor on 21-inch I-sections, spanning the long beams and expressed externally, further supported the top floor, thus adding to the sense of compartmentalisa-tion which the layered design suggested. In reality, the separation between the floors provided a cral space for electrical and mechanical servives and enhanced acoustic separation. The flexibility of the lower floors was in stark contrast to the cellular arrangement of the top floor, where the rear elevation was divided into nine equal bays, six for bedrooms and the other three for the

t h e p e r s p e c t i v e d r a w i n g e m p h a s i s e s t h e s t r u c t u r a l c o n c e p t b e h i n d t h e d e s i g n .

library, the radio room and the patio which merged with the stair shaft. Only the library and the master bed-room extended the full depth of the floor plate, each accommodating, in an almost symmetrical manner, storage for books and clothes respectively. A spine cor-ridore, set off-centre, linked them. All the other rooms, which were essentially identical, had a shallower plan and opened off one side of the corridor, on the other side of which were three bathrooms, the study and the sewing room. It was a tight, almost institutional plan but, within the confines of a framed structure, must have worked. The defining feature of the building is the fins. There function, as has been suggested, was to combat solar gain. With the rear of the building is the fins. There function, as has been suggested, was to combat solar gain. With the rear of the building facing south-east, their positioning would have welcomed morning sun but the more the sun moved to the south, the more the fins would have excluded summer sun late in the day, by which time the building would require no more heat-ing. The locationh of the fins was determined by tests

of a model on a heliodon, where the poition of the sun at any time on any day of the year could be simulated and the shadows measured. Koenig therefore placed the fins close together on the bedroom level, where the rooms were narrow, while on the lower levels, where the rooms were larger, the fins were positoned futher apart. Thus the permitted solar gain was in proportion to the spaces which it heated. The house, nevertheless, was fitted ready for the installation of air-conditioning. It might have been of this house that Christopher Reed, writing Koenig's obituary, described how at one client's request, Koe-nig had installed the ducts, though not the machines, for air-conditioning. He had asked the client to depend upon natural ventilation for just one year but, "In less than a year," he is quoted as saying, "the client phoned to say he didn't need air-conditioning."

a p e r s p e c t i v e d r a w i n g o f a n e a r l i e r v e r s i o n o f t h e s c h e m e , w i t h t h e s w i m m i n g p o o l a n d c a r p o r t r e m o v e d a n d t h e u p p e r s t o r e y o n e b a y l o n g e r .

21

a p e r s p e c t i v e d r a w i n g o f a n e a r l i e r v e r s i o n o f t h e s c h e m e , w i t h t h e s w i m m i n g p o o l a n d c a r p o r t r e m o v e d a n d t h e u p p e r s t o r e y o n e b a y l o n g e r .

Born

Married Merry �ompson; one child Randall Francis Koenig

Divorced Merry �ompson

Married Gaile Carson

Gaile gave birth to their one child, Jean Pierre Koenig

Divorced Gaile Carson

Attended School of Engineering. University of Utah

Flash Ranger Observer, US Army

Attended Pasadena City College

Attended Department of Architecture, University of Southern California

Worked for Raphael Soriano.

Graduated as Bachelor of Architecture, University of Southern California Set up private practice

Worked for Jones and Emmons

Assed California State Board of Examiners Licensing Exams in Architecture Elected member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Brazil AIA-House and Home magazine Award Architectural League of New York Award

AIA-Sunset magazine Honor Award Western Construction magazine Honor Award

AIA-House and Home magazine Award

AIA-Sunset magazine Award

AIA-House and Home magazine Award Bethlehem Steel Company Traveling Exhibition Pavilion

AIA-House and Home magazine Award American Institute of Iron and Steel award best Exhibition Building Award, Portland, Oregon

Electronic Enclosures Incorporated Factory and Showroom

AIA southern California Chapter Architectural Grand Prix for 36 Best Buildings in Los Angeles since 1947

Appointed Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, University of southern California, Los Angeles, California, and granted tenure

Elected to College of Fellows of Fellows of the AIA

AIA 200/2000 Award

Los Angeles Department of Cultural A�airs Award.

AIA California Council 25 Year Award AIA California Council Maybeck Award for Lifetime Achievement Appointed Professor, Department of Architecture, University of Southern California

Distinguished Alumni Award, Department of Architecture, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California

AIA Los Angeles Chapter Gold Medal Star of Design for Lifetime Achievement in Architecture, Paci�c Design Center, Los Angeles, California Distinguished Professor of Architecture, University of Southern California

Elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects City of Los Angeles Historic Preservation Award 2000 Pasadena City College Distinguished Alumni Award Gold Medal Lifetime Achievement Award, Tau Sigma Delta Society of Architects and Landscape Architects

National Design Award, Architecture design Finalist, Smithsonian/Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum AIA California Council 25 Year AwardRessner Modular addition, Brentwood, California

Married Gloria Kaufman gained two stepsons, �omas and Barry Kaufman

Attended School of Engineering. University of Utah

Flash Ranger Observer, US Army

Attended Pasadena City College

Attended Department of Architecture, University of Southern California

Worked for Raphael Soriano.

Graduated as Bachelor of Architecture, University of Southern California Set up private practice

Worked for Jones and Emmons

Assed California State Board of Examiners Licensing Exams in Architecture Elected member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Brazil AIA-House and Home magazine Award Architectural League of New York Award

AIA-Sunset magazine Honor Award Western Construction magazine Honor Award

AIA-House and Home magazine Award

AIA-Sunset magazine Award

AIA-House and Home magazine Award Bethlehem Steel Company Traveling Exhibition Pavilion

AIA-House and Home magazine Award American Institute of Iron and Steel award best Exhibition Building Award, Portland, Oregon

Electronic Enclosures Incorporated Factory and Showroom

AIA southern California Chapter Architectural Grand Prix for 36 Best Buildings in Los Angeles since 1947

Appointed Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, University of southern California, Los Angeles, California, and granted tenure

Elected to College of Fellows of Fellows of the AIA

AIA 200/2000 Award

Los Angeles Department of Cultural A�airs Award.

AIA California Council 25 Year Award AIA California Council Maybeck Award for Lifetime Achievement Appointed Professor, Department of Architecture, University of Southern California

Distinguished Alumni Award, Department of Architecture, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California

AIA Los Angeles Chapter Gold Medal Star of Design for Lifetime Achievement in Architecture, Paci�c Design Center, Los Angeles, California Distinguished Professor of Architecture, University of Southern California

Elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects City of Los Angeles Historic Preservation Award 2000 Pasadena City College Distinguished Alumni Award Gold Medal Lifetime Achievement Award, Tau Sigma Delta Society of Architects and Landscape Architects

National Design Award, Architecture design Finalist, Smithsonian/Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum AIA California Council 25 Year AwardRessner Modular addition, Brentwood, California

Died

1925193919431943-19461946-19481948-19521950195219531956195719581959196019611961-1962196219631964196619671968197019711971-1976197319751979198119831984198519891989-19001994199519961998199920002001200220032004

Anon, 'Small House by Pierre Koenig, Designer', Arts &

Architecture, January 1954

Anon, 'Steel Frame House', Arts & Architecture, June 1955

Anon, 'An Econimical House Results from an Adventur-

ous Spirit', Living For Young Homemakers, February 1956

Anon, 'Jeunes architectes dans le monde', L'Architecture

d'aujourd'hue, September 1957

Anon, 'Framed and roofed… in 2 days', Sunset, the Mag-azine of Western Living, April 1959

B I B L I O G R A P H Y25

Alison Arieff and Bryan Burkhart, Pre Fab, Gibbs Smith, Utah, 2000

Eryn Brown, 'A Case Study in Stewardship,' Los Ange-les Times, 4 August 2005

Peggy Cochran, Koenig, St. James Press, Andover/De-troit, 1988

Barbara East, 'There May Be a Steel House… In Your Very Near Future', San Francisco Examiner, Modern Living, 18 September 1955

David Hay, 'Returning to the Scene', House Beautiful, October 1998

Pierre Koenig, Johnson House, written description, un-published mss., no date

Pierre Koenig, 'Low-Cost production House', Arts & Ar-chitecture, March 1957

Pierre Koenig, 'Modern Production House', Arts & Ar-chitecture, January 1961

Brandon LaBelle and Steve Roden, Site of Sound: of Architecture & the Ear, Errant Bodies Press, Los Ange-les, 1999

Esther McCoy, 'Steel around the Pacific', Los Angeles Examiner, Pictorial Living, 25 February 1956

Esther McCoy, 'What I Believe… A statment of architec-tural principles by Pierre Koenig', Los Angeles Times Home Magazine, 21 July 1957

National Steel Corporation, 'I built this house of steel for many reasons…', Time, 9 April 1956, and Newsweek, 16 April 1956

Christopher Reed, 'pierre Koenig', The Independent, 2004

Elizabeth Smith A. T., Case Study Houses, Taschen, Co-logne 2006

Elizabeth Smith A. T., Case Study Houses. The Com-plete CSH Program 1945-1966, Taschen, Cologne, 2002

James Steele and David Jenkins, Pierre Koenig, Phaaidon Press, Longon, 1998

Margaret Stovall, 'Home of the Week', Independent Star-News, 31 August 1958

Magazine Arts & Architecture. All illustrations courtesy of David Travers: 8 both

Peter Gossel, Bremen: 87

Gossel und Partner, Bremen: 95

Neil Jackson: 14 both

Pierre Koenig estate: 4, 10,11 both, 12, 13, 17 left, 18 bot-tom, 22 bottom, 24, 27 bottom, 28 bottom, 29 bot-tom, 30 left, 34 (photo Richard Fish), 35 (photo Rich-ard Fish), 36 top (photo Richard Fish), 36 bottom, 37 (photo Richard Fish), 38 bottom, 43 bottom, 44 bot-tom, 46 bottom, 56 (photo Leiand Lee), 58 bottom, 59 (photo Leland Lee), 60 (Photo Leland Lee), 61 (photo Leland Lee), 63, 64, 65, left, 67 middle, 67 bgottom, 68 bottom, 70 both, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 79 top left, 79 bottom, 81, 82 both, 84, 85 bottom, 91 all, 92, 93 both,

I am particularly grateful for the guidance and assis-tance given to me by Gloria Koenig and by Jan Ipach, and to all those owners of a Koenig house who, over the years, have shown me their homes or talked so en-thusiastically about them. Without their help, this book could not have been written.

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

C R E D I T S

27

94 bothJohn Edward Linden/arcaid.com.uk: 33 both

Photography Juergen Nogai, Santa Monica, CA: 38 top, 39, 40 both, 41, 66, 67 top, 68 top, 69 both

Juergen Nogai/Julius Shulman: 50, 52 top, 53 both, 54, 55 top

© J. Paul Getty Trust. Used with permission. Julius Shulman Photography Archive, Reserch Library at the Getty Reserch Instutute: 2, 6, 16, 17 top, 18 top, 19 both, 20, 22 top, 23, 25, 26, 27 top, 28 top, 29 top, 30 right, 31 both, 32, 42, 43 top, 44 top, 45, 46 top, 47, 48, 49 top, 58 top, 62, 65 top, 76, 78, 79 top right, 80, 83, 85 top, 86, 88, 89, 90, 92

James Steele and David Jenkins: Pierre Koenig, Phaid-on, London, 1998: 52 bottom, 55 bottom

Neil Jackson is a british architect and architectural his-torian who has written extensively on modern archi-tecture in California, where he taught between 1985 and 1990. His 2002 book Graig Ellwood won the Sir Banister Fletcher Award in 2003. This study of Pierre Koenig is the result of a long freindship and a mark of respect for a great architect. Professor Jackson cur-rently teaches at the University of Liverpool.

T H E A U T H O R

koenig nov9

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