Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CALIFORNIA'S NAKED ARCHITECTURE
Clothing-optional California has never been shy about showcasing its assets. Starting in
the 1960s, California embraced the stripped-down, glass-wall aesthetics of the Interna-
tional Style championed by Bauhaus architects Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe and Le Corbusier. Open floor-plans and floor-to-ceiling windows were especially
suited to the see-and-be-seen culture of Southern California.
Austrian-born Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra brought early modernism to LA
and Palm Springs. PS's signature style is still celebrated every February during Modern-
ism Week. Neutra and Schindler were also influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, who de-
signed LA's Hollyhock House in a style he dubbed 'California Romanza.'
With LA-based designers Charles and Ray Eames, Neutra contributed to the experi-
mental open-plan Case Study Houses, several of which jut out of the LA landscape and
are used as filming locations, for example, in LA Confidential.
Arts and Crafts & Art Deco
Simplicity and harmony were hallmarks of California's early-20th-century Arts and Crafts
style. Influenced by both Japanese design principles and England's Arts and Crafts move-
ment, its woodwork and handmade touches marked a deliberate departure from the Indus-
trial Revolution's mechanization. SoCal architects Charles and Henry Greene and Bernard
Maybeck and Julia Morgan in Northern California popularized the versatile one-story bun-
galow. Today you'll spot them in Pasadena and Berkeley with their overhanging eaves,
airy terraces and sleeping porches harmonizing warm, livable interiors with the natural en-
vironment outdoors.
California was cosmopolitan from the start, and couldn't be limited to any one set of in-
ternational influences. In the 1920s, the international art-deco style took elements from the
ancient world - Mayan glyphs, Egyptian pillars, Babylonian ziggurats - and flattened
them into modern motifs to cap stark facades and outline streamlined skyscrapers, notably
in LA and Oakland. Streamline moderne kept decoration to a minimum and mimicked the
aerodynamic look of ocean liners and airplanes.
