Classic Modern, which begins by tracing sources of the midcentury design sensibility, takes us inside some of the great houses fashioned by Richard Neutra, Marcel Breuer and others before going on to the mainstreaming of modern design that came with standardized parts, prefabricated structures, and synthetic materials developed in the war.
Dietsch then looks at some of the architectural experiments that generated interest at a time when split levels were overtaking the country. They include the Case Study Houses in Southern California, designed by architects such as Eero Saarinen, Craig Ellwood, and Charles and Ray Eames among others, in response to a challenge to use off-the-shelf components to create homes as livable and affordable as you could find in America's Levittowns.
When unveiled in 1946 and '47, the first six of the 36 designed drew 400,000 visitors. But "the crisp, exacting architecture never caught on with the home-building industry," Dietsch writes of the "flat-roofed structures based on European concepts of flowing, open spaces."
We tour the familiar Eames residence in Pacific Palisades and a few other Case homes before Dietsch plumbs different regions to show pioneering developments in Colorado and the San Francisco Bay area based on Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture, a development in a D.C. suburb that eschewed uniform front lawns and identical lot sizes, and climate-sensitive modern homes in Sarasota, Fla., based on new technologies.
