Overprovision can be seen as an architecture strategy through the lens of resilience—making spaces adaptable to changes, reinterpretations, and future needs. However, could overprovision also offer a productive lens for rethinking spatial design? Are there parallels in architectural theory or practice that align with this concept, as explored by notable figures in the discourse on space?
This question becomes particularly relevant in residential design, especially in regions like Hong Kong or Tokyo, where the demand to maximize space is a cultural and practical norm. Designers are frequently tasked with "making use of every inch" for storage or function, reflecting a tendency among residents to accumulate belongings disproportionate to their living spaces.
Foster + Partners, led by Normal Foster, has just been selected to reimagine the Television City studio complex in Los Angeles, following a global competition. The project involves the restoration of William Pereira’s iconic 1952 buildings and the transformation of the 25-acre site into a low-rise multi-modal campus and draws inspiration from the Los Angeles’ renowned Case Study Houses. The campus will feature new sound stages, production offices, creative workspace, and retail surrounding its perimeter.
The home is a fundamental expression of architectural movements within the fabric of a city. As one of the smallest typologies, it is the simplest canvas to exhibit the design ethos of any particular era. African cities have continuously negotiated the meaning of their residential dwellings, from traditional architecture to colonial architecture, and the influx of post-colonial modern architecture. Vernacular architecture explored homes with spatial patterns rooted in cultural dexterity, envelopes built with indigenous materials and forms, endowed with traditional motifs. These were in stark contrast to colonial homes that featured a range of imported architectural styles across the continent, neglecting their climatic and cultural contexts while amplifying social class.
The Case Study Houses (1945-1966), sponsored by the Arts & Architecture Magazine and immortalized by Julius Shulman’s iconic black-and-white photographs, may be some of the most famous examples of modern American architecture in history. Designed to address the postwar housing crisis with quick construction and inexpensive materials, while simultaneously embracing the tenets of modernist design and advanced contemporary technology, the Case Study Houses were molded by their central focus on materials and structural design. While each of the homes were designed by different architects for a range of clients, these shared aims unified the many case study homes around several core aesthetic and structural strategies: open plans, simple volumes, panoramic windows, steel frames, and more. Although some of the Case Study Houses’ materials and strategies would become outdated in the following decades, these unique products and features would come to define a historic era of architectural design in the United States.
https://www.archdaily.com/961900/how-did-materials-shape-the-case-study-housesLilly Cao
Case Study House 22. Image via Flickr user: mbtrama Licensed under CC BY 2.0
Between 1945 and 1966, the Case Study Houses program, following the Weißenhof-siedlung exposition, commissioned a study of economic, easy-to-build houses. The study included the creation of 36 prototypes that were to be built leading up to post-war residential development. The initiative by John Entenza, editor of Arts & Architecture magazine, brought a team to Los Angeles that featured some of the biggest names in architecture at the time, including Richard Neutra, Charles & Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig, and Eero Saarinen, among others.
The program's experiment not only defined the modern home and set it apart from its predecessors, but it also pioneered new construction materials and methods in residential development that continue to influence international architecture to this day. Take a detailed look at some of the program's most emblematic work together with recommendations for facing contemporary challenges.
Arts & Architecture’s Case Study House program was supposed to be about creating replicable, affordable designs for post-war living—stylish but modest homes for young families on a budget. And then came house #17(2).
To be fair, this house was designed for real clients, with specific and ambitious requirements. The Hoffmans had four children, a household staff, and an art collection. So this was never going to be just another suburban three-bedroom.
The editorial notes on Arts & Architecture’s 11th Case Study House set out the “basic principles of modern architecture”: an emphasis on “order, fitness and simplicity.” Livability and practicality are key, and “sham” is frowned on. As with other houses in the series, this design by JR Davidson adheres to these goals with clean, horizontal lines, an open floor plan, and integration of the outdoor space.
It’s a modest, compact home, less high-concept than some of the other houses in the programme—no indoor plantings or reflecting pools; no complicated backstory for the imagined clients (think of the next two, #12 and especially #13)—but arguably more successful in providing a model for the average American home. Its value doesn’t depend on dramatic landscaping or views, but on thoughtful design and attention to solving everyday problems. Walking through Archilogic’s 3D model reveals the elegance of Davidson’s approach.
The tenth Case Study House wasn’t actually intended for the Arts & Architecture programme. It was added on its completion in 1947, to fill out the roster, as many houses remained unbuilt. Clearly, the Nomland design earned its place on the list, having many features in common with other Case Study homes and, most importantly, meeting the stated aims of economy, simplicity, new materials and techniques, and indoor/outdoor integration. The different departure point, however, can be seen in the layout. Whereas Case Study homes were designed primarily for families, this plan is for “a family of adults”—which is to say, a childless couple.
WATG Urban's first prize design for The Freeform Home Design Challenge in 2016 is now moving one step closer to becoming a reality. Since winning the competition, WATG's Chicago office has been developing the winning design, dubbed Curve Appeal, alongside Branch Technology. Curve Appeal is now undergoing the "wall section testing, research and development phase" with an anticipated goal of breaking ground later this year. This revolutionary project could change the way we construct complex, freeform structures.
The seventh house in the Arts & Architecture Case Study program was built with real clients in mind: a family of three with creative hobbies. The result, designed by Thornton M Abell, is a flexible home with a distinctive functional character.
The house divides neatly into three separate areas: to the left of the entrance, working spaces make up nearly half of the full floorplan, with living and sleeping areas off to the right and extending forward into the garden. Sliding panels between the roomy central reception/dining area and the cozy living room create the option of privacy or extra space, as required, with the terrace and splash pool beyond offering further possibilities for summer entertaining. A small planting area beside the sliding door blurs the line between indoors and out.
The fourth house in Arts & Architecture’s Case Study program departed from the trend with a noticeably more introverted design. Intended for a modestly sized urban lot, rather than the dramatic and expansive canyon or forest locations of so many other Case Study homes, it couldn’t borrow drama from the landscape, nor would the residents welcome curious glances from their close neighbors—so the house looks entirely inward.
Rapson called his design the “Greenbelt House” for the glass-covered atrium that divides the living and sleeping areas. In his original drawings and model, as in Archilogic’s 3D model shown here, this strip is shown filled with plant beds in a striking geometric pattern. However, Rapson imagined that it could be put to many uses, according to the residents’ tastes: a croquet court or even a swimming pool could find their place here. This “brings the outdoors indoors” rather more literally than, for instance, Richard Neutra’s expansive, open-door designs.
Only three of the Arts & ArchitectureCase Study Houses were built outside Los Angeles, and those three formed a united concept. The Triad Houses in La Jolla, a seaside suburb of San Diego, share a single driveway, motor court, and design vocabulary, while being created to meet different needs.
In keeping with the Case Study mission, all three houses used open-plan design, affordable modern materials (such as aluminium and concrete with wood frames), and plenty of glass to create a fresh and open mood. The emphasis was on strong geometric forms, careful detailing, horizontal lines (with perfectly flat roofs) and – this being the Californian coastline – dramatic views and outdoor living space, creating the illusion of more interior space than was actually present.
Nestled in the verdant seaside hills of the Pacific Palisades in southern California, the Entenza House is the ninth of the famous Case Study Houses built between 1945 and 1962. With a vast, open-plan living room that connects to the backyard through floor-to-ceiling glass sliding doors, the house brings its natural surroundings into a metal Modernist box, allowing the two to coexist as one harmonious space.
Like its peers in the Case Study Program, the house was designed not only to serve as a comfortable and functional residence, but to showcase how modular steel construction could be used to create low-cost housing for a society still recovering from the the Second World War. The man responsible for initiating the program was John Entenza, Editor of the magazine Arts and Architecture. The result was a series of minimalist homes that employed steel frames and open plans to reflect the more casual and independent way of life that had arisen in the automotive age.[1]
The third Arts & ArchitectureCase Study House has a noticeably different sensibility to that of many of the other designs in the series. While equally engaged with the goal of maximizing enjoyment of the natural surroundings, in this design the architects show more concern for privacy and protection.
The approach from the street is somewhat forbidding; aluminum siding presents an impenetrable front. Besides the front and garage doors, the small, high kitchen windows are the only visible openings, though it is possible to peer over the fence of grape stakes into the children’s private garden.
The second house in Arts & Architecture magazine’s Case Study Houses program shows the hallmarks of the series: an emphasis on light-soaked living areas, indoor-outdoor living, strong horizontal lines dominated by a flat roof, and so on. It is distinguished, though, by particularly creative details linking the indoor and outdoor areas, and by a strong awareness of function.
The Bailey house—one of Richard Neutra’s four Case Study designs for Arts & Architecture—forms one of five Bluff houses, standing high above the ocean. The brief was to create a low-budget home for a young family, with just two bedrooms, but offering the possibility of expansion as time went by (which did in fact transpire; additional Neutra-designed wings were later built).
Neutra employed the same indoor-outdoor philosophy that can be seen at work in his unbuilt Alpha and Omega houses, using large sliding glass doors to create light and a visual sense of space, as well as ensuring that the house physically opened up to, as he put it, “borrow space from the outdoors.” With this sunny Californian ocean-view setting, it made perfect sense to use the back garden and terrace as living and dining room.
In designing his (unbuilt) house for the Arts & ArchitectureCase Study program, Whitney Smith, like Richard Neutra, prioritized the connection to outdoor space. His motivation, however, was more specific than a desire to extend the living area of a small house. Rather, he wanted to create a highly personal space, geared to the passion of his hypothetical client. Seeing conventional plans as a straitjacket for residents who craved appropriate working space within their home (be it a sewing studio or a photography darkroom), he aspired to fit this house to the needs of a keen horticulturist.
Of the four homes designed by Richard Neutra for the Case Study Houses program, post-war thought experiments commissioned by Arts & Architecture, only one was ever realized. In the imaginary village of the program's many unbuilt homes, next to #6, the Omega house, stands #13, named Alpha. Archilogic’s 3D model gives us a unique chance to experience this innovative concept home.
Each of Neutra’s projects was designed for a family of five, and each reveals his psychoanalytic approach to architecture, in which the house itself is an intimate part of family relationships, as important as the personalities involved. (Neutra was personally acquainted with Freud, and a committed follower of birth trauma theorist Otto Rank.) Underlining this Freudian view, his imaginary clients are not just neighbours—they are related; Mrs Alpha being sister to Mrs Omega.
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