Designing California Notes PDF

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HAVC 44 History of Art and Visual Culture - Fall 2019 Albert Narath [email protected] Porter D-214 Office: Monday 3-5pm

9/27 - Part 1: Design and Nature - California now / Manifest Destiny (representations of progress) - Gold rush propaganda - California as a place of escape - A cul-de-sac - “California style” - Ranches, food, bedrooms, etc - Pick 3 images, print, bring to section - Audience for each image - What would constitute california style 9/30 - Part 2: Design and Nature - Mitchell Schwarzer - California -> series of contradictions - Nature/Technology - Craft/Medicine - Body/Environment - City/Rural  iedmont, oil on - William Keith, Reverend Joseph Worcester’s House, P canvas, 1883

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- Renovated beyond recognition, in a different context than it used to be - Originally had very rustic qualities, one with nature, Worcester considered natural objects such as birds and trees were manifestations of God -> connection between design and nature - Shingles made of redwood - Redwood was one of the primary materials used in building this part of California - Critters don’t like eating redwood - Design isn’t just a subject, it is a staging/structure/set of social relations William Keith, Yosemite Valley, Piedmont, oil on canvas, 1875 John Muir, Picturesque California, 1888 - Key in turning Yosemite into a picturesque landscape Bernard Maybeck (architect) - Sketch of William Worcester’s Piedmont cottage - Palace of Fine Arts A. Page Brown with A.C. Schweinfurth and Bernard Maybeck, Church of the New Jerusalem, San Francisco, 1894-95 - prefer a bare hall (not too aesthetic), perfectly imperfect - surrounding buildings designed by Worcester as well - bark from madrone trees to structure the building - “grown” rather than designed - fireplace is put off center to increase informality - chairs made with simple maple, no nails - chair seat woven with tule plant

10/2 - Part 3: The Ceramics Revolution - Chair, designed for the Church of New Jerusalem: initiated the “Mission Style” - Joseph P. McHugh, Designs for Mission Furniture, 1904

- Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901 - Gustav Stickley Display at the Pan-American Exposition, 1901 - Investigate forms of the chair -> mass-production - “New furniture” inspired by old stuff, but new direction of what people would eat/sit on - Total simplicity - Chair lightly stained, see wood grain through stain - Gustav Stickley, Eastwood Chair, 1901 - “ “, “False” Furniture, The Craftsman, March 1904 - Stickley Factory - William Morris - The Craftsman Magazine started in 1901, ran for ~15 years - Writer, designer, thinker - Responsible for the arts & crafts movement in Britain/Europe - News from Nowhere, 1890 - Philip Webb and William Morris, Red House, Kent, 1860s - Not just a house to keep you from the rain, but a community - Several arts working together: woodwork, tapestries, wall hangings, etc... - Simple exterior, just plain brick - Everything asymmetrical - Arts and crafts style, principled on “honesty” - Gladding, McBean & Co., Lincoln, California, beginning 1875 - Charles Gladding - Sewer pipes, roof tiles, large scale ceramics - Studio Pottery - Edith Kiertzner Heath (founder of Heath Ceramics) - Hand-thrown ceramic tableware with speckled blue glaze for Gump’s Department Store, San Francisco, September 1944 - Heath Pottery, bowl from the Coupe Line, 1940s - Heath tile brochure, around 1970 - Tile at the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena - Glaze of the tile reminiscent of the mountains

- Plain tiles set out in patterns 10/4 - Edith Heath - Asilomar Craft Conference, June 1957 - Julia Morgan, Asilomar Auditorium Building, 1913 - First woman to get a civil engineering degree from UCB - Marguerite Wildenhain - Born in France, educated in Germany - Bauhaus, Weimar, Germany - Famous as a cultural capital - Location of art school - “Create a new guild of craftsmen, w/o class distinctions...” - Theodor Bogler, Plaster Elements for Ceramic Teapots, 1923 - Take series of basic elements that could be put together - Only woman enrolled in the ceramics workshops at the time - ‘Halle shape’ vase for the Staatliche Porzellanmanufaktur Berlin, 1930-1933 - Pond Farm Pottery - Pond Farm Workshops, near Guerneville, 1949-52 - Taught on Bauhaus principles - Mastering process, rather than technical aspects - Raina Lee - Los Angeles based pottery artist - Production + marketing of her arts by herself - Displays her arts in treehouse - Arequipa Pottery Vases, 1911-1918 - Produced at Arequipa Sanatorium, Fairfax, CA - 1906 SF earthquake -> debris/pollutants in air -> tuberculosis epidemic

- Sanatorium set up for the working classes of women - In the process of recovering lungs, set up a pottery workshop, which would thus fund the Sanatorium - Relationship between Design + Health - “Fight tuberculosis” - Josef Hoffmann, Sanatorium Purkersdorf - Jan Duiker, Sanatorium Zonnestraal, Netherlands, 1928 - “Machines for curing” - Alvar Aalto, Paimio Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Paimio, Finland 1929 - “Solarium Tournant”, Aix-les-bains - Design + Health/Therapy: Southern California - “The Land of Sunshine” Magazine - Pottenger Sanatorium, Monrovia - Barlow Respiratory Sanitorium, Los Angeles, founded 1902 - Bungalow style - Single family house - Greene and Greene, Gamble House, Pasadena, 1908 - Arts and crafts style, handmade details - Idea of health (floating porches, detailed) - Rudolph Schindler - Austria -> Los Angeles - Kings Road House (Schindler House), West Hollywood, 1922 - Citrus orchards - Tilt slab construction - Pour concrete, form panels, lift - Open house plan Richard Neutra - Vienna - Arrives after Schindler -> interns

- More ambitious than Schindler, takes clients - Lovell health house 10/7 - Sculptures - J.B. Blunk - Sculpture at Cowell - J.B Blunk house, Inverness, CA - Richard Neutra - Lovell House - Surround yourself with a healthy built environment - U.V rays - Thought house as a school - Playground facilities - outside/inclosed play area - Craft practices - First steel frame house constructed in America - Domestic architecture - Most glass you can put on facade = best for well being of the people - Nothing on walls to interrupt the purity of the walls - Lights chosen from a Ford car (connection of architecture to industrial world/modern industry) - Integrated pieces of a single puzzle of health - Use pool water to water plants - interior/exterior living = california style of a modern house - Dependent on specific climate of california (particularly southern) - “Architecture of the Sun” by Thomas S. Hines - John Lautner, Sheats-Goldstein Residence, LA, 1963 - “Arts and Architecture” magazine, began 1929 - Stages its own architecture competitions - Craig Ellwood, Case Study House, Bel-Air, Los Angeles, 1953

- Ralph Rapson, Case Study House (Green Belt House), Bel-Air, LA, 1953 - Pierre Koenig, Stahl House, Los Angeles, 1960 - Julius Shulman - Constructed images of architecture - Case Study Houses 8 + 9 - House 9 -> house built for editor of Arts and Architecture John Entenza - Social events defined the living area - Ray and Charles Eames, Case Study House #8 10/11 - Part 5 Wartime Production - Ray and Charles Eames, Case Study House #8 (Eames House), Pacific Palisades, begun mid-1940s - Film 1955 - Still images, played to a rhythm - Toy parade (marching to music) - Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen, Experimental molded plywood chairs, 1940 - Idea that they could be mass produced in factories and cheap - Form to fit the body, so comfortable that it would not need cushions - Plain walls - Built from a 3-dimensional plywood shell - Never mass produced because WWII - Organic Design - Make chair not noticeable, as if not felt when sitting on - Charles and Ray Eames, Kazam! Machine - Use pressure and heat to form the seat of the plywood chair - Bicycle pump, balloon, gauge, wood - Apply machine to form many things out of plywood - Charles and Ray Eames, LCW (Lounge Chair Wood)

- Splinter - Charles and Ray Eames, “Blister”, Glider - Lockheed P-38 Lightning - Jointed, aluminum skin walls - 1 pilot 2 planes - Lockheed Factory, Burbank - Became important asset during WWII - Set designers helped in concealing the factory - Covered the whole factory, became a semi suburban neighborhood from above head - Simulate a fake country side “Production lines are battle lines” - Brought in many workers, growth after war - Changing labor forces - 8% -> 65% of women took up workforce throughout war Part 8 - Designing Recreation: The Piton - *** Long Range Development Plan, Community Workshop - Tuesday, October 22, 12-2pm - UCSC Stevenson Event Center - 1156 High St., Santa Cruz, CA 95064 - Write a short reflection - 2 extra points on midterm exam - Yosemite - Small forest fires benefits the ecosystem, tends the wild by allowing sunlight in - Burned only 57,000 acres back then - “Thick carpets of forest” -> greater potential for fires - Greater tree density 1930s -> 2000s - Yosemite is a landscape of design - Ansel Adams, Yosemite Golf Course, 1950s - Yosemite as an image of nature/recreational landscape

- Hunting of cougars altered Yosemite’s ecology - increase population of mule deer - decline in black oak seedlings, causing trees to disappear - allow ponderosa pine trees to invade and proliferate - etc, consequences - “Discovery of the Yosemite” - Lafayette Bunnell - Mariposa War - Burned villages, food stores - State militia takes over area - Tenaya Lake, Yosemite National Park - Named after leader of Abinichi Tribe - Maria Lebrado, last survivor of the Mariposa Battalion’s 1851 raid. Returned to Yosemite in the late 1920s - Julia Parker (born 1928) - Painters - William Keith, Yosemite Valley, Piedmont, oil on canvas, 1875 - Albert Bierstadt, Looking Up the Yosemite Valley, circ, 1863-75 - Photographers - Carleton Watkin - Idea of progress, growth, wilderness - Key agent in expressing california expansion - Yosemite Scenic Vista Management Plan - Meticulously managed viewpoints - Ex: trees obscure view - Cut down trees to make views accessible - As well preserved landscape - Frederick Law Olmsted at Yosemite - Played a large role in getting Yosemite to become a nat’l park - He puts into words Lincoln’s values when proclaiming Yosemite should be a nat’l park - Bloomer Cut

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- “8th wonder of the world” - Near auburn - Dug into the ground to allow train tracks for transcontinental railroad Hutching’s House, Yosemite, starting 1864 - One room had a tree growing out of it - “Hutchings’ California Magazine” John Muir Several hotels on valley floor Gilbert Stanley Underwood, Ahwahnee Hotel, (Since March 2016, “Majestic Yosemite Hotel”), Yosemite National Park, opened 1927 ? Granite formations - Formed from molten under the ground/glacial formations - Quartz, feldspar, hornblende, biotite John Salathe - One of the pioneering climbers - Mid life spiritual conversion -> devote the rest of his life to meditation, vegetarianism, rock climbing - “Lost Arrow” Piton - First of yosemite - Bend and axle of a Ford - Named after “Lost Arrow” spire - Propel climber up the wall - Sets social precedent of climbers - Spirit of adventure and recreation - Campground 4, valley uprising - Locust point of a whole community of climbers - Counterculture location, parties

Part 9 - Surfboard Design - Bruce Davidson, Yosemite photographer - John Salathe and the Lost Arrow Piton - Develop series of basic climbing tools

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- Subsequent to the upcoming generation of climbers Yvon Chouinard - Innovate climbing equipment - Due to the competitive nature of climbers (time, type, etc) - Selling pitons from the back of his car - Enables him to live the camping lifestyle - First piton: late 1960s - Founded a shed in Ventura, blacksmith forging shop: Chouinard Equipment - Evolved into Patagonia, Ventura, CA - Seen as a work of art - Nothing additional added to the piton, sleek - Bong bongs - Hand forged - Significant environmental damage - Permanent expansion bolts in granite - Visible eyesores, chips “Clean climbing” - Rock supposedly left unaltered - Hexentrics - Able to put into area of granite without leaving traces Royal Robbins and Liz Robbins - Royal Robbins, “Basic Rockcraft”, 1971 - “Nutcracker Suite” - Top of El Capitan - Billie goat shorts - Performance gear -> elastic waist bands, short cut - Sweater craft - Way of advertising Surfing - Battlesuit between Santa Cruz and Huntington Beach on which is surf city Santa Cruz Surfing Museum

- Wetsuits - Jack O’Neill pioneered wetsuits from Santa Cruz - Surfing first brought to Santa Cruz by Hawaiian princes - Hold contention for being surf city - Redwood from santa cruz for boards - Grover Lumber Company, Santa Cruz - Princes brought back surfboard - Kicked off 40 year era of redwood surfboards in Hawaii - Outrigger Canoe Club, Waikiki Beach, est in 1908 by Alexander Hume Ford - Mid-Pacific Magazine Part 10 - Freeway City - Tom Blake - Legendary figure in surfing - California surf culture - Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, opened 1889 - Repairing the boards, knowledge - Experiments in improving surfboard designs - Upperclass, royal patrons - Publication of books about surfboarding - “Hawaiian Surfboard” - Attempt to make boards lighter - Drill boards to get rid of mass, covered with thin layer - Develop skim and frame technique - Looks at aircraft design - Plywood coverings held together by brass screws and pins - Introduce first finn - People still individually produced surfboards in early days - Evolve into surfboard industry

- Bob Simmons - Legacy of surfboard design - Breaks hand, becomes interested in surfing - Works on and off as a mathematician - Around 1945, end of war - Look at books of naval research - Hydrodynamic Planning Hull - Made of balsa wood - Resin, fiberglass - Make lighter, smoother, less friction in water - 1950s - Styrofoam - Invents first styrofoam core surfboard - Used in WWII - Sandwich board - Famous car - Developing tradition of beach culture - Lived in car - Drove up and down California coast - surf board attached on top of car -

Hobie Alter - Lighter, faster surfboards - Poly

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Use of clark foam - Most expensive at the time - “The best” - Surfboard blanks - Foam pieces bad for water - Chemicals leak into water

- Paulownia wood - Decomposition of wood is good - Clark foam shuts down - Due to bad for environment - By EPA - Elon Musk Boring Company - Pacific Electric Railway - Expansion over southern california - Red cars - Over Cahuenga Pass, 1911 - Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles 10/23 -

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Reyner Banham Wilshire boulevard, los angeles Arroyo Seco Parkway, opened 1940 Design of LA freeways - Bridges, combine/hide technology - Earliest, most prominent example of city implementing freeway into city design - Sound barriers along freeway (first) - For the neighborhoods it passes through Diagram from “Can Noise Radiation from Highways be Reduced By Design?”, California Highway Transportation Agency, 1968 First sound barrier constructed by 680 by Milpitas - Important in design - Created 1968 Sound Barrier Walls - “Pieces of art” Wayne Thiebaud, Freeway Curve, 1979

- Vulgar, everyday environment of the freeway could be seen as art - Curves, smoothness of the freeway - Four-level Interchange, complete 1949 - First “stack  interchange” - Pancake stack of freeways - Maturity of LA’s freeway system - Very complex object of design - Issues of drainage - Drew eyes of photographers - Unique dynism of the interchange - “Most photogenic pile of cement in town” - Ford, Model T, Manufactures from 1908-1927 - Early los angeles car culture - Parkinson & Bergstrom, Ford Motor Plant - Built Model T cars - Was then bought by American Apparel, tech company considered buying it but turned to living complex - Los Angeles was consuming more cars per capita than anywhere else in the world - Harley J. Earl 10/30 - Skateboard City - Alvar Aalto - Paimio Chair, 1931-32 - Bent plywood design - Landmark design - Feel like you’re floating in the air - Villa mairea, Noormarkku, Finland - Use of natural materials to soften facade of building - Stones, grasses, trees, various woods - Curved form of swimming pool

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- First curvilinear pool - Swimming pool typically rectangular - Skateboarders come into empty swimming pool to skate - Legendary skating pool - Skate history - Changed history of skateboarding - Kidney shaped design Donnell House, Sonoma, CA, 1948 (landscape by Thomas Church) - Pool as an extension of the landscape in the distance - Curvilinear pool - Cover of house beautiful - “New domestic environment of california” - Spread of kidney shaped pool in southern california - Inside/outside living - Utopian leisure Taking a leisure pool -> use with very different purpose without paying - Aesthetics of skating in backyard pools - Smooth, align with curvilinear forms Tony Alva - Tapping into architecture Venice amusement park - Torn to ruins in 1975 - Became popular surfing spot - Zephyr group - Reclaiming postleisure landscape Santa Cruz skateboards Skating in large industrial pipes - Used by Nancy Holt - Same curve similar to surfing on waves

11/1 - Grass - Bermuda grass - Used for putting grass - Alternative for sand greens - Close, cuttable grass - Glenn Burton (Tifton 85 Bermuda Grass) - Costa Plain station? - Professor of University of Georgia - Tried to make hybrid bermuda grass - Mixture of local grasses and grasses from South Africa - Use of sprigs rather than seeds - Planted millions of acres by farmers - Manufactured designed object - Continuous of the front lawn - Landscape of trick or treating - Close, single family houses - Suburbia - “Signs of Life: Symbols in the American City,” Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1976 - Grass as a form of self expression - What we put in our front years is symbolic of class, expression - Shutters, lamp posts - Learn from American public by virtue of what they put in front of their front yards - Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, “Learning from Levittown” studio, 1970 - The Lawn - Reaches back along time ago as an idea - Old England: “Glade, opening in the woods” - Artificial strand of land reminiscent of the woods - Cultivate idea of a romantic lawn - So guards could have an unobstructed view

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- Recreational enjoyment not related to agriculture, just leisure Tapis Verte (Green carpet), Versailles - Get view of building from garden - Kings, princes, nobility Garden at Stourhead, England, 1741-1780 DDT - Idea of putting it on lawns: healthy lawnscape - Discovery coincided with WWII - Kill mosquitoes, lice - After WWII, try to remodel it to fit the american public “Silent Spring”, Rachel Carson, 1962 - About the chemicals that surround us daily, affects children and animals - Homeowner not aware of dangers Production of lawn rolls - Unroll like a carpet - Slip n slide - Smooth surface - Lawn ad becomes more abstract Lawn attached to the suburban house - Grass as treasure at the end of the rainbow - Secure, joyful, family, financially successful life that can emerge after warfare: a home Levittown, New York, beginning 1947 - Levitt & Sons - Abraham Levitt and his two sons - Levittown, Pennsylvania, begun 1952 - Produce a new home every 16 minutes - Over 17,000 homes built - Attract huge populations from city centers - Obtainable as little of 8,000 - G.I Bill, housing subsidies

- Slabs poured first - Frame built - Levittown had its own lumber bill - Woods shipped to new york - Big money fronts - Plant lawns, specific type of trees - Fruit trees, flowering shrubs, expanse of grass - Homeowners guide - Life designed by the Levitts - Rules to abide do - “The Lawn and its Upkeep” - Height of grass around 2 and a half inches except summer? - Someone who can upkeep a lawn “can be trusted” American National Exhibition, Moscow, 1959 - Domed design - Charles and Ray...