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Stahl House (Case Study House #22)

Immortalized by photographer Julius Shulman, the Stahl House epitomized the ideal of modern living in postwar Los Angeles.

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• Pierre Koenig

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• Single-Family Residential
• Los Angeles

Based on a recent approval by the City of Los Angeles for a new residence at the base of the hillside and below the historic Stahl House, this action now places this Modernist icon at risk. The hillside is especially fragile as it is prone to slides and susceptible to destabilization. This condition will be exacerbated as this proposed new residence is planned to cut into the hillside and erect large retaining walls.

The proposed project received approval despite opposition and documentation submitted that substantiates the problem and potential harm to the Stahl House. An appeal has been filed and the City is reviewing this now. No date has been set yet for when this might come back to the City Planning Commission.

To demonstrate your support for the Stahl House and to ensure the appeal is granted (sending the proposed project back for review), please sign on to the  Save the Stahl House campaign .

Who hasn’t seen the iconic image of architect Pierre Koenig’s Stahl House (Case Study House #22), dramatically soaring over the Los Angeles basin? Built in 1960 as part of the Case Study House program, it is one of the best-known houses of mid-century Los Angeles.

The program was created in 1945 by John Entenza, editor of the groundbreaking magazine  Arts & Architecture . Its mission was to shape and form postwar living through replicable building techniques that used modern industrial materials. With its glass-and-steel construction, the Stahl House remains one of the most famous examples of the program’s principles and aesthetics.

Original owners Buck and Carlotta Stahl found a perfect partner in Koenig, who was the only architect to see the precarious site as an advantage rather than an impediment. The soaring effect was achieved using dramatic roof overhangs and the largest pieces of commercially available glass at the time.

The enduring fame of the Stahl House can be partly attributed to renowned architectural photographer Julius Shulman, who captured nearly a century of growth and development in Southern California but was best-known for conveying the Modern architecture and optimistic lifestyle of postwar Los Angeles. Shulman’s most iconic photo perfectly conveys the drama of the Stahl House at twilight: two women casually recline in the glowing living room as it hovers over the sparkling metropolis below.

View the National Register of Historic Places Nomination

The Conservancy does not own or operate the Stahl House. For any requests, please contact the Stahl House directly at (208) 429-1058.

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Stahl House (Case Study House #22)

Pierre Koenig | Website | 1960 | Visitor Information

1635 Woods Drive , West Hollywood 90069, United States of America

The Stahl House by Pierre Koenig (also known as Case Study House #22) was part of the Case Study House Program, which produced some of the most iconic architectural projects of the 20th Century. The modern residence overlooks Los Angeles from the Hollywood Hills. It was completed in 1959 for Buck Stahl and his family. Stahl envisioned a modernist glass and steel constructed house that offered panoramic views of Los Angeles when he originally purchased the land for the house in 1954 for $13,500. When excavation began, he originally took on the duties of both architect and contractor. It was not until 1957 that Stahl hired Pierre Koenig to take over the design of the family’s residence. The two-bedroom, 2,200 square foot residence is a true testament to modernist architecture and the Case Study House Program. The program was set in place by John Entenza and sponsored by the Arts & Architecture magazine. The aim of the program was to introduce modernist principles into residential architecture, not only to advance the aesthetic but to introduce new ways of life, both stylistically and as a representation of modern lifestyle. Koenig was able to hone in on the vision of Buck Stahl and transform that vision into a modernist icon. The glass and steel construction is the most identifiable trait of the house’s architectural modernism, however, way in which Koenig organized the spatial layout of the house, taking both public and private aspects into great consideration, is also notable. As much as architectural modernism is associated with the materials and methods of construction, the juxtaposition of program and organization are important design principles that evoke utilitarian characteristics. The house is “L”-shaped, completely separating the public and private sections except for a single hallway connecting them. The adjacent swimming pool, which must be crossed to enter the house, is not only a spatial division of public and private but it serves as the interstitial space in which visitors can best experience the panoramic views. The living space of the house is behind the pool and is the only part of the house that has a solid wall, which backs up to the carport and the street. The entire house is one large viewing box, capturing amazing perspectives of the house, the landscape, and Los Angeles. Oddly enough, the Stahl house was fairly unknown and unrecognized for its advancement of modern American residential architecture until 1960 when photographer Julius Shulman captured the pure architectural essence of the house in a shot of two women sitting in the living room overlooking the bright lights of the city of Los Angeles. That photo put the Stahl House on the architectural radar as an architectural gem hidden in the Hollywood Hills. The Stahl House is still one of the most visited and admired buildings today. It has undergone many interior transformations. Today, you will not find the same iconic 1960s furniture inside, but the architecture, the view, and the experience still remain.

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AD Classics: Stahl House / Pierre Koenig

• Written by Andrew Kroll

• Architects: Pierre Koenig
• Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  1959
• Photographs Photographs: Flickr User: dalylab

Text description provided by the architects. The Case Study House Program produced some of the most iconic architectural projects of the 20th Century, but none more iconic than or as famous as the Stahl House, also known as Case Study House #22 by Pierre Koenig. The modern residence overlooks Los Angeles from the Hollywood Hills. It was completed in 1959 for Buck Stahl and his family.

Buck Stahl had envisioned a modernist glass and steel constructed house that offered panoramic views of Los Angeles when he originally purchased the land for the house in 1954 for $13,500. Stahl had originally begun to excavate and take on the duties of architect and contractor; it was not until 1957 when Stahl hired Pierre Koenig to take over the design of the family’s residence.

The two-bedroom, 2,200 square foot residence is a true testament to modernist architecture and the Case Study House Program.  The program was set in place by John Entenza and sponsored by the Arts & Architecture magazine.  The aim of the program was to introduce modernist principles into residential architecture, not only to advance the aesthetic, but to introduce new ways of life both in a stylistic sense and one that represented the lifestyles of the modern age.

Pierre Koenig was able to hone in on the vision of Buck Stahl and transform that vision into a modernist icon.  The glass and steel construction is understandably the most identifiable trait of architectural modernism, but it is the way in which Koenig organized the spatial layout of the house taking the public and private aspects of the house into great consideration.  As much as architectural modernism is associated with the materials and methods of construction, the juxtaposition of program and organization are important design principles that evoke utilitarian characteristics.

The house is “L” shaped in that the private and public sectors are completely separated save for a single hallway that connects the two wings.  Compositionally adjacent is the swimming pool that one must cross in order to get into the house; it is not only a spatial division of public and private but its serves as the interstitial space that one must pass through in order to experience the panoramic views. 

The living space of the house is set back behind the pool and is the only part of the house that has a solid wall, which backs up to the carport and the street. The entire house is understood to be one large viewing box that captures amazing perspectives of the house, the landscape, and Los Angeles.

Oddly enough, the Stahl house was fairly unknown and unrecognized for its advancement of modern American residential architecture, until 1960 when Julius Shulman captured the pure architectural essence of the house.  It was the night shot of two women sitting in the living room overlooking the bright lights of the city of Los Angeles.

That photo put the Stahl House on the architectural radar as being an architectural gem hidden up in the Hollywood Hills.

The Stahl House is still one of the most visited and admired buildings today.  It has undergone many interior transformations, so you will not find the same iconic 1960s furniture, but the architecture, the view, and the experience still remain.  You can make reservations and a small fee with the Stahl family, and even get a tour with Buck Stahl’s wife, Carlotta, or better recognized as Mrs. Stahl.

This building is part of our Architecture City Guide: Los Angeles . Check all the other buildings on this guide right here.

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Explore two stunning Case Study Houses Case Study House #8 -- The Eames House (exterior only with interior visable through large open doorways) Designed, built and lived in by the world renowned mid-century designers, Charles and Ray Eames. Case Study House #22 -- The Stahl House (interior & exterior) The iconic family home featured in countless films, television shows and advertisements. Mid-century modern enthusiasts travel from all over the world to view just one of these houses. This is your opportunity to experience both homes with a uniquely qualified guide. Andrew Edelstein has been a docent for the Eames Foundation for the past three years and is the only person to give tours at The Stahl House (that is not a member of the Stahl family). With Andrew as your guide, you will delve into the fascinating stories of living in a Case Study House as well as hearing about the history of the Case Study House Program. Includes transportation and refreshments. …

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The view alone is worth the visit... The house wraps around the pool in an L shape...the layout accentuates the million dollar views from both bedrooms and living space You will feel like you are in a Dwell magazine photo shoot as soon as you step into the property (Written by husband)

Views from the pool

View of LA from the house

My three friends and I booked this tour as part of a birthday surprise outing for one of our friends. I had often seen this house in photos and was thrilled that we were able to see this lovely home in person. We booked a sunset tour on a spectacularly clear day in Los Angeles. The views were wonderful as well as the ability to walk around, throughout the property as the changing light from sunset to evening transpired. It was magical to watch the city lights appear and to imagine what life what like for the family who lived here. I highly recommend this fun tour and would further recommend taking the evening time to do this tour. Andrew was our tour guide. We enjoyed all the interesting inside stories he shared. I have shared a post on my blog about the visit for anyone interested in seeing some photos of the changing light on the day we visited the Stahl house. Giving this tour a thumbs up. Lots of fun to see the home. http://followbarbsbliss.blogspot.com/2012/03/stahl-case-study-house-22.html

I was given the Case Study House Tour as a birthday gift. What a great gift! I had walked through the mock-up of the Stahl house created for the show on mid-city modern aesthetics at the Temporary Contemporary several years ago. I thought I had pretty much experienced the real thing. Not so! The key to this house is the location. The glass walls makes the airliner view of the L.A. basin part of the design. The experience of being there is almost as dramatic as the different experiences of looking at architectural renderings--floor plans and elevations--and then of walking into the built structure. I enjoyed the mock-up. I was stunned by the real house. Having Mrs. Stahl and the youngest son there made it even more real. Visiting the Eames home and studio was impressive in a different way. I was disappointed we didn't get to go inside, BUT, again, the big surprise was the relationship of the house to the site. I don't think that any photo or book or video conveys how incredibly appropriate these two kinda Mondrian-abstract-appearing structures are to this Pacific-overlooking site. I had never really thought of this as anyone's HOME. The tour changed my opinion. My first surprise was the startling juxtaposition of the homey decor (think FLW's comments about the hearth, enclosure) to the austere glass and siding. Then, even from outside, it was clear the glass walls served as huge, barely framed landscape "paintings." But, of course, the "paintings aren't naturmort; the site makes it clear that this is raw nature just outside. The minimal landscaping accentuates this reaction. So, just as at the Stahl house, the big revelation was experiencing the site, the house as part of the place. The guide told several interesting anecdotes about Ray and Charles Eames that, again, made the experience of being there even more vivid.. What was it like to LIVE in these incredible homes, to be the people for whom these home were built? Want to experience these homes intimately, directly? Take the tour and find out!

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The Case Study houses that made Los Angeles a modernist mecca

Mapping the homes that helped to define an era

Los Angeles is full of fantastic residential architecture styles, from Spanish Colonial Revival to Streamline Moderne. But the modernist Case Study Houses , sponsored by Arts & Architecture and designed between the 1940s and 1960s, are both native to Southern California and particularly emblematic of the region.

The Case Study series showcased homes commissioned by the magazine and designed by some of the most influential designers and architects of the era, including Charles and Ray Eames, Richard Neutra, and Pierre Koenig. The residences were intended to be relatively affordable, replicable houses for post-World War II family living, with an emphasis on “new materials and new techniques in house construction,” as the magazine’s program intro put it.

Technological innovation and practical, economical design features were emphasized—though the homes’ scintillating locations, on roomy lots in neighborhoods like Pacific Palisades and the Hollywood Hills , gave them a luxurious allure.

With the help of photographer Julius Shulman , who shot most of the homes, the most impressive of the homes came to represent not only new styles of home design, but the postwar lifestyle of the booming Southern California region.

A total of 36 houses and apartment buildings were commissioned; a couple dozen were built, and about 20 still stand in the greater Los Angeles area (there’s also one in Northern California, a set near San Diego, and a small apartment complex in Phoenix). Some have been remodeled, but others have been well preserved. Eleven were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.

Here’s a guide to all the houses left to see—but keep in mind that, true to LA form, most are still private residences. The Eames and Stahl houses, two of the most famous Case Study Houses, are regularly open to visitors.

As for the unconventional house numbering, post-1962 A&A publisher David Travers writes that the explanation is “inexplicable, locked in the past.”

Case Study House No. 1

J.R. Davidson (with Greta Davidson) designed this house in 1948 (it was actually his second go at Case Study House No. 1). It was intended for “a hypothetical family" with two working parents and was designed to require "minimum maintenance.”

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Case Study House No. 2

Case Study House No. 2 was designed in 1947 by Sumner Spaulding and John Rex. Arts & Architecture wrote that the home’s layout “achieves a sense of spaciousness and flexibility,” with an open living area and glass doors that lead out to adjoining terraces.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Samuel Dematraz (@samueldematraz) on Oct 28, 2018 at 1:07am PDT

Case Study House No. 7

Case Study House No. 7 was designed in 1948 by Thornton M. Abell. It has a “three-zone living area,” with space for study, activity, and relaxation/conversation; the areas can be separated by sliding panels or combined.

Eames House (Case Study House No. 8)

Legendary designer couple Charles and Ray Eames designed the Eames House in 1949 and even Arts & Architecture seemed kind of blown away by it. The home is built into a hillside behind a row of Eucalyptus trees on a bluff above Pacific Palisades. It's recognizable by its bright blue, red, and yellow panels. The Eameses lived in the house until their deaths. It’s now open to visitors five days per week, though reservations are required.

Entenza House (Case Study House No. 9)

The Entenza House was built in 1949 and designed by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen for Arts & Architecture editor John Entenza. According to the magazine, “In general, the purpose was to enclose as much space as possible within a reasonably simple construction.”

Case Study House No. 10

Case Study House No. 10 was designed in 1947 by Kemper Nomland. The house is built on several levels to mold into its sloping site. Recently restored, the home sold to Kristen Wiig in 2017.

Case Study House No. 15

Designed by J.R. Davidson in 1947, Case Study House No. 15 has south walls made of huge glass panels. Its flagstone patio and indoor floor are at the same level for that seamless indoor-outdoor feel. According to the magazine, the floorplan “is basically that of another Davidson house, Case Study House No. 11,” which has been demolished.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Samuel Dematraz (@samueldematraz) on Nov 15, 2018 at 6:13am PST

Case Study House for 1953

Craig Ellwood’s Case Study House for 1953 is usually numbered as 16 in the Case Study series . It has a modular steel structure and “the basic plan is a four-foot modular rectangle.” But the interior walls stick out past the exterior walls to bring the indoors out and the outdoors in. The Bel Air house hit the market in November with a $3 million price tag.

Case Study House No. 17 (A)

Case Study House No. 17 (A) was designed by Rodney Walker in 1947. A tight budget kept the house at just 1,560 square feet, “but more space was gained through the use of many glass areas.” The house also has a large front terrace with a fireplace that connects the indoor living room fireplace. The house has been remodeled .

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Case Study House #17, 1947 (@casestudy17) on Jun 11, 2016 at 2:20pm PDT

Case Study House No. 17 (B)

Case Study House No. 17 (B) was designed in 1956 by Craig Ellwood, but “governed by a specific program set forth by the client.” Ellwood took into account the clients' collection of contemporary paintings and made the living room “purposely undersized” to work best for small gatherings. The house was extensively remodeled in the sixties by Hollywood Regency architect John Elgin Woolf and his partner, interior designer Robert Koch Woolf.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by BAUKUNST™ El Arte de Construir (@i_volante) on Aug 13, 2017 at 4:42pm PDT

West House (Case Study House No. 18 [A])

Case Study House No. 18 (A) was designed by Rodney Walker in 1948. The house is oriented toward the ocean, but set back from the cliff edge it sits on to avoid noise issues. As A&A says, "High above the ocean, the privacy of the open south and east exposures of Case Study House No. 18 can be threatened only by an occasional sea-gull." The house features a "bricked garden room" separated from the living room by a two-sided fireplace.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by CaseStudyHouse18A (@casestudyhouse18a) on Oct 6, 2018 at 8:44pm PDT

Fields House (Case Study House No. 18 [B])

Case Study House No. 18 (B) was designed by Craig Ellwood in 1958. Ellwood didn’t attempt to hide that the house was prefabricated (the magazine explains that he believed “that the increasing cost of labor and the decline of the craftsman will within not too many years force a complete mechanization of residential construction methods”). The components of the house, however, are “strongly defined with color: ceiling and panels are off-white and the steel framework is blue.” According to A&A' s website, the house has been remodeled.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by MCM Daily (@dc_hillier) on Oct 29, 2018 at 8:32pm PDT

Case Study House No. 20 [A])

This two-bedroom house was meant “to serve young parents who find they can afford just that much,” according to architect Richard Neutra’s description. He also wrote that he used several different kinds of natural wood in the house.

Bass House (Case Study House No. 20 [B])

The Bass House was designed in 1958 by Buff, Straub, and Hensman for famed graphic designer Saul Bass. It's “unique in that it was based upon the experimental use of several prefabricated Douglas fir plywood products as part of the structural concept,” including hollow-core plywood vaults that covered the central part of the house.

Case Study House No. 21

Pierre Koenig designed Case Study House No. 21 in 1958. It was originally completely surrounded by water, with a walkway and driveway spanning the moat at the front door and carport, respectively. The house was severely messed with over the years, but restored in the ’90s with help from Koenig.

Stahl House (Case Study House No. 22)

Pierre Koenig's Stahl House , designed in 1960, is probably the most famous house in Los Angeles, thanks to an iconic photo by Julius Shulman . The house isn't much to look at from the street, but its backside is mostly glass surrounding a cliff's-edge pool. Tours are available Mondays, Wednesdays, and Friday—but book well ahead of time, as they sell out quickly.

Case Study House for 1950

The unnumbered Case Study House for 1950 was designed by Raphael Soriano. It's rectangular, with living room and bedrooms facing out to the view. However, in the kitchen and eating areas, the house “turns upon itself and living develops around a large kitchen-dining plan opening upon a terrace which leads directly into the living room interrupted only by the mass of two fireplaces.” According to A&A 's website, the house has been remodeled.

Frank House (Case Study House No. 25)

The two-story Frank House was designed by Killingsworth, Brady, and Smith and Associates in 1962 and it sits on a canal in Long Beach. A reflecting pool with stepping stones leads to its huge front door and inside to an 18-foot high courtyard. The house sold in 2015 with some unfortunate remodeling .

Case Study House No. 28

Case Study House No. 28 was designed in 1966 by Conrad Buff and Donald Hensman. According to the magazine, “the architects were asked to design a house that incorporated face brick as the primary structural material to demonstrate its particular advantages.” They came up with a plan for two symmetrical wings joined by glass galleries.

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Koenig’s Case Study House No. 22 as home

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Each Christmas they hung their homemade stockings from the crannies of the rock-faced fireplace in the living room. Summers found them diving off the flat roof into the pool for coins their grandfather threw into the deep end, or playing safari in the dense foliage of the hillside below their house, under the glass-enclosed room that cantilevered precipitously above them.

FOR THE RECORD: Stahl house: A June 27 story on Case Study House No. 22 said 1956 news coverage of architect Pierre Koenig’s work was most likely in a pictorial section of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. The coverage was likely in a pictorial section of the Los Angeles Evening Herald Express. —

For the Stahl children -- Bruce, Sharon and Mark -- who grew up roller skating on the concrete floors of Case Study House No. 22, the glass-and-steel pavilion perched in the Hollywood Hills has always been more than a landmark. It has been more than the house in Julius Shulman’s famed 1960 photo of two pretty girls suspended in time, floating above the twinkling lights of the city -- arguably the most iconic image of midcentury L.A.

For the children of C.H. “Buck” Stahl and his wife, Carlotta, the house was and always will be “just home.”

As the Stahl house celebrates its 50th birthday and opens for public tours this weekend, perhaps what’s most remarkable is how little people know about the property, despite its fame. The house has appeared in more than 1,200 newspaper and magazine articles, journals and books, not to mention a slew of films, TV shows and commercials.

“When you’re a kid, you don’t think of the house you live in as being anything unusual,” says Mark Stahl, 42, whose family still owns the home. “I first began to think of it as something special in junior high when film companies rented the house to shoot movies. Then later, after bus tours of architects from all over the world began coming, the architectural importance of our home began to sink in.”

Three sides of the home were made of plate glass -- the largest available at the time -- that made for fabulous views. But the windows were not the tempered safety glass used today, and they could shatter into a thousand jagged pieces if anyone were to walk -- or roller skate -- into one accidentally. The radiant-heated concrete floors were sleek, but they were hard and unforgiving for toddlers who fell a lot. Then there was the cantilevered living room that extended 10 feet over the hill -- so dramatic, but just how did one wash all those windows or put up Christmas lights under the eaves?

Eldest son Bruce Stahl, a 2-year-old when the family moved into the house in the summer of 1960, recalls his dad putting up a chain-link fence under the house where the children used to play, simply to keep them from falling down the hillside.

The floors have since been covered with wall-to-wall carpet, the windows have been replaced with shatterproof glass and the cantilevered living room has been given a narrow walkway around its perimeter for window washers.

To many, though, the house will be forever frozen in 1960, the moment when those two pretty girls sat for Shulman’s photo. Nevermind that they were not members of the Stahl family -- just two students that the photographer used as models. And all that glorious midcentury furniture in the living room? Every piece was brought in by casual furniture maker Van Keppel-Green to decorate the house for its premiere in the pages of Arts & Architecture magazine as part of the Case Study House Program.

Begun in 1945, the program aimed to introduce the middle class to the beauty of modernism: simplicity of form, natural light, a seamless connection between inside and out. Owners agreed to open up their homes as part of the program, but after the public tours wrapped at the Stahl house, every stick of furniture was hauled away, daughter Sharon Stahl Gronwald says.

“My mother always said she wished they would have left it,” says Gronwald, 49. “They were given the option to buy the furniture, but my parents didn’t have the money at the time.”

Indeed, over the years the house has been appointed with contemporary furnishings with nary a midcentury chair in sight.

Perhaps the most surprising fact is that the original inspiration for the design may not have come from architect Pierre Koenig but rather his client, Buck Stahl.

Before the children were born, the house was the dream of Buck Stahl, a former professional football player, his children say, then a purchasing agent for Hughes Aircraft. In 1954, he and Carlotta were renting a house in the Hollywood Hills when he spotted grading equipment on an empty lot nearby.

“My dad told me he went down to see what was happening, and the owner just happened to be there,” Mark Stahl says. “Two hours later, he shook hands on a deal.”

Sale price: $13,500.

“At the time he got a lot of teasing from the family,” says son Bruce, 50. “In those days you could have gotten a three-bedroom home in the flats for the amount my dad paid just for the lot. My grandfather told my dad, ‘You’ll never get your money out.’ The whole family thought my parents were crazy.”

Buck Stahl spent two years collecting broken-up concrete from construction sites and hauling it to the lot in his Cadillac convertible. He dedicated most weekends to building the retaining walls for what would be the front and back of the house. In the Life magazine article “Way Up Way of Living on California’s Cliffs,” dated Feb. 23, 1962, Stahl is shown dangling “1,000 feet above Los Angeles” from a rope tied around his waist, planting ivy around his concrete terracing to secure the hillside.

Architect Koenig was hired in 1957. Construction didn’t begin until September 1959 and finished in May 1960. The two-bedroom, 2,200-square-foot house cost $34,000 to build; the pool, $3,651 more. Buck passed away four years ago, and today Carlotta and the three children have no intention of selling, though there’s a list of wannabe owners -- recognizable figures in the film and fashion world, the family says, although they decline to cite names. The highest offer so far: $15 million.

That might be the end of the story if it were not for a previously unpublished photo from the family album. Taken in July 1956, 16 months before Koenig received the commission, the image shows a shirtless Stahl posing with his nephew Bobby Duemler next to a large-scale model of a glass-and-steel house. It bears more than a passing resemblance to the iconic design attributed to Koenig.

Is it possible that Stahl deserves some of the credit for the house?

The children say the initial concept of the home was their father’s, though it’s possible he may have been influenced by Koenig’s other work when building the model. Buck Stahl had seen photos of the architect’s elegant steel and glass homes before the two men ever met. In a 2001 Los Angeles Magazine article, Carlotta remembered seeing a “pictorial section of the Sunday paper,” most likely the Pictorial Living Section of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1956, which featured layouts of Koenig’s work. The family archives include an article from Roberts News by Toni Edgerton in 1957 that talked about Koenig’s steel homes.

“My dad always wanted to build his own house with a completely unobstructed view of the mountains to the sea,” Bruce Stahl says. “I think he’s not given enough credit for the initial design of the home. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s pretty darn close.”

Brother Mark agrees, saying that their father played a larger role in the design than history has recorded.

“It was a collaboration,” he says. “Pierre bought into my dad’s vision but made alterations to make it buildable. In the end, he gave my dad what he wanted.”

The CA Boom contemporary design show this weekend will include shuttle tours of the home, still considered by many the archetypal 20th century Southern California house. Show impresario Charles Trotter says the “aha” moment for attendees will be when they learn the extent to which Buck Stahl worked with Pierre Koenig “in this masterpiece of modern architecture.”

However, the architect’s widow, Gloria Koenig, dismisses the idea that the house should be credited to Stahl.

“Pierre used to say that every client thinks they designed their house,” she says, “and this is a perfect example of that.”

Architect and writer Joseph Giovannini, former architecture critic of the Herald Examiner, recalls Stahl telling him that he had “given Pierre the idea for the house.”

“I dismissed it as typical owner hubris at the time,” Giovannini says. However, upon seeing the photograph of the model, he changed his mind.

“The gesture of the house cantilevering over the side of the hill into the distant view is clearly here in this model,” he says. “But it is Pierre’s skill that elevated the idea into a masterpiece. This is one of the rare cases it seems that there is a shared authorship.”

One thing seems certain: Koenig was the right architect at the right time. Others had turned down the project. The jagged-edged hillside lot was problematic, and Buck Stahl insisted on a 270-degree uninterrupted view. He also had Champagne tastes and a beer budget, the children say.

According to family lore, Koenig honed Buck Stahl’s ideas into a masterpiece. In Stahl’s model, the two-bedroom wing along the pool was curved, with the carport between the bedrooms. Koenig straightened out the curve, relocated the carport to the end and changed the butterfly-type roof to a flat tar-and-gravel roof.

“The design indeed shares certain similarities with what was later built, but Pierre Koenig would never have introduced curving forms into his work, and I’m struck by the pronounced arc of the house’s wings in Stahl’s model,” says Elizabeth Smith, a former curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and organizer of the seminal 1989 exhibit “Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses.”

“From this I can infer that Koenig adhered to the basic attributes of Stahl’s concept but refined the design into something much more rigorous, geometric and ‘pure’ in its form and materials -- in essence adapting it to his own vocabulary.”

One of Koenig’s innovations was to use the largest possible sheets of glass available at the time for residential construction, reducing the presence of framing elements so that the house seems to float, Smith says.

Adds Giovannini: “Koenig suspended disbelief along with gravity when he designed the daring, transparent structure, capturing in a single building what modern life in a modern house could be.”

In the end, Buck, Carlotta and their children got their home -- a modern dream house that lives on for them, as well as for other Angelenos for whom Shulman’s photo represents the halcyon days of mid-20th century.

“My dad loved the house,” Gronwald says. “He never wanted to leave.”

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Stahl House / Case Study House nº22

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Case Study House #22

Janey got the weekend before my birthday off we decided to do something special just in case she had to work during my birthday. We decided to take a tour of the most famous of the Case Study houses, #22 the Stahl House. Unlike most of the other Case Study houses the Stahl House was made famous by this Julius Shulman photograph , which depicts two women sitting and talking while appearing to hang in midair over the LA skyline. Among the Case Study houses the Stahl House has by far the best story.

In 1954 “Buck” Stahl was driving through the hills above Hollywood when he saw the site which was being used as a dumping ground for dirt and concrete. He saw the developer who owned the plot and bought the land on the spot for $13,500, about the price of a small house at the time. Over the next two years Buck and his wife Carlotta hauled dirt and concrete to the spot and an idea for a house began to form. Buck made a small model  and began to show it various architects who all told him it couldn’t be built.

Finally in 1957 Buck found Pierre Koenig, who was designing the glass and steel Case Study House #21  and took on the task of turning Buck’s dream into a reality. In early 1959 Koenig suggested the Stahls submit the house to the Case Study program. The story goes that they crumpled up the application and threw it away only to pull it out of the trash and smooth it back out again. Later in 1959 just before groundbreaking the house was accepted into the program, but not because it was affordable (it cost $37,500 to build) or easily reproducible (the house is incredibly specific to the site) but because it pushed Modernist architecture to its limits and showed what was truly possible with the best materials and design of the day.

The house is all glass on three sides and every room has a sweeping view of LA below, every architectural design decision has been made to increase the view as much as possible to the exclusion of everything else. Nothing is load bearing except for the posts between the enormous panes of glass which were the largest available at the time of building. Koenig was also extremely clever with the designs, maximizing morning sun to warm the house and providing long eves on specific sides to keep in cool through the afternoon.

In 1960 Julius Shulman’s photos of the house appeared in Arts & Architechure as a part of the Case Study House program and launched the house into the spotlight. In 1962 an article appeared in Life, “Way Up Way of Living on California Cliffs” that featured several photographs of the house including one of Buck Stahl dangling off the edge of the cliff with a rope around his waist  planting ivy to reenforce the hillside. The house has been used in dozens of movies, tv shows, commercials, and photo shoots since then.

In some ways I think the Stahl house captures something uniquely American, that Buck Stahl, a sign painter and graphic artist could devote 6 years to an idea and create it from literally the ground up. His famous quote “Nobody famous ever lived here” really sums up something about the classic American dream.

• Tours of the Stahl House
• Stahl House Wikipedia Article
• Original 1960 Article
• Wikipedia list of Case Study homes
• List of original articles
• Original introduction article

The Stahl House is open for tours on a regular basis  and is one of only 2 that you can take a tour of. I really recommend the evening tour if you can make it, since you get to see the house in daylight, sunset and night. They let you take photographs only with cell phones and photos are for personal use only.

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9 comments on “Case Study House #22”

It’s absolutely stunning, there’s such a beauty in the simplicity and cleanliness of the design.

This one is by far my favorite.<3 I'd love to live in a home like that!

Vegetarian Courtesy

this place is so amazing … For sure we know it from several movies …

Growing up in the 60s, I was fascinated by the photos of houses like this one in Life magazine. All the modern “ranch” houses in my neighborhood looked quaint by comparison.

That house is just so amazing. Although I don’t see myself as an LA person, the thought of living in a house like this in a 60s, enjoying the California sunshine and that stunning view, could almost make me change my mind.

This is GORGEOUS! I’m not often a fan of 50s-60s houses with very modernist lines, but this one has given me a change of heart! It’s so open, I love the long, low silhouette. And I’d love so many windows… as long as neighbors are far away!

That is amazing!!!

That view, oh my word! It’s absolutely spellbinding. What a stunning abode, pool, and vista!

Mid-century architecture is not really my favorite, but this is pretty amazing. But as a Northern California girl, I can’t help but wonder about earthquakes, with so few load bearing walls, and being on a cliff!

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Inside The Iconic Midcentury Stahl House (Case Study House #22)

Earlier this year I found myself lifted out of the streets of West Hollywood and into the hills above, to Woods Drive. What may appear to be a regular house in the Hollywood Hills as you drive up the winding, dead-end road, is much more spectacular than that. And unlike its neighbors, the house—now a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument—was originally built as an inexpensive, efficient model home. Over a half century later, Case Study House #22 (better known as the Stahl House ) has gone on to become a property so coveted, even the tours sell out fast.

I purchased my tickets about a month ahead of time (this is when they typically sell out, so plan ahead), and when I arrived I was pleasantly surprised that not only was the tour being given by a family member (it is given by a friend of the family on some occassions), but the tour groups are kept small. This is to give you an uncrowded experience—you can spend one hour on the grounds, taking photos clean of other people in the shots, or serenely sitting by the crystal blue pool like you own the place.

There are afternoon, late afternoon, and evening tours—you can find the schedule and buy tickets here .

History of the Stahl House

In 1960, Julius Shulman took that iconic photograph of two women sitting inside, at the corner of the home that hangs over the edge of the mountain it sits upon. The shot was something out of a surreal dreamscape—two women poised, smiling, calm, in a home that appeared to be floating there over a rocky ledge. But it was real, and it would become the ultimate representation of 20th century architecture in Los Angeles, where nothing seems real anyway.

It was the perfect image given that the vision all started as a dream, one of Buck and Carlotta Stahl, who purchased the property for $13,500 six years earlier, in 1954. The two provided inspiration for the design, which was brought to life by architect Pierre Koenig. Here’s how it went down according to the Stahl family , who still own the home, and while there are tours, some of them still live there:

The Stahl House story starts in May 1954 when the Stahls purchased a small lot above Sunset Blvd. Over the following two years C.H. ‘Buck’ Stahl and Carlotta Stahl worked weekends constructing the broken concrete wall that surrounds the buildable portion of the lot. During these working weekends, the design and vision for the Stahl House began to take shape. In the Summer of 1956, Buck Stahl constructed a three dimensional model of their dream home. It is with this model they interviewed and hired Architect Pierre Koenig in November 1957. On April 8th, 1959, the home was inducted into the Case Study House program by Arts & Architecture magazine, and assigned the number 22. Construction of the house began in May 1959 and was completed a year later in May of 1960.

Stahl residence, 1960s. (Courtesy of the USC Libraries )

The pavilion-type house was described as "a happy combination of site, soil, height, and location combined to suggest a solution in which it was possible to take advantage of all elements without the necessity of compromising design." For all of these reasons, as well as the interior design of the space, it's been spotted used in plenty of movies: Smog (1962); The First Power (1990); The Marrying Man (1991); Corrina, Corrina (1994); Playing by Heart (1998); Why Do Fools Fall In Love (1998); Galaxy Quest (1999); The Thirteenth Floor (1999); Nurse Betty (2000); and Where the Truth Lies (2005). It's also been on the small screen, namely in Columbo . And maybe you remember the video for Wilson Philips' "Release Me"?

History of the Case Study Houses

The Case Study Houses were beautiful experiments in residential architecture, all spawned from an Arts & Architecture project that lasted from 1945 to 1966. The original 1954 announcement ( PDF ) included just eight houses, and read, in part, "We are, within the limits of uncontrollable factors, proposing to begin immediately the study, planning, actual design and construction of eight houses, each to fulfill the specifications of a special living problem in the Southern California area."

The magazine commissioned some big architects of the era to design inexpensive model homes when the U.S. was dealing with a post-war housing boom. In the end, 27 structures were built, almost all in Los Angeles, and nearly all photographed by Shulman. Today, 20 remain, while 3 were demolished and 4 were altered beyond recognition. Below, you'll find a full list of those that were built, with accompanying PDFs to the original profile of each home that ran Arts & Architecture.

Case Study House #8, the Eames House . (Photo courtesy of Architectural Resources Group)

• Case Study House #1 ( PDF ) still exists at 10152 Toluca Lake Avenue in North Hollywood
• Case Study House #2 ( PDF ) still exists at 857 Chapea Road in Pasadena
• Case Study House #3 ( PDF ) at 13187 Chalon Road in L.A. was demolished
• Case Study House #7 ( PDF ) still exists at 6236 North Deerfield Avenue in San Gabriel
• Case Study House #8, the Eames House ( PDF ) still exists at 203 Chautauqua Boulevard in Pacific Palisades
• Case Study House #9 ( PDF ) still exists at 205 Chautauqua Boulevard in Pacific Palisades
• Case Study House #10 ( PDF ) at 711 South San Rafael Avenue in Pasadena was significantly altered
• Case Study House #11 ( PDF ) at 540 South Barrington Avenue in West Los Angeles was demolished
• Case Study House #15 ( PDF ) still exists at 4755 Lasheart Drive in La Canada
• Case Study House #16 ( PDF ) at 9945 Beverly Grove Drive in Beverly Hills was demolished
• Case Study House #17A ( PDF ) still exists at 7861 Woodrow Wilson Drive in L.A.
• Case Study House #17B ( PDF ) at 9554 Hidden Valley Road was remodeled beyond recognition
• Case Study House #18A ( PDF ) still exists at 199 Chautauqua Boulevard in Pacific Palisades
• Case Study House #18B ( PDF ) at 1129 Miradero Road in Beverly Hills was remodeled beyond recognitio
• Case Study House #20A ( PDF ) still exists at 219 Chautauqua Boulevard in Pacific Palisades
• Case Study House #20B ( PDF ) still exists at 2275 Santa Rosa Avenue in Altadena
• Case Study House #21 ( PDF ) still exists at 9038 Wonderland Park Avenue in West Hollywood (and it's currently for sale )
• Case Study House 1950 ( PDF ) still exists at 1080 Ravoli Drive in Pacific Palisades, however it has been remodeled
• Case Study House 1953 ( PDF ) still exists at 1811 Bel Air Road in Bel-Air
• Case Study House #22, the Stahl House ( PDF ) still exists at 1635 Woods Drive in L.A.
• Case Study House #23 was a triad ( PDF ) 23A and 23C still exists, while 23B remodeled beyond recognition. They are all in La Jolla.
• Case Study House #25 ( PDF ) still exists at 82 Rivo Alto Canal in Long Beach
• Case Study House #26 ( PDF ) still exists at 177 San Marino Drive in San Rafael
• Case Study House #28 ( PDF ) still exists at 91 Inverness Road in Thousand Oaks
• Case Study Apartments #1 ( PDF ) still exists 4402 28th Street in Phoenix, Arizona

That last one was an attempt to deliver a more appealing multi-family residential unit, which they presented in their magazine alongside a brutal takedown of the dingbat apartment model . By the time Case Study Apartments #1 was built in 1964, the dingbat was here to stay, having spread over the city during the development-driven era of the 1950s.

Their statement read: "Our intention is to overcome by example, not just precept, as many as possible of those misconceptions and prejudices which have bred the outrageous 'dingbat' apartments, the cheap and blowzy eyesores that continue to proliferate everywhere in our country." They also wrote that ground would soon be breaking in Newport Beach for Case Study Apartments #2, but it never came to be. One apartment in the #1 property sold in 2014 for under $500,000, while another was on rental market for $1200/month —it's all been preserved, and you can see recent photos here .

The Stahl House isn't the only Case Study House that offers tours, you can also visit #8 (the Eames House)— make a reservation here .

Julius Shulman’s Case Study House #22

The Greatest American Architectural Photographer of the 20th Century

Julius Shulman is often considered the greatest American architectural photographer of the 20th century. His photography shaped the image of South Californian lifestyle of midcentury America. For 70 years, he created on of the most comprehensive visual archives of modern architecture, especially focusing on the development of the Los Angeles region. The designs of some of the world’s most noted architectures including Richard Neutra, Ray Eames and Frank Lloyd Wright came to life though his photographs. To this day, it is through Shulman’s photography that we witness the beauty of modern architecture and the allure of Californian living.

Neutra and Beyond

Born in 1910 in Brooklyn, Julius Shulman grew up in a small farm in Connecticut before his family moved to Los Angeles at the age of ten. While in Los Angeles, Shulman was introduced to Boy Scouts and often went hiking in Mount Wilson. This allowed him to organically study light and shadow, and be immersed in the outdoors. While in college between UCLA and Berkeley, he was offered to photograph the newly designed Kun House by Richard Neutra. Upon photographing, Shulman sent the six images to the draftsman who then showed them to Neutra. Impressed, Richard Neutra asked Shulman to photograph his other houses and went on to introduce him to other architectures.

The Case Study Houses

Julius Shulman’s photographs revealed the true essence of the architect’s vision. He did not merely document the structures, but interpreted them in his unique way which presented the casual residential elegance of the West Coast. The buildings became studies of light and shadow set against breathtaking vistas. One of the most significant series in Shulman’s portfolio is without a doubt his documentation of the Case Study Houses. The Case Study House Program was established under the patronage of the Arts & Architectue magazine in 1945 in an effort to produce model houses for efficient and affordable living during the housing boom generated after the Second World War. Southern California was used as the location for the prototypes and the program commissioned top architects of the day to design the houses. Julius Shulman was chosen to document the designs and throughout the course of the program he photographed the majority of the 36 houses. Shulman’s photography gave new meaning to the structures, elevating them to a status of international recognition in the realm of architecture and design. His way of composition rendered the structures as inviting places for modern living, reflecting a sense of optimism of modern living.

Case Study House #22

Case Study House #22, also known as the Stahl House was one of the designs Julius Shulman photographed which later become one of the most iconic of his images. Designed by architect Pierre Koenig in 1959, the Stahl House was the residential home of American football player C.H Buck Stahl located in the Hollywood Hills. The property was initially regarded as undevelopable due to its hillside location, but became an icon of modern Californian architecture. Regarded as one of the most interesting masterpieces of contemporary architecture, Pierre Koenig preferred merging unconventional materials for its time such as steel with a simple, ethereal, indoor-outdoor feel. Julius’s dramatic image, taking in a warm evening in the May of 1960, shows two young ladies dressed in white party dresses lounging and chatting. The lights of the city shimmer in the distant horizon matching the grid of the city, while the ladies sit above the distant bustle and chaos. Pierre Koenig further explains in the documentary titled Case Study Houses 1945-1966 saying;

“When you look out along the beam it carries your eye right along the city streets, and the (horizontal) decking disappears into the vanishing point and takes your eye out and the house becomes one with the city below.”

The Los Angeles Good Life

The image presents a fantasy and is a true embodiment of the Los Angeles good life. By situating two models in the scene, Shulman creates warmth, helping the viewer to imagine scale as well as how life would be like living in this very house. In an interview with Taina Rikala De Noriega for the Archives of American Art Shulman recalls the making of the photograph;

“ So we worked, and it got dark and the lights came on and I think somebody had brought sandwiches. We ate in the kitchen, coffee, and we had a nice pleasant time. My assistant and I were setting up lights and taking pictures all along. I was outside looking at the view. And suddenly I perceived a composition. Here are the elements. I set up the furniture and I called the girls. I said, ‘Girls. Come over sit down on those chairs, the sofa in the background there.’ And I planted them there, and I said, ‘You sit down and talk. I’m going outside and look at the view.’ And I called my assistant and I said, ‘Hey, let’s set some lights.’ Because we used flash in those days. We didn’t use floodlights. We set up lights, and I set up my camera and created this composition in which I assembled a statement. It was not an architectural quote-unquote “photograph.” It was a picture of a mood.”

Purity in Line and Design to Perfection

Shulman’s preference to shoot in black and white reduces the subject to its geometrical essence allowing the viewer to observe the reflections, shadows and forms. A Shulman signature, horizontal and vertical lines appear throughout the image to create depth and dimensional perspective. A mastery in composition, the photograph catches purity in line and design to perfection.

A Lifetime of Achievements

Julius Shulman retired from active architectural work in 1989, leaving behind an incredibly rich archive chronicling the development of modern living in Southern California. A large part of his archive resides at the Getty Museum in California. For the next twenty years he participated in major museum and gallery exhibitions around the world, and created numerous books by publishers such as Taschen and Nazraeli Press. Among his honors, Shulman is the only photographer to have been granted honorary lifetime membership in the American Institute of Architects. In 1998 he was given a lifetime achievement award by ICP. Julius passed away in 2009 in his home in Los Angeles.

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The Stahl House: Case Study House #22: The Making of a Modernist Icon Hardcover – November 2, 2021

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“Bruce Stahl and Shari Stahl Gronwald offer an intimate biography of ‘one of the great architectural wonders of Los Angeles’: the Stahl House, designed by Pierre Koenig and completed in 1960, and the house they grew up in…. Those with an interest in the human side of design and architecture will be captivated.” ― Publishers Weekly

“Sumptuous… a startlingly intimate document, chockablock with family snapshots, that goes beyond steel decking, glass walls, concrete caissons, and the geometry of H columns and I beams. It’s a love song to a global icon that was, for the residents themselves, no museum.” ― Vanity Fair

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Stahl Residence, Case Study House #22 by Pierre Koenig

During the holidays slow home will be re-running archived content,  we will return in 2010 with new episodes..

Wonderful! Thanks so much for this segment.

Fantastic tour and commentary on a great house. Thanks John!

John, if you compare the photograph above with the recent photographs that you took it appears that a small deck has been added around the living room. Is that correct?

As an aside, there are a couple of good articles in the Globe Real Estate section today. One details the plight of another famous LA residence – the Frank Lloyd Wright Ennis House. The other talks about the trend in high-end real estate towards smaller smarter design – Good things, small packages.

Of note with the Ennis house – this is another in a line of homes by FLW brilliant in design but poor in execution. No doubt ahead the construction and engineering practice of the day.

In the Good things, small packages article note the influence of the Stahl residence and other iconic mid-century residential designs on the current homes shown. It is not just the form of the house but the philosophy behind the design which is common.

Gorgeous house! Thanks for showing these pictures. Interesting to learn about the lights outside the house. One thing that came to mind was I wouldn’t want to change the light bulbs here!

Great segment John. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Thanks for the walk-through tour of this iconic home, John. Very interesting! I’ve found that learning about the layout and how the home’s elements interplay has usurped the amazing photos of its unique location above LA.

Fascinating house. Very unassuming from the street side and spectacular from the cliff side. It opens up interesting possibilities when you can use the outdoors as a functional part of the house. Hey John — maybe with global warming your successors will eventually be able to do this sort of thing here in Calgary!

I completely understand why they increased the size of the carport wall and put a locking door in it, as it would nice to be able to leave the sliding doors unlocked at night so that the children would be able to head to the kitchen for a midnight snack without either cutting through the master bedroom or having to take a key with them. However, if they aren’t fully awake when they try to negotiate that bridge they just might end up very awake and very wet!

Interesting that they chose to put the master bedroom in the middle and the children’s bedroom at the end. From a privacy perspective I would have expected it to be the other way around, but I guess they felt that the corner of the “L” was the best place to put the master ensuite and wanted to give the master bedroom a direct link to the rest of the house.

John — any chance that you could post a PDF or JPEG of the floorplan so that we could look at it more closely without having to pause the video?

Doug, Here is the plan.

I agree with your thoughts about the order of the bedrooms. Add to that the fact that there were two boys and one girl growing up in the house and it is wonder that there was any privacy at all. (We learned on the tour that the kid’s bedroom had been subdivided with a wall that lined up with the center mullion. The boy’s in bunk beds on one side and the girl on the other).

I think that the placement of the master bathroom (which is actually quite generous given the times and the size of the house) is inspired in terms of using up the outside corner of the L shaped plan.

Also a good point about falling into the pool. Several people on the tour almost did. Also, there are no handrails anywhere and it is quite easy to just walk off the edge of the cliff. Again, it seems like an unnerving place to raise a small family.

[img]cs22-3.jpg[/img]

Brad, Any chance you could share the link to the Ennis Brown House story?

I have been taking my students there for tours for fifteen years until it was closed because of the collapsing retaining walls. I actually had the opportunity to meet Mr. Brown (no relation unfortunately) several times before he passed away.

Good things, small packages: Vancouver architect D’Arcy Jones is tapping into a new dynamic

The Perfect House: Buyer needed to rescue a Wright masterpiece

Let’s try again…

Good things, small packages: Vancouver architect D’Arcy Jones is tapping into a new dynamic http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/good-things-small-packages/article1204232/

The Perfect House: Buyer needed to rescue a Wright masterpiece http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/buyer-needed-to-rescue-a-wright-masterpiece/article1204530/

Thank you for the little presentation. I think Pierre Koenig has done some outstanding houses – simple, spacious layouts. It seems to me he really liked to work with big sliding doors and water – perhaps not the perfect idea of families with small children but looking at those original picture it makes you understand the original idea behind that, behind this era of CA-Architecture. I guess Doug is right, perhaps those global changes will make it possible to do that kind of houses in other parts of the world too but on the other hand I’d like to know how this building is working in CA as well – guess you can not consider that to be a GREEN BUILDING but wouldn’t it be interesting to find ways to keep the idea and make this design work in the 21.century? The layout is never outdated but the contruction needs a good new makeover (without losing its obvious quality!) I love those case study houses – a very important piece of architectural history!

John, I’ve wanted so much to be “on the inside” of that iconic photo for so many years! Thank you so much for the tour and commentary. What a joyful, optimistic, modern house. Such a contrast with one of the more stifling ethos of our times: “the children must be (over)protected at all times!” I would think everyone would thrill to walk the edges of the pool and the cliff. But don’t leave us hanging… did all survive?

Another modern case study home. And one shaped like a box with floor to ceiling windows. How unique.

I disagree that the utter lack of privacy for the children’s rooms and the arduous trip from the carport to the kitchen with the grocery bags, constitute good design. I guess I just don’t get it.

FYI – According to the son of the homes owner, the house was designed in mid 1956 by his father, C.H. Stahl. Pierre Koenig was hired to fine tune the house design and make it buildable.

Robert, you are right there are many homes shaped like a box with floor to ceiling windows. But not in 1956. Also, very few houses presented a windowless, doorless response to the front.

The house does pose some practical problems for a family living in it, but the way it responds to its site and the social commentary it makes sets it apart as a very dynamic and influential piece of architecture.

I can’t emote how exciting this property is. Similar to other masterpieces such as The Philip Johnson Glass House it may not hold a sense of practicality for most of us but boy it really revs up the mental engine.

I appreciate more and more when such unique ideas becomes reality. If more people would be so bold.

It is said that most of our greatest ideas go with us to the grave. At least a few make it out alive.

Robert – Not to create a debate but it would be interesting to see a few examples of what you and others consider an ideal living environment. For myself the influences are varied and seem to evolve as I become more familiar with other styles.

Here is a reference to the LA Times article which discusses the Stahl residence as viewed by the family and the controversy regarding its design.

http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-stahl27-2009jun27,0,504751.story

Hi john, Could you please email me a readible copy of the Stahl house blue print?

John, Stumbled on your site yesterday and I love what I see. Looking forward to what you have to offer in the New Year.

As for this home – I love to see the use of sliders and pocket doors. (On a side note I think designers should incorporate them more). In relation to how the space feels and functions – these were a necessity. Their usage in the master kept it clean, sight lines intact, and saved precious space.

Does anyone know where I can find plan views of the house? Preferably with measurements. Thanks.

i need the analysis of this house as soon as possible …. that’s my email [email protected] plz help me

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Iconic Photos

Famous, Infamous, and Iconic Images

Case Study House No. 22, 1960

Between 1945 and 1966, Californian magazine Arts & Architecture asked major architects of the day to design model homes. The magazine was responding to the postwar building boom with prototype modern homes that could be both easily replicated and readily affordable to the average American. Among many criteria given to the architects was to use “as far as is practicable, many war-born techniques and materials best suited to the expression of man’s life in the modern world.”

Thirty-six model homes were commissioned from major architects of the day, including Richard Neutra, Raphael Soriano, Craig Ellwood, Charles and Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig, Eero Saarinen, A. Quincy Jones, and Ralph Rapson. Not all of them were built but some thirty of them were, mostly around the Greater Los Angeles area.

The magazine also engaged an architectural photographer named Julius Shulman to dutifully record this experiment in residential architecture. Fittingly for Shulman, one of the first architectural photographers to include the inhabitants of homes in the pictures, his most famous image was the 1960 view of Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House No. 22 (also the Stahl House), which showed two well-dressed women conversing casually inside.

In the photo, the cantilevered living room appears to float diaphanously above Los Angeles. “The vertiginous point of view contrasts sharply with the relaxed atmosphere of the house’s interior, testifying to the ability of the Modernist architect to transcend the limits of the natural world,” praised the New York Times . Yet this view was created as meticulously as the house itself. Wide-angle photography belied the actual smallness of the house; furniture and furnishings were staged, and as were the women. Although they were not models (but rather girlfriends of architectural students), they were asked to sit still in the dark as Shulman exposed the film seven minutes to capture lights from LA streets. Then, lights inside were quickly switched on to capture two posing women.

Case Study House No.22 as it appeared in Arts and Architecture . Shulman’s photo with inhabitants did not appear here.

See other Case Study Houses here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Study_Houses

Result was the photo Sir Norman Foster termed his favorite “architectural moment”. Indeed, the photo captured excitement and promises the house held, and propelled Case Study No. 22 into the forefront of national consciousness. Some called it the most iconic building in LA. It appeared as backdrop in many movies, TV series and advertisements. Tim Allen was abducted by aliens here in Galaxy Quest ; Greg Kinnear would make it his bachelor pad in Nurse Betty , and Columbo opened its pilot episode here. Italian models in slicked-back hair would frolic poolside in Valentino ads. It was even replicated in the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. According to Koenig, Case Study No. 22. was featured in more than 1,200 books — more often than Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.

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