Case Study Houses

The Case Study House program was started by Art & Architecture Magazine in 1945 as a way for architects to begin to formulate ideas for post-World War II housing. There are a few Case Study House architects whose collections are housed at the ADC: J.R. Davidson, Whitney Smith (of Smith & Williams), and Edward Killingsworth (of Killingsworth, Brady, and Smith). Additionally, our Ester McCoy collection of papers also contains drawings and materials pertaining to the design of some of the Case Study Houses.
The housing designs showed that good architecture and good design could be scaled up to produce low cost houses, since the need for single family homes was of paramount importance after WWII. As the Case Study House program evolved throughout the 1950s and into the early 1960s, the houses became more modern, with less emphasis on low-cost, but rather cutting-edge design.

Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.

circa 1945 - circa 1963

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