The Architecture of Red Los Angeles: Building Low-Cost Housing Communities for a Postwar Future, 1940-1960 Open Access
Rawlings, Courtney (Summer 2023)
Abstract
This dissertation argues that “California Modern” (known today as “midcentury modern”) architecture was first developed at midcentury by Los Angeles architects intent on solving the city’s worsening housing crisis. By tracing the decreasing politicization and increasing aestheticization of California Modern architecture from public housing to private housing co-operatives to the renowned Case Study Program, this dissertation provides insight into why midcentury modern architecture eventually shed its progressive roots. As a whole, the story of California Modern architecture is one of continuity and change. On the one hand, California Modern architects held steadfast to their conviction that architecture had the power to alter inhabitants’ behaviors and, in so doing, could engender a better, more egalitarian, and more democratically-attuned citizenry. These architects considered themselves “social scientists,” if not clinicians, who used housing to conduct “education campaigns” aimed at ameliorating “warped habits and modes of living” so that individuals might participate as equals in a new postwar culture characterized by “a broadened base of participation.” On the other hand, as the Cold War heated up and communitarianism became synonymous with communism, progressive architects curbed their political ambitions, moving their gaze from city and community planning to private, single-family homes. Although California Modern architects retained their “progressive” aesthetic throughout the midcentury period, their politics were tempered by a Cold War liberal program that focused political intervention on the individual.
Table of Contents
Introduction: 1
Chapter 1: Housing as Racial Uplift 6
Ch. 1: Figures 29
Chapter 2: Educating Citizens in a City of Superblocks 37
Ch. 2: Figures 77
Chapter 3: The Political Costs of the Cooperative Alternative 90
Ch. 3: Figures 128
Chapter 4: Freedom in Steel and Glass 137
Ch. 4: Figures 172
Conclusion: 180
Works Cited: 183
Archives Cited: 195
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