The Case Study House # 9 was designed by the architects Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen for John Entenza, responsible for initiating the program and also director and editor of Arts & Architecture magazine, who lived and worked there until he sold it to the 5 years of its construction, at which time a series of changes were made on the original design.
Located at 205 Chautauca Boulevard, Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles (USA), whose plot occupies almost one hectare in a meadow overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Like its partners in the "Casas de Estudio" Program, the house was designed not only to serve as a comfortable and functional residence but to show how modular steel construction could be used to create low-cost housing for a society that was still recovering from World War II. With this premise, the architects Eames and Saarinen designed the house in such a way that the landscape was an extension of it, so that the house was related to the landscape and its surroundings.
Located at 205 Chautauca Boulevard, Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles (USA), whose plot occupies almost one hectare in a meadow overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Like its partners in the "Casas de Estudio" Program, the house was designed not only to serve as a comfortable and functional residence but to show how modular steel construction could be used to create low-cost housing for a society that was still recovering from World War II. With this premise, the architects Eames and Saarinen designed the house in such a way that the landscape was an extension of it, so that the house was related to the landscape and its surroundings.
The objective of the original project designed by the architects was to reach the maximum space with the minimum possible structure, the project is developed with the idea of "elastic space" in which the space varies depending on the occasional occupation needs due to guests or the family. After a series of construction difficulties due to delays, the building was completed in 1949, maintaining the original idea of creating a fluid space related to the environment.
The house is structured around four steel pillars, 10 cm wide and 2.13 m high, located in the centre of the project, allowing, in this way, the bracing and transmitting of most of the load to the perimeter belt getting all the interior elements to support a similar and lighter load.
The structure of steel and glass is hidden by drywall panels that line the walls of the house. The roof is made of a single flat slab of concrete while the interior roof is covered with birch wood slats.
The floor of the house with square shape and sides of 16.5 meters. The house is divided by a gap of 90 cm that separates the public rooms from the private ones, where the architects take advantage of these height differences to create a piece of permanent informal furniture.
The entrance to the house, located to the North, is separated from the garage by translucent glass that allows the passage of light from a skylight located in it. In the corridor, we find the entrance to a more private area where there are two rooms, two bathrooms and a study without windows to avoid distractions from the outside.
South of the house is the public space where the architects Eames and Saarinen developed the idea of flexible space through a translucent tobacco shop that separates while connecting all rooms allowing an intimate relationship with the outside. The kitchen and living room are separated by a wardrobe wall while both open to the south.
The photographs presented in this article from Casa Case Study No. 9 (Los Angeles, California), 1950, have been reproduced from the J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute of the Julius Shulman Photography archive. While copying has been allowed, the copyright remains the property of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.
