When ‘Mid-Century Modern’ was simply modern

 

Above, photographer Julius Shulman’s now iconic photo of Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House hovering above 1940s Los Angeles– it seems to define what some folk now call “Mid-Century Modern.” Just one of over 1000 items in

the University of Southern California’s Architectural Teaching Slide Collection, which collects about 1300 rarely seen photographs of midcentury modern houses shot all over the western United States from the 1940s to the 1960s by Koenig himself, along with his colleague Fritz Block, who also happened to own a color slide company. “Instead of the polished tableaus you might find in the pages of Architectural Digest,” writes Hyperallergic’s Carey Dunne, “these spontaneous snapshots capture quirky and more intimate views.” Koenig and Block captured these houses “with an architect’s geometrically minded and detail-oriented eye, never presenting them as mere real estate.” The archive also offers images of models, blueprints, and other such technical materials.

[Hat tip Sandrine L.]

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