Drop-dead effects

fountains translucent replicas of the Chase’s comments on all this are

Reyner Banham Venus de Milo and vast chandeliers worth quoting for a number of reasons
And it is the transference of this sort of but chiefly for the light they may shed

John Chase thing to the exterior that is the true on the attitude with which younger
essence of the style architectural historians (and not only
Exterior Decoration Hollywood’s Chase is very good on the two basic in California set about their work
Inside Out Houses devices with which unremarkable What is so astonishing about this
I24pp Los Angeles Hennessey and facades can be elevated to the "dropdead
remodel is the attitude expressed in
Ingalls $19 dead category the clip-on false
it that anything can be transformed
09121588883 mansard roof (originallya restaurant To attempt the
into anything else
mannerism hence Goi
transformation of the Case Study
Visitors interested in the architecture (Won - a long-established substyle
House No 17 into a Greek temple
of Los Angeles weighed down by the style and the "Woolf-Pullman Door
with a Hollywood Regency street
massive "Gebhard and Winter (the with its arched or segmented doorsurround
facade requires the most profound
standard guide-book are apt to wish surround rising into the mansard
disregard of traditional notions of
that the authors had concentrated on above Its inventor John Woolf is the
architectural integrity The Woolf
fewer more important buildings and nearest thing to a founder the style can
re-model was however quite
left out most of those that require only boast and thus the nearest thing to a
successful in bringing out the
a one-line entry such as "Greatly hero in Chase’s narrative
simplified classicism . . of the
remodelled Gebhard and Winter The use of the word "style in this original
have a case however many visitors
context may cause some concern but
will be looking for examples of minor This will paraphrasequite neatly into a
this is no vernacular born of innocent
genres peculiar to the area - Wavy Line - quite the fair description of the direction of
and indigent craftsmanship
Moderne for instance and should be opposite it is
-
sophisticated contemporary revisionist
architectural
served However most of them will knowing
and almost as expensive as it tries to history
only be pursuing one or two of these look It may be kitsch but no more so
fancies and they will resent the space What is so astonishing about anyone
than many allegedly respectable this remodel seriously is the
allotted to those that don’t interest taking
current variants on Modern attitude that absolutely anything can
them
architecture indeed Chase draws
The answer proposed by some .when attention to examples from the 1950s be transformed into architectural
the guide first came out was to remove history To lavish so much scholarly
which anticipate the Post-Modernism
attention on a poor imitation of a
the one-liners and transfer them into a of East-coast scholiasts (such as
series of "Freak Supplements . one for
Greek Temple with a Hollywood
Michael Graves and Robert Stern by requires
Regency facade the
each fancy or building type and here as much as two decades
complete abandonment of
quite accidentally is the first of them
Where "Exterior Decoration most traditionalnotions of artistic quality
John Chase’s scholarly study of "West value-system of
threatens the The Tom Wolfe re-hash however is
Hollywood Re-Models The book’s
respectable architecture however is
title explains why the houses are quite successful in bringing out the
in its inabilityto see great buildings as simple-minded reductionism of
"inside-out - they display on the Ouite a few
having any lasting value much that used to pass as responsible
outside the kind of taste (sometimes distinguished hard-line modernists
called "HairdresserBaroque that is modern architecture .

have seen their works featured as

normally reserved for the decent classics of the "Drop-Dead genre Or words to that effect ... In what is
privacy of the interior As one of The most piquant example of this in the effectivelya re-run of the pioneer Pop
Chase’s captions has it "The plants
book is a spare airy stecl-andglass punditry of the 1950s Chase goes
and wall materials have been selected house designed
by Craig Ellwood beyond a superficial camp enthusiasm
for their color and textural values in for trendy trash and gives the product
situated off Coldwater Canyon and
much the same way as drapes would be known as a supreme a thorough well-observedand wellresearched
internationally
selected to harmonise with or contrast treatment
with a sofa
example of the Case-Study researched taking its

programme a scries of didactic houses pretensions as given and thus showing

Colour and texture however are intended to teach Angelenos about up the pretensions of those who claim
only half the story In a sub-culture Functionalism Now re-done by the to be above such things The welcome
where the interior decorator’s egregious John Woolf with Hindoo- that must be extended to this book as
ambitions are summed up in the epic Regency trim and Doric colums over an invaluable addition to the literature
phrase "I don’t want that people its skinny metal uprights ("to give this on l Angeles should be coupled with
beautiful’
should say ’How I want
they beautifully-made contemporaneous a warning that it may prove injurious to
should drop dead extensive threedimensional building a patina of age it gets the the mental health of those who believe
dimensional work will be required apd nod from //orac /?fauh magazine in that only the Eternal Veritiesare worth
’’’features’’
so will such as baroque which it is compared to Paestum the scholar’s care