Californian promise - review of architect Gordon Drake's designs

Architectural Review, The, March, 1996 by Neil Jackson

Had Gordon Drake not died aged 35 while skiing in the Sierras in 1952, he might have become one of the great names of post-war Californian architecture. As it was, he had not yet finished taking his California architectural licensing exams. Nevertheless his immediate influence can be recognised in the framed terraces and enclosed garden courts of Craig Ellwood's three Case Study Houses of 195 3, `55 and `58, and more recently, a similar use of gridded plans and natural fighting can be identified in Glenn Murcutt's work.

Gordon Drake suffered the mixed blessing of achieving early fame by winning, in 1946, Progressive Architecture's First Annual Award with his very first house and then winning, with his next two buildings, second place in the House and Gardens 1947 Awards in Architecture and a Mention in Progressive Architecture's Second Annual Award. His architecture was strongly influenced by Harwell Hamilton Harris who had taught him at the University of Southern California and for whom he had worked before and after the war. It was some indication of Drake's demanding character that Harris later wrote, `When satisfied there was nothing further to be discovered by continuing a design, he dropped it. Knowing this about him,' he added, `it is surprising that I let him come to work for me'.(1) In July 1949, frustrated in his own attempts at architecture, Drake had written to Harris: `It has taken me almost three years to write this letter and perhaps my present low estate was necessary for me to tell you that should I ever arrive at anything of merit in architecture it will be because I was able to work for a time under your guidance.'(2)

It was from Harris that he had learned the benefits of modular construction and the flexibility of gridded plans. It was not just the simplicity of such systems which appealed to Drake but also what they implied: here was a building process which could provide, at minimum cost, a high-quality living environment even an egalitarian architecture. This was the intent of his first house, built for himself in Beverly Glen, Los Angeles, and the essence of all his later work.

The Beverly Glen house, judged by William Wurster and Eliel Saarinen to `best exemplify sound progress in design,'(3) was a simple, single-room, handmade affair in glass and redwood. Arranged on a gridded plan, its long west elevation opened into the warm bowl of a hillside, the roof beams reaching out and hugging the trees which punctuated the brick terrace. Thus despite the restricted, viewless nature of the canyon site, every attempt was made, as The Architects' Journal told British readers, `to do away with any feeling of enclosure or smallness.'(4) Constructed of 100 mm square posts at 1800 mm centres, the redwood frame set up a close and intimate rhythm which was picked up in the repetitive glazed doors and translucent screens of the west elevation and extended across the panelled ceiling to the clerestory lights lining the other walls. Drake had conceived the house while serving in the Pacific as a major in the US Marines and, on coming home, built it with a group of war veterans who, as Progressive Architecture noted, `felt responsible for more than the labor they were performing'.(5) This was the same altruistic intent which John Entenza expressed in promoting Arts Architecture's contemporary Case Study House program: an attempt to provide well-designed and affordable housing for the post-war years.

Surprisingly, Drake never built a Case Study House. Perhaps he died too soon or was too faithfully wedded to timber, for from 1949 to 1960 the eight Case Study Houses which Entenza published had steel frames. Nevertheless, his David Presley House, built in Silver Lake, Los Angeles in 1946 was as experimental as any Entenza promoted. It was built as a test house for the Home-Ola housing company of Chicago, but the fact that the site was unconventional, steeply sloping and with excellent views, compromised the prototypical nature of the design which was intended for unremarkable, flatland sites. `The Presleys', Drake wrote to Eleanor Bittermann at Architectural Forum, `are a couple in their mid-twenties and like most young people have never been exposed to work of this spirit ... My work was called to their attention just at the time when the panel system of construction was being investigated. They were told of the nature and risk of the experiment and decided to be the subjects ... Throughout the design and construction they have been most cooperative and now that the house is finished seem very pleased with the finished product'.(6) As with his own house, the Presley house snuggled into the hillside but, with open views to the north, the main living spaces also took advantage of this aspect. Arranged on a 1200 mm grid, the house was constructed of prefabricated stressed-skin plywood panels with doors and windows built in. The simple, monopitch roof allowed for clerestory windows and standardised roof and fascia panels. `The Presley house,' he explained, `investigates the feasibility of the system of construction and stays within the limits of the basic scheme as much as the site and the client's needs would allow. It cannot be compared to either a custom designed house or to one that has reached the simplification of mass production. I feel it is a compromise to both; a compromise that will be justified by the revised sceme [sic] that suits the needs of an average unknown client on a site devoid of either grade or view.'(7)