Inside the Early Efforts to Rebuild the Iconic Architecture of Los Angeles
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As deadly wildfires raged in Southern California, Save Iconic Architecture, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit founded by Jaime Rummerfield and Ron Woodson, interior designers with close ties to the city, and dedicated to amplifying preservation efforts of historical and cultural structures, began posting about the historic homes that had been lost in the LA area—and the few that had been saved.
Now, as Los Angeles begins to rebuild, Save Iconic Architecture (SIA) is focused on preserving California architecture. “People are very traumatized, and continuing forward. It’s amazing the resilience and the hope that people have to rebuild,” she tells T&C. “Everyone's trying to do something or help. For us, this is our lane where we can really help provide a guidebook, and work with people who really want to take it forward as a case study and develop some of these California classics again.”
They’re aiming to revive the Case Study House project for the modern era, which was first launched in 1945 by Arts and Architecture magazine. The case study houses, commissioned by editor John Entenza, were meant to serve as a prototypes for modernist homes that could be easily built in the post-war period.
Rummerfield’s ambition is to find property owners and architects who will participate in a new case study program. “What we're looking for is five willing property owners and five architects— it's the same format as the [original] case study program, where you just get the best of the best and people who are willing to do this for art's sake. This is the initiative that we're going to champion to, at minimum, provide a guidebook on these styles of architecture that built these neighborhoods and really remind people,” she says.
Here, Rummerfield speaks with T&C about launching SIA, what the city of Los Angeles needs to do now (step one: open a preservation office), and the legacy of the case study houses.
What are the origins of Save Iconic Architecture?
I am an interior designer here in Los Angeles, and I do a lot of heritage properties already—that's a lot of my expertise. Over the years, I have witnessed—just being on job sites and new client meetings where they've bought a very spectacular historic property and the first thing they say is, okay, we're going to tear it down and we're going to build something either much bigger or much more modern. And it's actually just many appalling moments where it's like, no, you cannot tear down this Wallace Neff or this Paul Williams or this Richard Neutra. And with that, I would go to the city. It's really hard to find some recourse or protection for very notable properties in Los Angeles. In LA, things move super quick. Demolition is rampant. Already in LA, our history is just completely getting erased—what little history we have.
So after working with the city and the LA Conservancy and trying to find parameters that can be enforced with preservation, we realized, wow, LA just really does not have a great preservation program. It's really non-existent. Actually, our Office of Historic Resources consists of two employees and they just really manage the submissions for landmarks, but they don't proactively protect or preserve our city treasures at all. And that's what was even more alarming to me.
Over the years, with co-founder Ron Woodson—he was my design partner for years, we no longer are partners, but we still champion SIA [together] and he lives in Europe now—would kind of just grapple with the city and even the building department about there's no way of knowing when they give demo permits whether it's historic or not, unless it is already a landmark.
The city of LA doesn't really proactively protect history. So we started an initiative called Preserve LA, we brought it to the city, and [Principal City Planner] Ken Bernstein and he was like, ‘Oh, the city has no funds for preservation. Can your organization raise money for it?’ I thought that was really low, a really low request. Again, this is Los Angeles! California is such a huge economic resource to the whole country and we can't even designate a fund for preservation. So that's always been our plight is to bring attention to this. And that started in 2016—to put a spotlight on notable architecture in LA. We have world class architecture. The whole world looks to LA for entertainment, art, fashion and design. LA, without a doubt, has just incredible architecture. A lot of people just don't even know it or appreciate it.
So, Save Iconic Architecture really puts a spotlight on that and celebrates what we have here in LA. With the fires, there's just so much interesting and historic architecture that has been damaged or is now gone. And so we're just cataloguing it. Architecture, to a lot of people, is like a friend, it's like as a soul. People care deeply about buildings and the story it tells about our city. And so the big concern about a house, whether it is standing or not, it matters to them to at least know either way.
And with that, we're also developing an initiative that is a case study program for the 21st century now. We're right in the middle of reviving the California classics in the wake of these fires and the discussion of rebuilding and reviving the neighborhood.
What does reviving the California classics mean?
So what's interesting about these enclaves that have burned is Pacific Palisades is not only a wonderful beach community and very, very creative, very artistic in this wonderful oasis, it was also the birth of where Arts and Architecture magazine created their case study program with seven major architects—[including] Richard Neurta, Charles Eames, and just to name a few. That is now the most prolific, architecturally significant modern housing development. Now these houses are pieces of art, they're collectors items now.
One of the most famous is [Pierre] Koenig's Case Study #22. It just perched above Hollywood. And there's a very famous black and white photo by Julius Schulman where a woman's in the window, she's sitting in this house is suspended over the city and it's this very modern architecture. So this has become a legacy for the Palisades as well; the golden west of California was all emulated in these homes.
And then you have Will Rogers’s home, and it's a state park. [Ed note. the Will Rogers Ranch burned down in the fires.]
Case Study Houses: The Complete CSH Program 1945-1966
That's why these neighborhoods were created over decades and decades and decades of a mix of styles or homes, but they're very recognizable to the communities. It's important to not forget the style of California design. All the neighborhoods had a soul. And our big concern is a lot of the guidelines and stipulations for building have been dropped, which is good for movement, but it's also a little nerve wracking for aesthetics who want to be sure that that soul comes back, and it's not just boxes and cheap materials.
If you rewind to why we started Save Iconic Architecture, it was in the resistance to really beautiful and historic buildings being torn down and replaced with soulless boxes, cheap materials, and no context to the neighborhood. And that was our biggest fight when it comes to historic preservation. Now you have this formula of rapid development, grab bag type approach that could just be aesthetically just kind of your worst nightmare when it comes to good architecture design. This is what we're fighting against. There are now thousands of empty lots that are needing to be rebuilt and so rebuilding, what does that mean? What does it look like when people are hastily trying to rebuild? It's like, oh, let's think about this. And this is where developing this case study program [comes in], where it is a guidebook on these historic homes.
As the communities start to think about rebuilding, what do you think LA will look like in the future?
LA is so resilient and it has a very can-do attitude, and it's always been known for building itself [up] and tearing itself down and rebuilding itself already. But I hope that we're at a crossroad right now where, ideally, what I would love to see is care and effort not only from a design standpoint, but from an architecture standpoint—when it comes to the detailing of architecture like how it was done by Wallace Neff or Paul Williams or A. Quincy Jones.
The bar has been very lowered, and the city needs to be held accountable as well. You're talking about billions of dollars, where in the preservation bucket of city of LA there's literally $0. They do not have a preservation office. We really need the city of Los Angeles to take a look at this, and put some effort and stand behind the pride of our city. We are a city based on art and culture, but our funds really go to very straightforward civic issues. And what is a city without its art? That has always been my question. I think it's time that the city of Los Angeles really makes an effort and puts funding behind it—because we have so many landmarks! Unfortunately where I see it going is in 10 years is we are going to lose most all of our cultural monuments that are not protected, and we'll lose many of our notable architectural structures because they will be exchanged for something bigger, better. And that's just the spirit of LA: Build and make more money.
It is about getting people housed first, obviously, and people finding peace and stability in life to our displaced. But then with that is bigger conversation of our hope would be that we can continue to develop these notable structures that have high integrity in architecture and design, and that these collectors pieces can continue on—where the people who do care about architecture can really live in something that is worth living in. Some people don't care. But our fear is that if these options are not even provided, then people just take what's offered to them.
What has the reaction been like to your posts about the fire and what has been lost and what was saved?
People are so grateful. People really care about of what's happening to our city because it's the story of our city. When buildings are so integral in telling stories and they're also a place of comfort for a lot of people, and whether it's a restaurant that has burned down or a park, these are some safe havens for a lot of people. People watch architecture and who buys them, who lives in 'em, what happens in 'em. It's like a celebrity in its own right. And there's a care for good architecture, just like art. If you have a favorite painting or there's some paintings that you just can recognize anywhere in anything, and these [buildings] fall into that same category for a lot of people.
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