Case Study Houses vs International Style
ケース・スタディ・ハウス / インターナショナル・スタイル
Both sit in Modern Architecture, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Case Study Houses
The experimental housing program commissioned by Arts & Architecture for the postwar shortage: steel and glass from off-the-shelf parts, popularizing an image of bright modern living open to the California climate.
International Style
Strips ornament and aims at a universal architectural language crossing borders: the box, the free plan, steel, concrete and glass.
| Case Study Houses | International Style | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1945–1966 | 1920s–1960s |
| Family | Modern Architecture | Modern Architecture |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Lightness of steel and glass / Indoors flowing outdoors / Off-the-shelf components / Horizontally open plans | Rectangular volumes / Glass planes / No ornament / The free plan |
| Best used for | Building a light framed house quickly on a sloping site with a view · Proposing bright living where industrial components stay visible | Corporate headquarters and civic buildings that must earn trust through proportion, not ornament. · Long life offices and galleries whose partitions move as programs change. |
| Type | Space slender steel columns at a regular bay, dimensions left visible | Align sans serif signs to the column grid, flush with the wall. |
| Composition | Run the floor from living room to terrace, openings full width | Carry floors on columns so plan and facade both stay free. |
| Material | Assemble catalog steel, glass and colored panels without modification | Steel and concrete frame, white rendered planes, large sheets of glass. |
| Caution | Copying the glazed openness while neglecting sun and privacy control produces a hot, exposed house that photographs well and cannot be lived in. | A white box alone misses the structure, free plan, industrial materials and social program, and ornament stripped without tuned proportion and detail reads as cheapness, leaving openings with no reason for their position. |