Cory Buckner: Inside the mind of a great man

At the end of World War II, returning soldiers were faced with housing shortages, and, across the country, affordable communities of affordable housing began to spring up. Among them was the Mutual Housing Association  in the hills above Santa Monica, California.

In 1946 four men pooled their resources and formed the Cooperative Housing Group, with the intention of building four homes around a shared pool and playground. The idea mushroomed and soon there were 500 members, each paying a $25 membership fee and making quarterly deposits of $500 in order to form a cooperative community. By 1947 the group had a board of directors and a credit union in place, and the MHA was formed. Eight hundred acres of land near Santa Monica was divided into 350 lots, and Whitney R. Smith and A. Quincy Jones, and an engineer, Edgardo Contini were selected to design the neighborhood, beginning with the architect's site office and a communal day care center.  Garrett Eckbo was chosen as the landscape architect for the neighborhood. Eventually, 150 houses were completed, and in 1956, the site office—which the architects worked out of for nearly a decade—was converted into a home. In 1961 a fire took out 45 of the homes, and numerous others were torn down or drastically altered.

Fast-forward to 1993, when Cory Buckner and her husband Nick Roberts purchase the former site office tor their home in the neighborhood now known as Crestwood Hills. At first she unsuccessfully tried to have the area designated as a historic preservation zone but decided to get individual houses declared historic monuments. And with the help of the late Julius Shulman and Elaine Sewell Jones, A. Quincy Jones's widow, she has done just that. Fifteen of the homes now have historic designation.

As a result of her work with Crestwood Hills, Buckner has written a monograph about A. Quincy Jones and has preserved a significant portion of California modernism. She says her hard work has been a small price to pay for "living inside the mind of a great man."

From dwell.com

All images from dwell.com

Buckner-Roberts home

Driveway

Kitchen

Living room

Living room

Patio/dining room

A. Quincy Jones retrospective

Yesterday I received an email from Cory Buckner, practicing architect in Los Angeles and author of the only monograph to date on the work of A. Quincy Jones. She wanted to know the status of the Andrew Fuller home in Fort Worth that I posted about here, here and here. The home, designed by Jones for Fuller and his wife, narrowly escaped demolition earlier this year. The home was purchased in August by a couple who reportedly planned to restore it. I told Ms. Buckner I would contact Historic Fort Worth, Inc. to see if there has been significant restoration yet, and if I learn anything new, I'll post an update.

Buckner let me know about a retrospective on the work of Jones that the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is having from June 2, 2013 through September 8, 2013. Here are the particulars, from the Hammer Museum site:

The Hammer Museum's exhibition Building the California Dream: A. Quincy Jones and His Circle is the first comprehensive museum exhibition of A. Quincy Jones's work. The exhibition draws from the architect's archive, housed in UCLA's Special Collections, and showcases original drawings, models, furniture, and photographs, together with new commissioned photography of many extant buildings. The exhibition and accompanying publication explore Jones's impact on the built landscape of Southern California—underscoring his collaborative work with landscape architects, other architects, developers, and interior designers—and examine his influence on contemporary architecture and city planning. Through its content and design, the exhibition provides visitors with a unique to-scale, physical experience of some of Jones's most masterful forms and spaces.

In the spirit of A. Quincy Jones's collaborative approach, Brooke Hodge, the Hammer's director of exhibitions and publications, has assembled team to collaborate with her on the exhibition and publication. In addition, our team is supplemented by an advisory committee comprising leading scholars on mid-century architecture, design, and landscape architecture. This committee includes Thomas S. Hines, UCLA professor emeritus of architectural history and an expert on Richard Neutra and modern architecture in Los Angeles; Cory Buckner, a practicing architect and author of the only monograph to date on the work of A. Quincy Jones; Frederick Fisher, a practicing architect who is currently renovating several of Jones's most important buildings including Sunnylands (the Annenberg estate in Rancho Mirage, California) and whose architecture office is located in Jones & Emmons's own former office building in Los Angeles; Peter Loughrey, director of Los Angeles Modern Auctions and an acknowledged expert on mid-century interior furnishings; E. Marc Treib, University of California, Berkeley professor emeritus of architecture and coauthor of Garrett Eckbo: Modern Landscapes for Living; Mayer Rus, currently the Design and Culture Editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, former editor of Interior Design magazine, and a frequent contributor to Architectural Digest and Wallpaper*; and Elizabeth A. T. Smith, the curator of MOCA's important exhibitions on Rudolf Schindler and the Case Study House program, and currently curatorial director at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada.

You can read more about Jones and about where to purchase Cory Buckner's boon on arcspace.

A. Quincy Jones
eichlernetwork.com

Cory Buckner
kcet.org