Collection by Brandi Andres
A New Book on the Los Angeles Development of Iconic Modernist Architect A. Quincy Jones
Architect and Dwell on Design Los Angeles speaker Cory Buckner’s forthcoming book, Crestwood Hills: The Chronicle of a Modern Utopia, revisits the obstacles faced by the Mutual Housing Association (MHA) in 1947, as they worked to develop a utopian, post–World War II community in Brentwood, California. The struggling Crestwood Hills project (originally called the Mutual Housing Tract) eventually put the MHA on the map as the only successful large-scale modern housing cooperative in the west. The cooperative hired Southern California modernist architects A. Quincy Jones and Whitney R. Smith to design 28 floor plans to offer its members.
Roy and Patricia Hamma enjoy time in their living room, furnished with Charles and Ray Eames pieces. Once the couple's MHA 111 model was complete, Roy Hamma, an attorney, hired a professional photographer to document their newly built home, which was one of the original 30 “guinea pig” properties.
The MHA cooperative purchased 800 acres of land on the Brentwood side of the Santa Monica Mountains and worked with modernist architects A. Quincy Jones and Whitney R. Smith and structural engineer Edgardo Contini to build 350 homes. Only 85 houses from the original Jones/Smith plans actually saw the light of day.
Carport of Arens House (MHA 104).
Los Angeles architect Cory Buckner found great interest in the Crestwood Hills project when she and her late husband, architect Nick Roberts, purchased and restored one of the houses, which was built in 1949. She has since spearheaded a preservation movement of the community tract, prompting the City of Los Angeles to designate 19 of the homes as historic cultural monuments.