Making L.A. Modern: Craig Ellwood—Myth, Man, Designer
by Edited by Michael Boyd; ; photography by Richard Powers
Foreword by Ray Kappe
A stellar group of writers—SFMOMA
architecture curator Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, writers Michal Webb and Jeffrey
Head, industrial designer Carl Magnusson, Modern San Diego president Keith
York, and Ellwood’s own daughter Erin, a designer in her own right—join
designer Michael Boyd and architect Ray Kappe, FAIA, to take a very personal
look into Ellwood’s architecture, furniture, and mystique. Kappe’s foreword—“The
Craig Ellwood I Knew”—traces his adulation from his job interview out of
college (no work, no position) to a true friendship between colleagues. In a
refreshing structural change to the typical monograph, Boyd places project
texts after a select portfolio of 11 built works, allowing Richard Powers’
images to speak loudly and the reader to have a wonderfully immersive experience.
The essays (save foreword and editor’s preface) are placed likewise. This demands
attention to theworkprior to
detailed and illustrated descriptions of Ellwood’s notorious “life of refined
decadence” that fueled his “brand of playboy architecture.” The essayists
address Ellwood’s painting, furniture design, and personal style, in addition
to the contributions he made to defining a California architecture. After
enjoying this book, you’ll agree with Boyd that “Craig Ellwood was a complex
man in search of a simple architecture.”
Rizzoli
International Publications; 2018; 240 pages; hardcover; $65.
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