Donald C. Hensman, 78; Architect Styled Home Designs for the Southland

Donald C. Hensman, whose award-winning designs helped further the development and influence of the Modernist style in Southern California architecture, died Dec. 9 at his Pasadena home. He was 78. The cause of death was not reported.

In decades-long collaboration with architects Conrad Buff III and, later, Calvin C. Straub and others, Hensman created hundreds of contemporary homes ranging from budget-minded dwellings to opulent celebrity sanctuaries.

Among them were two of the legendary Case Study Program houses, No. 20 and No. 28. Conceived by John Entenza, editor and publisher of the avant-garde monthly magazine Arts & Architecture, the Case Study project was intended to foster the creation of modern, easily constructed and affordable housing prototypes.

Hensman’s partnership with Buff and Straub “produced a number of very graceful and elegant and inexpensive modern homes in the area,” said Elizabeth A.T. Smith, chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and author of a book about the Case Study houses. “It was [Hensman’s] and his colleagues’ use of materials, and especially their integration with the sites, which made him an attractive and appropriate figure for inclusion in the Case Study Program.”

A graduate of USC, where he later taught, Hensman was strongly identified with what the architectural writer Esther McCoy termed “the Pasadena School.” This was a generation of architects, many associated with USC’s School of Architecture, who combined an interest in new technology and experimental solutions with a sensitivity to the Southern California landscape and the history of modernism. Their work also took into account California architectural predecessors, such as Greene and Greene and the Craftsman tradition of design.

As a group, they responded to the crisis in affordable housing that followed World War II, when millions of U.S. servicemen and women came home looking for work and low-cost but stylish contemporary dwellings. Hensman and his partners directed many of their efforts toward meeting that challenge.

“They’re very symbolic of that whole Case Study Program, the idea of being responsible not just to the wealthy people, but to the broad middle class,” said Victor Regnier, a USC architecture professor.

Architect Pierre Koenig of Los Angeles, a fellow Case Study designer, said Hensman’s risk-taking approach to architectural practice, like that of many colleagues, had been influenced by his wartime years.

“We’d all been in the armed services,” Koenig said, “so we were older and we had a lot of experience in back of us, good and bad. And so we were willing to take chances. That was one of the key elements of the growth of architecture in Southern California. The war put everything in perspective, so nobody was much afraid of anything.”

Born in Omaha, Neb., in 1924, Hensman attended Hollywood High School, leaving in 1943 to join the U.S. Navy. He became a parachute rigger in the New Hebrides.

After receiving an honorable discharge in February 1946, he decided to take advantage of the G.I. Bill by attending Los Angeles City College. He soon transferred to USC, where he received his bachelor’s degree in architecture and became president of the Scarab Society, a national honorary architectural fraternity.

It was at USC in 1948 that Hensman first met Buff, commencing an intensely productive working partnership that lasted until Buff’s death in 1988. Before graduating from USC, both men began their professional careers by designing more than 600 tract and model homes near Long Beach for Brittain Development.

Eventually, Hensman was named an assistant professor within USC’s design curriculum and was chairman of the joint USC/American Institute of Architects education committee. Among the students of Hensman and Buff are Frank Gehry, designer of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; and Jon Jerde, whose projects include the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.

Almost every California architect educated since the early 1950s has been influenced by the work of Hensman, Buff and Straub in one way or another, Regnier said. “They formed the dominant philosophy of the [USC] School of Architecture in the 1950s,” she said. “It was their thinking and their passion for architecture in Southern California after the war that made people come to school at the time.”

Pasadena architect and friend Randell L. Makinson said that Hensman was “an extraordinary detailer” who often sketched out ideas spontaneously on the back of cocktail napkins or whatever else was handy. Recalling the symbiotic workings of the Hensman-Buff partnership, Makinson said it was not unusual to see the two men “using two soft pencils, drawing on the same drawing at the same time, and dialoguing, creating together.”

“Conrad liked being inside, and Donald loved being outside,” Makinson said. “So the aspect of Don often out on the construction site and being able to carry the whole philosophy of the drawing clear out to the site, and Conrad sticking pretty close to the office -- that worked out very well.”

Described by friends as intensely loyal to people and institutions he cared about, Hensman acquired a number of celebrity clients. Even after retiring in 1998, he continued to design and build homes on a smaller scale.

“He was just a really sweet personality -- funny, and a very passionate and caring individual,” Regnier said.

Hensman is survived by nephews Brad Traughber of Nipomo, Calif., and Chris, Mike and Mark Traughber of San Pedro; and nieces Betsy Allen of San Francisco and Melinda LaVoy of Rhinelander, Wis.

A new book chronicling the work of Hensman and Buff is expected to be published by the USC Architectural Guild Press next year.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the USC School of Architecture for the Donald C. Hensman Publication Fund, USC School of Architecture, Watt Hall, Room 204, Los Angeles, CA 90089.

A celebration of Hensman’s life is scheduled for 2 p.m. on Jan. 11 at the USC School of Architecture.