A rare window into two Modernists’ art

ARCHITECTS Conrad Buff III and Donald C. Hensman, who met at USC in the 1940s and worked together until Buff’s death in 1988, are responsible for many of the more intriguing postwar houses tucked away in the San Gabriel Valley. On Saturday, five will be open to the public, offering a rare chance to appreciate the duo’s ambitious yet economical spin on Southern California Modernism.

The tour is organized by the Gamble House in Pasadena, whose director, Edward Bosley, came to know Hensman late in the architect’s life. Before he died in 2002, Hensman handpicked the houses for the tour, which comes on the heels of a comprehensive monograph on Buff and Hensman’s work, edited by James Steele and published last year by USC Guild Press.

Buff and Hensman did their most original work in a handful of post-and-beam designs in the 1950s and early ‘60s, a period when Calvin Straub was a partner in their firm. Not surprisingly, then, the most significant design on the tour is also the earliest: the Bass residence in Altadena from 1958-60, otherwise known as Case Study No. 20. Designed for Saul Bass, a film-title designer and graphic artist, the house is nearing the end of a thorough and much-needed restoration by its new owners.

It combines exposed steel columns, an unusual vaulted ceiling and wide expanses of glass for a look that encapsulates the Case Study ideal of delivering good design to the American middle class. Like all the best designs in that experimental program, it suggests the happy coincidence of suburban living and cutting-edge trends. It feels a good deal larger than it actually is, drawing light inside from a central garden court and a wide backyard.

Each of the other designs is worth a look too, particularly the King residence, a collection of low-lying pavilions begun in the late 1970s using redwood, stucco and quarry tile and rocks found on site. The house sits on a dramatic site underneath the huge arched supports of the Colorado Street Bridge and abutting a creek. Other stops, all in Pasadena: Buff’s house from 1977, the large Hernandez house with its waterfall and reflecting pool, and the 1991 Moseley residence, an expansive house with squared-off forms that has a commanding view of the San Gabriel Valley.

The tour kicks off Friday with a reception at the Peck House in Pasadena; tickets are $35. Tour tickets are $75, with discounts for combined Friday-Saturday tickets and for members of the Gamble House and the Pasadena-Foothill chapter of the American Institute of Architects.