Join scholar Todd Cronan in conversation with Jesús (Chuy) Barba Bonilla as they discuss Cronan’s new book, Nothing Permanent: Modern Architecture in California. Although “midcentury modern” is a highly popular and ubiquitous architectural style, this term obscures the varied perspectives and approaches of its original practitioners. In Nothing Permanent, Todd Cronan displaces generalizations with a nuanced intellectual history of architectural innovation in California between 1920 and 1970, revealing the conflicting intentions that would go on to reshape the future of American domestic life. Focusing on four primary figures—R. M. Schindler, Richard Neutra, and Charles and Ray Eames—Nothing Permanent demonstrates how this prolific era of modern architecture in California, rather than constituting a homogenous movement, was propelled by disparate approaches and aims. Exemplified by the twin pillars of Schindler and Neutra and their respective ideological factions, these two groups of architects represent opposing poles of architectural intentionality, embodying divergent views about the dynamic between interior and exterior, the idea of permanence, and the extent to which architects could exercise control over the inhabitants of their structures. Looking past California modernism’s surface-level idealization in present-day style guides, home decor publications, films, and television shows, Nothing Permanent details the intellectual, aesthetic, and practical debates that lie at the roots of this complex architectural moment. Extracting this period from its diffusion into visual culture, Cronan argues that midcentury architecture in California raised questions about the meaning of architecture and design that remain urgent today.
Todd Cronan is professor of art history at Emory University and the author of Against Affective Formalism: Matisse, Bergson, Modernism and Red Aesthetics: Rodchenko, Brecht, Eisenstein. Cronan is also the founder of and editor-in-chief of nonsite.org.
Jesús (Chuy) Barba Bonilla was born in Mexico and grew up in Zacatecas, a Spanish colonial mining city declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, which is where he became passionate about history and architecture. Jesús obtained his Bachelor's in architecture in 2012 from the Universidad del Valle de Mexico in Guadalajara, Mexico, and moved to California in the same year, where he obtained his Master’s degree in Heritage Conservation at the University of Southern California while working as an Architectural Designer and Preservation Specialist in the firm of Page & Turnbull, he also serves as Director on the Docomomo US Board.
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