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The Stahl House by Pierre Koenig | Case Study House #22

Perched on the Hollywood Hills with a commanding view of Los Angeles, the Stahl House, also known as Case Study House #22, is a paragon of mid-century modern architecture. Designed by Pierre Koenig and completed in 1960, this residence is an architectural masterpiece and a symbol of a particular era in Los Angeles, characterized by a burgeoning optimism and a new approach to residential design.

The Stahl House Technical Information

• Architects 1 : Pierre Koenig
• Location: 1636 Woods Drive, Los Angeles , California , United States
• Topics: Mid-Century Modern Houses
• Area: 210 m 2 | 2,300 ft 2
• Project Year: 1959-1960
• Photographs: Various, See Caption Details

If you don’t know the Stahl House, then you don’t know mid-century modern architecture. – Julius Shulman 3

The Stahl House Photographs

A Vision of Glass and Steel

The journey of the Stahl House began in 1954 when Buck Stahl purchased a lot that was considered unbuildable. His vision was clear—a home that embraced its surroundings with vast expanses of glass to capture the sprawling cityscape. In 1957, Koenig, known for his proficiency with industrial materials, was commissioned to realize this vision. The result was a structure of steel and glass that was both minimalistic and expressive.

Design and Layout

Koenig’s design was a masterclass in the use of industrial materials in residential architecture. The house is distinguished by its “L” shaped plan, separating public and private spaces through a simple yet effective layout. Large, 20-foot-wide panes of glass form the majority of the walls facing the view, offering unobstructed panoramas of Los Angeles.

The design also cleverly incorporates the landscape into the living experience. The swimming pool, positioned between the wings of the house, not only serves as a physical buffer separating the living spaces but also as a visual corridor to the city beyond.

I design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown. – Pierre Koenig 2

Iconic Status and Architectural Significance

Julius Shulman’s photography cemented the Stahl House’s iconic status. In a series of images that have become synonymous with mid-century modern architecture, Shulman captured the essence of the house. These photographs highlight the house’s integration with its surroundings and open, transparent design.

The Stahl House was included in the Case Study House program, which aimed to reimagine residential architecture post-World War II. Case Study House #22 became an influential model showcasing the possibilities of modernist aesthetics in suburban settings.

Cultural Impact and Legacy

Over the years, the Stahl House has transcended its role as a private residence to become a cultural landmark. It has been featured in numerous films, commercials, and fashion shoots, each time underscoring its timeless appeal and architectural significance.

Despite its fame, the house remains a family-owned property, preserved as the Stahls left it. The family offers tours, allowing architecture enthusiasts to experience the space and its spectacular views firsthand.

The Stahl House Plans

The Stahl House Image Gallery

About Pierre Koenig

Pierre Koenig was a pioneering American architect, born on October 17, 1925, in San Francisco. Renowned for his influential contributions to mid-century modern architecture, Koenig is best known for his work in the Case Study House program, particularly the iconic Case Study House #22, or Stahl House. His designs emphasized industrial materials like steel and glass, integrating buildings seamlessly into their environments while promoting sustainability through the use of prefabricated materials. A long-time professor at the University of Southern California, Koenig’s legacy continues to influence architectural practices and education. He passed away on April 4, 2004, leaving behind a significant impact on the landscape of Southern California architecture.

Notes & Additional Credits

• Client: Buck Stahl
• Case Study Houses by Elizabeth A. T. Smith
• Modernism Rediscovered by Julius Shulman
• Pierre Koenig: Living with Steel by Neil Jackson

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A Hidden History of Los Angeles's Famed Stahl House

Review: 'the stahl house: case study house #22: the making of a modernist icon,' by bruce stahl and shari stahl gronwald with kim cross.

The Stahl House: Case Study House #22: The Making of a Modernist Icon , by Bruce Stahl and Shari Stahl Gronwald with Kim Cross. Chronicle Books, 208 pages, $24.95 .

Julius Shulman’s iconic nighttime photo of Case Study House #22—with its cantilevered glass-walled living room hovering above the city lights of sprawling Los Angeles—is arguably the most famous image of residential architecture . Yet the story behind this remarkable building—how it came into being and the experience of living there—is far less known. And that’s what this book reveals. A deep and detailed account with abundant images, it’s a biography of a house and its owners—and the book’s first half, in particular, is a great read.

Shari Stahl Gronwald and Bruce Stahl, along with their late brother, grew up in Case Study House #22 and still own it. As they write in the foreword, touring visitors often ask about the family behind it. “We knew there was an untold story,” Bruce recently said, “and we set out to tell it.” In the dozen chapters that follow, Kim Cross, an Idaho-based author and journalist, weaves a narrative that portrays the family in intimate detail while placing the house within the cultural, historic, and technological-architectural contexts that made it possible. The project came at a pivotal moment and through the convergence of five key players: Buck and Carlotta Stahl, determined clients with a vision and an extraordinary piece of land; Pierre Koenig, a young architect with a background in experimental prefabricated-steel construction and a willingness to tackle a site widely deemed unbuildable; John Entenza, the inspirational editor/owner of Arts & Architecture magazine, who’d launched the Case Study Houses program in 1945; and Shulman, the photographer who portrayed the house, sparking public imagination. Completed in 1960, the project emerged from the post–World War II era, when materials and innovations previously channeled into the war effort became fodder for cutting-edge design. The Case Study program—addressing a burgeoning middle class and rising housing shortage—aspired to create affordable, easily buildable prototypes for modestly scaled yet inventive Modernist houses. (It’s ironic that many of the 20 surviving Case Study Houses have become privileged commodities.)

The Stahl kids dove from the roof into the pool. Photo courtesy Chronicle Books

Buck and Carlotta Stahl were indeed a middle-class couple of limited means. A graphic designer turned aerospace purchasing agent and a homemaker, they had, as Koenig later said, “champagne tastes and a beer budget.” Despite their artistic sensibilities, they couldn’t afford, even with discounts, the Mid-century Modern furnishings from Arts & Architecture’s shoot; and, after happily occupying the house for nearly a decade, the family had to move in with relatives to weather a severe economic downturn. But, six years later, they returned, with “the Stahl kids” resuming “ordinary childhoods in an extraordinary house.” No Case Study project was more quintessentially Modernist than the two-bedroom #22, perched on a Hollywood Hills promontory, with steep drop-offs and a 270-degree panorama.

Cross’s research for the book was clearly profound and extensive—delving into family snapshots and archives, consulting with lead architects and engineers, and logging 125-plus interview hours. Then she deftly wove together the myriad threads, including unexpected, relevant background details for each key player. The book is full of striking revelations.

For example, the only bank willing to finance this unconventionally cantilevered glass-and-steel house, on such an implausible site, was the African-American-owned Broadway Federal, where Paul R. Williams, the Black architect with Modernist leanings, served on the board. For unknown reasons, the bank required a swimming pool (not previously in the design), which became compositionally important, with the entry sequence crossing the pool patio, perceptually amplifying the house’s rectilinear transparency.

Another surprise: one of “the girls”—the two women in summer dresses, casually chatting in the living room in Shulman’s famous photo—was the fiancée of well-known San Francisco architect Jim Jennings, then an architectural apprentice, assisting with the shoot.

Cross also tells how the Stahl offspring have regularly jumped off the roof into the pool. And she reveals that the house’s original GE kitchen appliances (long gone) were pink!

Among the book’s many engaging images are stunning professional photos, family snapshots, artwork featuring the house (by David Hockney and others), and original letters, contracts, and receipts, for what now seem quaint sums.

The volume’s second half, however, is not as compelling as the first. Sections describing movie, TV, and ad shoots at the house could have been reduced, perhaps more effectively, to an amazing list accompanying the visuals (among them, a Simpsons poolside scene). Captions for all images would have been welcome. And the prose—which is generally clear and engaging—occasionally gets effusive or metaphor-heavy. But these are minor quibbles.

The house, now operated as a family business, hosts over 6,000 paid visits a year. With interior staging courtesy of Design Within Reach, the original design remains largely intact—and some modified elements, such as kitchen counters, will eventually be restored.

Through the lens of one important building, the book offers a compelling model for examining history and social change. And Bruce Stahl is right: it’s a story well worth telling.

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Stahl House (Case Study House #22)

Pierre Koenig | Website | 1960 | Visitor Information

1635 Woods Drive , West Hollywood 90069, United States of America

The Stahl House by Pierre Koenig (also known as Case Study House #22) was part of the Case Study House Program, which produced some of the most iconic architectural projects of the 20th Century. The modern residence overlooks Los Angeles from the Hollywood Hills. It was completed in 1959 for Buck Stahl and his family. Stahl envisioned a modernist glass and steel constructed house that offered panoramic views of Los Angeles when he originally purchased the land for the house in 1954 for $13,500. When excavation began, he originally took on the duties of both architect and contractor. It was not until 1957 that Stahl hired Pierre Koenig to take over the design of the family’s residence. The two-bedroom, 2,200 square foot residence is a true testament to modernist architecture and the Case Study House Program. The program was set in place by John Entenza and sponsored by the Arts & Architecture magazine. The aim of the program was to introduce modernist principles into residential architecture, not only to advance the aesthetic but to introduce new ways of life, both stylistically and as a representation of modern lifestyle. Koenig was able to hone in on the vision of Buck Stahl and transform that vision into a modernist icon. The glass and steel construction is the most identifiable trait of the house’s architectural modernism, however, way in which Koenig organized the spatial layout of the house, taking both public and private aspects into great consideration, is also notable. As much as architectural modernism is associated with the materials and methods of construction, the juxtaposition of program and organization are important design principles that evoke utilitarian characteristics. The house is “L”-shaped, completely separating the public and private sections except for a single hallway connecting them. The adjacent swimming pool, which must be crossed to enter the house, is not only a spatial division of public and private but it serves as the interstitial space in which visitors can best experience the panoramic views. The living space of the house is behind the pool and is the only part of the house that has a solid wall, which backs up to the carport and the street. The entire house is one large viewing box, capturing amazing perspectives of the house, the landscape, and Los Angeles. Oddly enough, the Stahl house was fairly unknown and unrecognized for its advancement of modern American residential architecture until 1960 when photographer Julius Shulman captured the pure architectural essence of the house in a shot of two women sitting in the living room overlooking the bright lights of the city of Los Angeles. That photo put the Stahl House on the architectural radar as an architectural gem hidden in the Hollywood Hills. The Stahl House is still one of the most visited and admired buildings today. It has undergone many interior transformations. Today, you will not find the same iconic 1960s furniture inside, but the architecture, the view, and the experience still remain.

Tags: Classic , Los Angeles

Information provided in part by: ArchDaily

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This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here .

Inside The Iconic Midcentury Stahl House (Case Study House #22)

Earlier this year I found myself lifted out of the streets of West Hollywood and into the hills above, to Woods Drive. What may appear to be a regular house in the Hollywood Hills as you drive up the winding, dead-end road, is much more spectacular than that. And unlike its neighbors, the house—now a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument—was originally built as an inexpensive, efficient model home. Over a half century later, Case Study House #22 (better known as the Stahl House ) has gone on to become a property so coveted, even the tours sell out fast.

I purchased my tickets about a month ahead of time (this is when they typically sell out, so plan ahead), and when I arrived I was pleasantly surprised that not only was the tour being given by a family member (it is given by a friend of the family on some occassions), but the tour groups are kept small. This is to give you an uncrowded experience—you can spend one hour on the grounds, taking photos clean of other people in the shots, or serenely sitting by the crystal blue pool like you own the place.

There are afternoon, late afternoon, and evening tours—you can find the schedule and buy tickets here .

History of the Stahl House

In 1960, Julius Shulman took that iconic photograph of two women sitting inside, at the corner of the home that hangs over the edge of the mountain it sits upon. The shot was something out of a surreal dreamscape—two women poised, smiling, calm, in a home that appeared to be floating there over a rocky ledge. But it was real, and it would become the ultimate representation of 20th century architecture in Los Angeles, where nothing seems real anyway.

It was the perfect image given that the vision all started as a dream, one of Buck and Carlotta Stahl, who purchased the property for $13,500 six years earlier, in 1954. The two provided inspiration for the design, which was brought to life by architect Pierre Koenig. Here’s how it went down according to the Stahl family , who still own the home, and while there are tours, some of them still live there:

The Stahl House story starts in May 1954 when the Stahls purchased a small lot above Sunset Blvd. Over the following two years C.H. ‘Buck’ Stahl and Carlotta Stahl worked weekends constructing the broken concrete wall that surrounds the buildable portion of the lot. During these working weekends, the design and vision for the Stahl House began to take shape. In the Summer of 1956, Buck Stahl constructed a three dimensional model of their dream home. It is with this model they interviewed and hired Architect Pierre Koenig in November 1957. On April 8th, 1959, the home was inducted into the Case Study House program by Arts & Architecture magazine, and assigned the number 22. Construction of the house began in May 1959 and was completed a year later in May of 1960.

Stahl residence, 1960s. (Courtesy of the USC Libraries )

The pavilion-type house was described as "a happy combination of site, soil, height, and location combined to suggest a solution in which it was possible to take advantage of all elements without the necessity of compromising design." For all of these reasons, as well as the interior design of the space, it's been spotted used in plenty of movies: Smog (1962); The First Power (1990); The Marrying Man (1991); Corrina, Corrina (1994); Playing by Heart (1998); Why Do Fools Fall In Love (1998); Galaxy Quest (1999); The Thirteenth Floor (1999); Nurse Betty (2000); and Where the Truth Lies (2005). It's also been on the small screen, namely in Columbo . And maybe you remember the video for Wilson Philips' "Release Me"?

History of the Case Study Houses

The Case Study Houses were beautiful experiments in residential architecture, all spawned from an Arts & Architecture project that lasted from 1945 to 1966. The original 1954 announcement ( PDF ) included just eight houses, and read, in part, "We are, within the limits of uncontrollable factors, proposing to begin immediately the study, planning, actual design and construction of eight houses, each to fulfill the specifications of a special living problem in the Southern California area."

The magazine commissioned some big architects of the era to design inexpensive model homes when the U.S. was dealing with a post-war housing boom. In the end, 27 structures were built, almost all in Los Angeles, and nearly all photographed by Shulman. Today, 20 remain, while 3 were demolished and 4 were altered beyond recognition. Below, you'll find a full list of those that were built, with accompanying PDFs to the original profile of each home that ran Arts & Architecture.

Case Study House #8, the Eames House . (Photo courtesy of Architectural Resources Group)

• Case Study House #1 ( PDF ) still exists at 10152 Toluca Lake Avenue in North Hollywood
• Case Study House #2 ( PDF ) still exists at 857 Chapea Road in Pasadena
• Case Study House #3 ( PDF ) at 13187 Chalon Road in L.A. was demolished
• Case Study House #7 ( PDF ) still exists at 6236 North Deerfield Avenue in San Gabriel
• Case Study House #8, the Eames House ( PDF ) still exists at 203 Chautauqua Boulevard in Pacific Palisades
• Case Study House #9 ( PDF ) still exists at 205 Chautauqua Boulevard in Pacific Palisades
• Case Study House #10 ( PDF ) at 711 South San Rafael Avenue in Pasadena was significantly altered
• Case Study House #11 ( PDF ) at 540 South Barrington Avenue in West Los Angeles was demolished
• Case Study House #15 ( PDF ) still exists at 4755 Lasheart Drive in La Canada
• Case Study House #16 ( PDF ) at 9945 Beverly Grove Drive in Beverly Hills was demolished
• Case Study House #17A ( PDF ) still exists at 7861 Woodrow Wilson Drive in L.A.
• Case Study House #17B ( PDF ) at 9554 Hidden Valley Road was remodeled beyond recognition
• Case Study House #18A ( PDF ) still exists at 199 Chautauqua Boulevard in Pacific Palisades
• Case Study House #18B ( PDF ) at 1129 Miradero Road in Beverly Hills was remodeled beyond recognitio
• Case Study House #20A ( PDF ) still exists at 219 Chautauqua Boulevard in Pacific Palisades
• Case Study House #20B ( PDF ) still exists at 2275 Santa Rosa Avenue in Altadena
• Case Study House #21 ( PDF ) still exists at 9038 Wonderland Park Avenue in West Hollywood (and it's currently for sale )
• Case Study House 1950 ( PDF ) still exists at 1080 Ravoli Drive in Pacific Palisades, however it has been remodeled
• Case Study House 1953 ( PDF ) still exists at 1811 Bel Air Road in Bel-Air
• Case Study House #22, the Stahl House ( PDF ) still exists at 1635 Woods Drive in L.A.
• Case Study House #23 was a triad ( PDF ) 23A and 23C still exists, while 23B remodeled beyond recognition. They are all in La Jolla.
• Case Study House #25 ( PDF ) still exists at 82 Rivo Alto Canal in Long Beach
• Case Study House #26 ( PDF ) still exists at 177 San Marino Drive in San Rafael
• Case Study House #28 ( PDF ) still exists at 91 Inverness Road in Thousand Oaks
• Case Study Apartments #1 ( PDF ) still exists 4402 28th Street in Phoenix, Arizona

That last one was an attempt to deliver a more appealing multi-family residential unit, which they presented in their magazine alongside a brutal takedown of the dingbat apartment model . By the time Case Study Apartments #1 was built in 1964, the dingbat was here to stay, having spread over the city during the development-driven era of the 1950s.

Their statement read: "Our intention is to overcome by example, not just precept, as many as possible of those misconceptions and prejudices which have bred the outrageous 'dingbat' apartments, the cheap and blowzy eyesores that continue to proliferate everywhere in our country." They also wrote that ground would soon be breaking in Newport Beach for Case Study Apartments #2, but it never came to be. One apartment in the #1 property sold in 2014 for under $500,000, while another was on rental market for $1200/month —it's all been preserved, and you can see recent photos here .

The Stahl House isn't the only Case Study House that offers tours, you can also visit #8 (the Eames House)— make a reservation here .

Etan Does LA

#52: case study house no. 21 (bailey house – hollywood hills), architect pierre koenig’s thoroughly modern jewel in the hollywood hills epitomized the case study house program.

Added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 24, 2013

Pierre Koenig, the architect that gave us the Stahl House the following year, designed this 1959 wonderbox on a tiny lot in the Hollywood Hills for psychologist Walter Bailey and his wife Mary.

The footprint of the house is just over 1300 square feet of living space. Koenig made the most of it by opening up the space, putting the absolute minimum of opaque walls on the interior. Sitting in the dining room eating a sandwich, Walter could watch Mary pull into the carport through a glass wall, with only some brick walkways and a pool of water between them. The enclosed bathroom in the core of the house is the main divider, and even that looks out into a courtyard. The rest of the home is defined by clear glass, simple steel frames and clever orientation of spaces and walls to provide just enough discretion, and plenty of natural light. You can look at the hillside on the west edge of the property from almost anywhere in the house. Cross-ventilation is provided by the many sliding glass doors, and the pools of circulating water that surround the house also help keep it cool during the warmer months. 

In a lot of ways, this home epitomized the ideals of Arts & Architecture Magazine ’s Case Study House program: small-scale homes made out of inexpensive materials. Clean, unfussy lines and efficient use of space. Easily reproducible. 

The Baileys sold this mid-century marvel in 1969. Its next owners didn’t have as much appreciation for Koenig’s design; they added skylights and a fireplace, replaced the floors and completely redid the kitchen, undoing some of the house’s unique spatial flow.

But in the late ‘90s, film producer Dan Cracchiolo fell in love with the Bailey House through Julius Shulman’s photos, bought it and hired Koenig to restore it to his original specs, nearly 40 years after its original construction. In 2002, the house was bought by another respectful film producer Michael LeFetra, who helped it earn status as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument to preserve its integrity in perpetuity. Julius Shulman was even invited back to photograph it again.

When I visited in November 2021 and June 2022, the Bailey House was undergoing another transformation at the behest of another film producer-owner, Alison Sarofim. The dirt underneath the foundation has been slipping away for years, and the house had to be stripped down to its bones to fix the issue. As of October 2023 the work seems nearly complete. The internal glass walls are installed, a bunch of planting has been done on the street side, and the water feature is filled in again. The Bailey House has survived alteration and restoration cycles before, and it’ll happen again. I’ll be back to see it when it’s livable again.

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ View Julius Shulman’s photos of Case Study House No. 21 from 1958-59 (Getty Archives)

+ See pictures of Case Study House No. 21 from 2016 (ArchDaily)

+ Watch a Pierre Koenig lecture about his work on Case Study House No. 21 (SCI-Arc Media Archive, 1990)

+ Take a virtual look into Case Study House No. 21 (Archilogic)

+ Resources, drawings and quotes by Koenig (GreatBuildings.com)

+ Thorough restoration—not demolition—underway on Case Study House No. 21 (Curbed)

Music omnivore, student of LA history, beer snob and amateur father. Working my way through the canon.

• #224-229: Whole Bunch o' Bungalow Courts, pt. 4 (Pasadena) August 11, 2024
• 223: Rancho Los Alamitos (Long Beach) August 6, 2024
• #222: LAX's Hangar One (Inglewood) July 23, 2024
• #221: Michael White Adobe (San Marino) July 11, 2024
• #220: Winona Boulevard Mid-Century Modern Historic District (Los Feliz) June 28, 2024

Stahl House (Case Study House #22) – Pierre Koenig, 1960

• August 1, 2012
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Stahl House – Pierre Koenig

Perhaps the most widely recognized mid-century home in Los Angeles is the Stahl House by Los Angeles architect Pierre Koenig.  Perched on a nearly vertical precipice in the Hollywood Hills, at the time of its construction the site was considered by many architects to be completely unsuitable for building on.

The Stahl House is also commonly known as Case Study House #22.  The Case Study houses were part of a program sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine that commissioned major architects to design and build affordable model homes for the housing boom brought on by millions of soldiers returning home at the end of World War II. The program ended up running from 1945 to 1966 and included architects such as Richard Neutra, Raphael Soriano, Eero Saarinen, Craig Ellwood, Charles and Ray Eames, and as noted here, Pierre Koenig.

One of the standout elements of Pierre Koenigs work was his use of steel in the home’s design. The established school of thought at the time was that steel was too “industrial” and that woman would never want to live in such a home.  However, once fully realized into a structure for living, the brilliance of Koenig’s homes became indisputable. With their simplicity, their graceful lines and proportions, and their bright and airy openness, his ideas represented a new ideal in living.

Koenig’s houses, and the Stahl House especially, became popularized thanks in no small part to the unforgettable photographs taken by the renowned architectural photographer Julius Shulman that captured the imagination of viewers immediately and ever since. These images convey not only the innovation and strength of design of a home that rests comfortably on the edge of the cliff above the city, with lights blanketing the landscape for miles, but also a contemporary and casual lifestyle with an indoor/outdoor flow that became a hallmark of the California aesthetic that continues to this day. The mostly windowed house allows a breathtaking 240-degree view of the city. And thanks to the house’s steel frame, the roof overhangs are able to jut out a generous 8 feet, which provides a very effective means of shading the windows.

“It was my notion, when I started, to make anonymous architecture for ordinary people.”  – Pierre Koenig

The Stahl House holds visits that are open to the public.  The viewings last 60 minutes and include access to the interior yard and pool area, as well as the kitchen, dining room, and living room.  For more information tours, see  http://www.stahlhouse.com

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A Modern Mission in the Oaks of Los Feliz

The duckett residence, 1964 – vernon f. duckett, a.i.a, the ohara residence in silver lake by richard neutra, 1959.

Koenig’s Case Study House No. 22 as home

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Each Christmas they hung their homemade stockings from the crannies of the rock-faced fireplace in the living room. Summers found them diving off the flat roof into the pool for coins their grandfather threw into the deep end, or playing safari in the dense foliage of the hillside below their house, under the glass-enclosed room that cantilevered precipitously above them.

FOR THE RECORD: Stahl house: A June 27 story on Case Study House No. 22 said 1956 news coverage of architect Pierre Koenig’s work was most likely in a pictorial section of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. The coverage was likely in a pictorial section of the Los Angeles Evening Herald Express. —

For the Stahl children -- Bruce, Sharon and Mark -- who grew up roller skating on the concrete floors of Case Study House No. 22, the glass-and-steel pavilion perched in the Hollywood Hills has always been more than a landmark. It has been more than the house in Julius Shulman’s famed 1960 photo of two pretty girls suspended in time, floating above the twinkling lights of the city -- arguably the most iconic image of midcentury L.A.

For the children of C.H. “Buck” Stahl and his wife, Carlotta, the house was and always will be “just home.”

As the Stahl house celebrates its 50th birthday and opens for public tours this weekend, perhaps what’s most remarkable is how little people know about the property, despite its fame. The house has appeared in more than 1,200 newspaper and magazine articles, journals and books, not to mention a slew of films, TV shows and commercials.

“When you’re a kid, you don’t think of the house you live in as being anything unusual,” says Mark Stahl, 42, whose family still owns the home. “I first began to think of it as something special in junior high when film companies rented the house to shoot movies. Then later, after bus tours of architects from all over the world began coming, the architectural importance of our home began to sink in.”

Three sides of the home were made of plate glass -- the largest available at the time -- that made for fabulous views. But the windows were not the tempered safety glass used today, and they could shatter into a thousand jagged pieces if anyone were to walk -- or roller skate -- into one accidentally. The radiant-heated concrete floors were sleek, but they were hard and unforgiving for toddlers who fell a lot. Then there was the cantilevered living room that extended 10 feet over the hill -- so dramatic, but just how did one wash all those windows or put up Christmas lights under the eaves?

Eldest son Bruce Stahl, a 2-year-old when the family moved into the house in the summer of 1960, recalls his dad putting up a chain-link fence under the house where the children used to play, simply to keep them from falling down the hillside.

The floors have since been covered with wall-to-wall carpet, the windows have been replaced with shatterproof glass and the cantilevered living room has been given a narrow walkway around its perimeter for window washers.

To many, though, the house will be forever frozen in 1960, the moment when those two pretty girls sat for Shulman’s photo. Nevermind that they were not members of the Stahl family -- just two students that the photographer used as models. And all that glorious midcentury furniture in the living room? Every piece was brought in by casual furniture maker Van Keppel-Green to decorate the house for its premiere in the pages of Arts & Architecture magazine as part of the Case Study House Program.

Begun in 1945, the program aimed to introduce the middle class to the beauty of modernism: simplicity of form, natural light, a seamless connection between inside and out. Owners agreed to open up their homes as part of the program, but after the public tours wrapped at the Stahl house, every stick of furniture was hauled away, daughter Sharon Stahl Gronwald says.

“My mother always said she wished they would have left it,” says Gronwald, 49. “They were given the option to buy the furniture, but my parents didn’t have the money at the time.”

Indeed, over the years the house has been appointed with contemporary furnishings with nary a midcentury chair in sight.

Perhaps the most surprising fact is that the original inspiration for the design may not have come from architect Pierre Koenig but rather his client, Buck Stahl.

Before the children were born, the house was the dream of Buck Stahl, a former professional football player, his children say, then a purchasing agent for Hughes Aircraft. In 1954, he and Carlotta were renting a house in the Hollywood Hills when he spotted grading equipment on an empty lot nearby.

“My dad told me he went down to see what was happening, and the owner just happened to be there,” Mark Stahl says. “Two hours later, he shook hands on a deal.”

Sale price: $13,500.

“At the time he got a lot of teasing from the family,” says son Bruce, 50. “In those days you could have gotten a three-bedroom home in the flats for the amount my dad paid just for the lot. My grandfather told my dad, ‘You’ll never get your money out.’ The whole family thought my parents were crazy.”

Buck Stahl spent two years collecting broken-up concrete from construction sites and hauling it to the lot in his Cadillac convertible. He dedicated most weekends to building the retaining walls for what would be the front and back of the house. In the Life magazine article “Way Up Way of Living on California’s Cliffs,” dated Feb. 23, 1962, Stahl is shown dangling “1,000 feet above Los Angeles” from a rope tied around his waist, planting ivy around his concrete terracing to secure the hillside.

Architect Koenig was hired in 1957. Construction didn’t begin until September 1959 and finished in May 1960. The two-bedroom, 2,200-square-foot house cost $34,000 to build; the pool, $3,651 more. Buck passed away four years ago, and today Carlotta and the three children have no intention of selling, though there’s a list of wannabe owners -- recognizable figures in the film and fashion world, the family says, although they decline to cite names. The highest offer so far: $15 million.

That might be the end of the story if it were not for a previously unpublished photo from the family album. Taken in July 1956, 16 months before Koenig received the commission, the image shows a shirtless Stahl posing with his nephew Bobby Duemler next to a large-scale model of a glass-and-steel house. It bears more than a passing resemblance to the iconic design attributed to Koenig.

Is it possible that Stahl deserves some of the credit for the house?

The children say the initial concept of the home was their father’s, though it’s possible he may have been influenced by Koenig’s other work when building the model. Buck Stahl had seen photos of the architect’s elegant steel and glass homes before the two men ever met. In a 2001 Los Angeles Magazine article, Carlotta remembered seeing a “pictorial section of the Sunday paper,” most likely the Pictorial Living Section of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1956, which featured layouts of Koenig’s work. The family archives include an article from Roberts News by Toni Edgerton in 1957 that talked about Koenig’s steel homes.

“My dad always wanted to build his own house with a completely unobstructed view of the mountains to the sea,” Bruce Stahl says. “I think he’s not given enough credit for the initial design of the home. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s pretty darn close.”

Brother Mark agrees, saying that their father played a larger role in the design than history has recorded.

“It was a collaboration,” he says. “Pierre bought into my dad’s vision but made alterations to make it buildable. In the end, he gave my dad what he wanted.”

The CA Boom contemporary design show this weekend will include shuttle tours of the home, still considered by many the archetypal 20th century Southern California house. Show impresario Charles Trotter says the “aha” moment for attendees will be when they learn the extent to which Buck Stahl worked with Pierre Koenig “in this masterpiece of modern architecture.”

However, the architect’s widow, Gloria Koenig, dismisses the idea that the house should be credited to Stahl.

“Pierre used to say that every client thinks they designed their house,” she says, “and this is a perfect example of that.”

Architect and writer Joseph Giovannini, former architecture critic of the Herald Examiner, recalls Stahl telling him that he had “given Pierre the idea for the house.”

“I dismissed it as typical owner hubris at the time,” Giovannini says. However, upon seeing the photograph of the model, he changed his mind.

“The gesture of the house cantilevering over the side of the hill into the distant view is clearly here in this model,” he says. “But it is Pierre’s skill that elevated the idea into a masterpiece. This is one of the rare cases it seems that there is a shared authorship.”

One thing seems certain: Koenig was the right architect at the right time. Others had turned down the project. The jagged-edged hillside lot was problematic, and Buck Stahl insisted on a 270-degree uninterrupted view. He also had Champagne tastes and a beer budget, the children say.

According to family lore, Koenig honed Buck Stahl’s ideas into a masterpiece. In Stahl’s model, the two-bedroom wing along the pool was curved, with the carport between the bedrooms. Koenig straightened out the curve, relocated the carport to the end and changed the butterfly-type roof to a flat tar-and-gravel roof.

“The design indeed shares certain similarities with what was later built, but Pierre Koenig would never have introduced curving forms into his work, and I’m struck by the pronounced arc of the house’s wings in Stahl’s model,” says Elizabeth Smith, a former curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and organizer of the seminal 1989 exhibit “Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses.”

“From this I can infer that Koenig adhered to the basic attributes of Stahl’s concept but refined the design into something much more rigorous, geometric and ‘pure’ in its form and materials -- in essence adapting it to his own vocabulary.”

One of Koenig’s innovations was to use the largest possible sheets of glass available at the time for residential construction, reducing the presence of framing elements so that the house seems to float, Smith says.

Adds Giovannini: “Koenig suspended disbelief along with gravity when he designed the daring, transparent structure, capturing in a single building what modern life in a modern house could be.”

In the end, Buck, Carlotta and their children got their home -- a modern dream house that lives on for them, as well as for other Angelenos for whom Shulman’s photo represents the halcyon days of mid-20th century.

“My dad loved the house,” Gronwald says. “He never wanted to leave.”

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Real Estate & Architecture in Los Angeles

Case Study House #21 For Sale in the Hollywood Hills

Be still my modernist heart. Case Study House #21 by architect Pierre Koenig just hit the market in the Hollywood Hills .

Pierre Koenig’s experience working alongside architect Raphael Soriano, A. Quincy Jones, and real estate developer Joseph Eichler served him well. By working with them, he gained first-hand steel construction experience and skills using the new arc welding process.

John Entenza, the editor and publisher of Arts & Architecture magazine, invited Koenig to participate in The Case Study House Program . The program was an experiment in residential architecture to introduce new materials in construction. When contemporary-minded couple Walter and Mary Bailey commissioned Koenig to design a modest-sized home in the Hollywood Hills , Koenig seized the opportunity as his time to shine.

Measuring 1,280 square feet, the home is a stunning example of modernist architecture . Arts and Architecture magazine gave it rave reviews, stating, “some of the cleanest and most immaculate thinking in the development of the small contemporary house.”

The interior floor plan comprises public and private rooms separated by a central core, housing bathrooms, and a mechanical room.

The exterior structure is surrounded by water ponds that circulate to the roof and return as fountains. Over the years, the home suffered from ad-hoc renovations. Thankfully, in 1997, Pierre Koenig was asked by the current owner to restore the house to its former glory.

With the help of mid-century modern collector Michael LaFetra, Case Study House #21 was registered as Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #669.

Listing courtesy of Marc Silver and Barry Sloane, Sotheby’s International Realty

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Marc Thorpe designs Case Study 2020 house for Los Angeles

American architect Marc Thorpe has designed this Hollywood Hills residence for an art collector to draw on the modernist Case Study Houses.

Thorpe has released renderings of Case Study 2020, a house he designed to bring elements of modernist architecture into the 21st century.

"Understanding that architectural principles of modernism ultimately failed to take hold residentially within the American physical and psychological landscape, my intention was to redeploy those principles of modernism within a contemporary socio-cultural context," he told Dezeen.

He drew on principles explored in the experimental Case Study House project of the 1950s and 1960s. Sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine, it was intended to provide a way to build American residences efficiently and inexpensively for the housing boom following the second world war.

Prominent modernist architects and designers, such as Richard Neutra , Eero Saarinen and Charles and Ray Eames , were commissioned to design houses. A number were built in Los Angeles like the Eames House , which is among the most well-known Case Study Houses.

Like its precedents, the 5000-square-foot (465-square-metre) Case Study 2020 is built with simple materials including concrete, steel, wood and glass.

It has a square concrete roof punctured with openings for trees to grow, or for skylights. Slender columns, a popular element of modernist architecture, support the roof, with glazing underneath slightly set back from the columns giving space to a series of outdoor walkways.

These paths divide the floor plan of the interiors into three volumes dedicated to living, sleeping and a gallery to showcase the client's art collection.

"Hosting the programmed volumes is the circulation or passageways unifying the spaces," Thorpe added. "The passages transition from exterior patio to interior hallway seamlessly, blurring the boundaries of the house."

Renderings show board-marked concrete walls with warm touches of wood and a minimal amount of furniture.

Outdoor areas extend beyond the space beneath the roof to two decks and an L-shaped swimming pool that wraps a corner of the house.

In addition to aesthetically referencing modernist houses, Thorpe also wanted to draw on the ideas of environmental responsibility and infrastructural independence – which he defines as being self-sustaining.

"The idea is that all buildings should be able to sustain themselves while also providing for others," he said. "It's a systemic approach to integrating ourselves and the things we make into the natural working order of the planet."

Thorpe imagines the house using a series of off-grid and sustainable systems, like solar power, water harvesting and composting to work "in perfect balance with its environment".

Construction on Case Study 2020 is slated to begin later this year. The architect, who founded his eponymous studio in New York City in 2010, has also built a black off-the-grid cabin in Upstate New York.

His other projects are a  housing prototype for Senegal and a conceptual installation near Marfa, Texas and the border of Mexico that resembles a large spaceship landing on earth.

Renderings are by Truetopia.

• Marc Thorpe
• Californian houses
• Architecture
• Conceptual architecture
• Los Angeles
• Residential

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• Midcentury Modern

Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House #21 comes up for sale in the Hollywood Hills

Boxy, unique, and classic midcentury

A wonderful piece of Los Angeles’s architectural history, and a picture-perfect example of midcentury modern style, Case Study House #21 is for sale in the Hollywood Hills. Built in 1958, the Bailey House was designed by architect Pierre Koenig as part of the Case Study House (CSH) program sponsored Arts & Architecture magazine.

The house, says the Los Angeles Conservancy, is "a simple one-story box with a flat roof, built mostly of steel and glass." It was designed to be surrounded by "shallow reflective pools," and the listing indicates those pools are still there, starting as "ponds that circulate to the roof and return as fountains."

Inside, the listing says, the two-bedroom house is laid out with a "central core" of bathrooms and "mechanical rooms."

The kitchen appears to be fully decked out in stainless steel, from cabinets to appliances. If the steel-framed house’s ceilings look like corrugated steel, it’s because they are .

The Case Study House program produced houses in the Los Angeles area from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. It sprinkled the city with fantastic examples of how some of the architects that we remember and revere today (Charles Eames, Richard Neutra) imagined affordable, replicable homes for middle-class families in the boom times after World War II.

Below are two photos taken by renowned architecture photographer Julius Schulman when Case Study #21 was built:

It's now listed for $4.5 million.

Photos below are by Elizabeth Daniels from a 2012 art event that took place at the house.

• The Sale of an Icon [Sotheby's International Realty]
• 9038 Wonderland Park Ave,Los Angeles, CA 90046 [Estately]
• Mapped: The Case Study Houses That Made Los Angeles a Modernist Mecca [Curbed LA]
• Bailey House (Case Study House #21) [Curbed LA]

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Combined Shape .st0{fill-rule:evenodd;clip-rule:evenodd;fill:#fff} region-beach-cities-lax region-downtown region-hollywood region-valley region-westside .st0{fill-rule:evenodd;clip-rule:evenodd;fill:#fff} SMS Main navigation Things to Do Attractions & Tours Arts & Culture Outdoors & Wellness Shopping Family Hidden Gems Luxury Pet-Friendly Eat & Drink Bars Clubs Dine LA Restaurant Week Restaurants Business Spotlight Find Events Itineraries Where to Stay Celebrate LA Heritage AAPI Heritage Black LA Latino Heritage LGBTQ+ Tourist Information Meetings About LA Tourism Travel Trade Membership Business Spotlight Media Research Careers Today's must read The Guide to Outdoor Music in Los Angeles Log in Search Search Things to Do Arts & Culture Discover the Landmark Houses of Los Angeles From Mid-Century Modern icons to LA's first World Heritage Site

Marion Davies House - Annenberg Beach House

The site that is currently known as the Annenberg Community Beach House was originally a five-acre oceanfront property belonging to William Randolph Hearst and his mistress, Marion Davies. The lavish compound was designed in the Georgian Colonial-style by architects Julia Morgan and William Flannery and featured a three-story main house, three detached guest houses, servants' quarters, dog kennels, tennis courts and two swimming pools. The legendary parties held at the compound during Hearst and Davies’ tenure had guest lists that often numbered in the thousands. Luminaries such as Howard Hughes, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, Cary Grant, Winston Churchill, and Gloria Swanson all spent time at the massive estate at one time or another.

The site operated as the popular Sand & Sea Club for decades, then sat vacant and boarded up for years until the city of Santa Monica announced plans to renovate and reopen it as a public beach facility. Renowned philanthropist Wallis Annenberg donated $27.5 million to the cause. During the renovation, all of the remaining original structures from the Hearst days were demolished, except for a 110-foot Italian marble swimming pool and one of the guest homes, now known as the Marion Davies Guest House . The Annenberg Community Beach House opened to the public in April 2009. The site is open daily and is also used as a special events/wedding venue and filming location.

Neutra VDL Studio and Residences

The only Richard Neutra-designed house that is now open regularly to the public, the Neutra VDL Studio and Residences is a Silver Lake hidden gem that was built by the famed architect in 1932. He ran his practice out of a studio here, and along with his wife Dione, raised three sons in this house, which he designed to demonstrate that Modernist principles could be enjoyed by less affluent clients, while maintaining privacy. Natural light, glass walls, patios and mirrors are hallmarks of the Neutra VDL House. Tours of the property, given by Cal Poly Pomona architecture students, are offered on Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

In January 2017, the Neutra VDL Studio and Residences was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The U.S. Department of the Interior press release describes Neutra as "a nationally and internationally seminal figure of the twentieth century Modern movement in architecture" and the VDL Research House as "the only property where one can see the progression of his style over a period of years and is among the key properties to understanding the national significance of Richard Neutra.”

Schindler House

When this residential house was built by Vienna-born Rudolf Schindler back in1922 - inspired by a recent trip to Yosemite with his wife - it was extremely unconventional at the time for a place to live. In reality, it was meant to be a cooperative live-work space between two families, much like a camp site. Having been the residence of the Schindlers and then other creatives, this WeHo hidden gem is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday as an architectural center.

Stahl House

The Stahl House (aka Case Study House #22) was designed by architect Pierre Koenig and built in 1959. Perched in the Hollywood hills above the city, the Stahl House is an icon of Mid-Century Modern architecture. A 1960 black and white photograph by Julius Shulman, showing two women leisurely sitting in a corner of the house with panoramic views through floor-to-ceiling glass walls, is one of the most famous architectural photos in history and a quintessential Los Angeles image. In 2016, TIME named Shulman's photo one of the 100 Most Influential Images of All Time .

The Stahl House was declared Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #670 in 1999. In 2007, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) listed the Stahl House as one of the top 150 structures on its "America's Favorite Architecture" list, one of only 11 in Southern California, and the only private residence on the list. The Stahl House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.

Discover LA Newsletter

This Sustainable House Has It All: A Pool with a Killer View, Drought-Tolerant Landscaping, and Room for a Family

A next-gen modern architectural gem is a model for gracious, sustainable living, taking full advantage of solar power, rainwater collection, geothermal temperature control, and the cooling breezes that tease the crestline along Mulholland Drive.

It’s hard to fathom that just 36 houses established Los Angeles as a mecca for modern architecture. Beginning in 1945 and ending in 1965, L.A.-based Arts & Architecture magazine ran its Case Study house project, an experiment in affordable, innovative, easily replicated housing designed in anticipation of a postwar housing boom. The editors commissioned some of the most promising young architects to design and build houses to appeal to potential young homeowners. Before Eames, Neutra, Koenig, or Saarinen were household names for design buffs, they were visionaries who embraced the Case Study challenge and built ground-breaking homes that established the hallmarks of modernism. Nearly 80 years later, their influence still reverberates across the globe. The most notable architects of today, like New York–based Peter Gluck of GLUCK+ , continue to tip their hats to the movement and expand on those original principles with more efficient materials and, yes, additional square footage. 

Thomas J. Story

When you see the house Gluck designed and built off Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills for his son, writer and director Will Gluck, his daughter-in-law, writer Trista Gladden, and his two granddaughters, there’s no mistaking the Case Study influence: Steel frame, walls of glass, open floor plan, angular roof, multi-purpose room that opens to the outside. Even the footprint of the house looks deceptively small, in keeping with the original Case Study model. But when you dig deeper and learn that the most innovative aspects of this construction are buried underground, it becomes clear that this house is more about the future than the past.

“My brother’s an architect, too,” says Will. “He works with my dad. My whole life I’ve been dragged along to buildings all over the world. As a kid, I hated it. When I got older, I realized how much I love architecture, and how much I love my dad’s architecture specifically.”

Living “inside the imagination” of his father was an appealing prospect. Making that vision come to life was a nearly seven-year labor of love. 

“It took two years for us to get this lot, starting back in 2013,” says Will. “It wasn’t for sale. Our real estate agent Craig Knizek knew of the property and got in touch with the owner. It took months for us to convince them to sell. That makes things more complicated.”

When you see how the house is sited, on a promontory high above Los Angeles, it’s obvious that it was worth the negotiating hassle. The epic views of the San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel, and Santa Monica Mountains and the seamless landscape design by Doug Hoerr, principal of the Chicago-based landscape architecture firm Hoerr Schaudt , position the property to join the ranks of the city’s iconic houses.

“The first time I saw the house, when it was just a frame on its perch overlooking the valley, it almost looked like a bird of prey,” says Hoerr. “It’s sited on this sliver of plinth on a huge hillside, but you have all of this livability and function.”

Once the land was theirs, Trista and Will ceded nearly all creative control to the Gluck team. The most notable feature of the structure is a sloped roof that appears to hover gracefully above the glass house, and, to Hoerr’s point, it isn’t unlike a bird with spread wings. Peter Gluck describes it as a “glass box with wood boxes inside of it to contain all the practical matters of living.” 

Supported by cantilever beams, the roof is designed to create ample shaded patio space, and boost comfort and energy efficiency, while also being able to accommodate enough solar panels to keep two electric cars charged, power the house, and produce enough energy to sell the excess back into the grid.

Floor-to-ceiling windows and retractable doors are placed strategically to take advantage of the sweeping vistas and the hilltop breezes for passive cooling in the summer months. Inside, the main floor is an open-concept living, kitchen, and dining area. Chicago-based interior designer Anne Kaplan of Insight Environmental Design designed low, modular seating in the first-floor great room that can be reconfigured to accommodate quiet nights at home or a house full of guests. The smooth, pale terrazzo floor reflects light and adds to the airiness of the space. The kitchen is cleverly separated into two sections: one for entertaining and mealtime, and the other for more mundane necessities like pantry storage. And the lower level, which is carved into the hillside, is where the more private family spaces are: bedrooms, bathrooms, a reading area, a home theater, and a gym. 

“My dad hates ostentatious houses, and he’s always liked the scale of the Case Study houses,” says Will. “When you first see the house, you can’t tell immediately how large it is. More than half of it is underground.”

Beneath a thin layer of earth, and surrounded by thick concrete walls, the rooms stay sealed, insulated, and at a comfortable temperature year-round, which also cuts down on energy usage. You could say that the dirt helps keep it clean.

“Every drop of rainwater is stored in large cisterns that supply the drip irrigation,” says Will. 

That water supply keeps the small patch of grass green even in drier months. And for all its achievements, the architectural community has heaped praise on the project. But the real star of the show is a sculptural cactus garden that’s the first thing you see when you ascend the driveway. Aside from a battle over “smart house” technology (Will was pro, Peter was con, but he eventually relented and Will got his wish), the plantings were the only creative disagreement.

“That was Trista’s idea,” says Will. “I hated the thought of a cactus garden, and so did my dad. Both of us are from New York, and I just never understood the appeal.” 

Trista, who has a soft-spoken confidence, stuck to her guns. “It was what I wanted. And Doug really wanted to do it, so we made it happen,” she says. “We love how it changes throughout the seasons.”

“Now I love it. We sit out there all the time,” Will says. “And my dad loves it, too.”

The original plan, according to Hoerr, was to plant a small meadow of wildflowers. Their short-blooming season was a deterrent. 

“This space is the first thing you see when you get to the house,” says Hoerr. “I wanted it to feel sculptural and have plants of varying heights, tones, and textures. I’m a huge fan of gravel gardens that have that arid feel. We wanted to make it explorable, create a composition you could walk through, not just a green mass. Trista wanted herbs for the kitchen, too, and gravel gardens are great for those.”

The biggest challenge Hoerr faced was dealing with the shallow soil depth. Because so much of the house is buried in the hillside, the landscape areas only have about a foot of soil to plant in. In some areas, it was only 4 inches deep. No plants with a large root ball would work. Succulents and cacti were the answer because their root systems require very little depth.

“We have an amazing plantsman, Steve Gierke, who’s been working out of our L.A. office for some time, and we work together so well,” says Hoerr. “He really knows the plant materials. I would ask for plants of certain heights and textures, and we worked together to make this happen.”

Despite the restrictions of what he calls “onerous California building codes that make every idea you have seem impossible,” Hoerr is pleased with the sustainable garden in the sky. 

The attention, raves, and awards the house has received—including the American Institute of Architects L.A. chapter Design Award of Merit in 2021—were a welcome surprise, if not exactly a shock.

“We put a lot of faith in Will’s dad, because he has so much experience and he loves a challenge. And we’re so glad we did. We love it here so much,” says Trista.

Despite the fact that they’ve lived in Los Angeles for two decades, they always imagined they’d return to their New York roots. “Now I don’t see that we’re ever leaving,” says Trista. 

At least one of their parents isn’t thrilled.

“We’re not going back to the city now,” Trista says, “and my mom is disappointed.”

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• Architecture News

Zaha Hadid’s Only Private Residential Project Rises Above A Russian Forest

• Written by Niall Patrick Walsh
• Published on April 10, 2018

On a hillside forest outside of Moscow , amongst 65-foot-high (20-meter-high) pine and birch trees, sits the only private house to be designed and built by Zaha Hadid in her lifetime. With a form defined by its natural surroundings, the Capital Hill Residence is divided into two components, one merging with the sloping hillside, and another “floating” 72 feet (22 meters) above ground to unlock spectacular views across the Russian forested landscape.

Like many of Zaha Hadid’s public works, the Capital Hill Residence is defined by fluid geometries emerging from the landscape. The scheme is organized into four levels, with the lower two floors housing a living room, dining room, kitchen, entertaining spaces, indoor swimming pool , and leisure facilities. The entrance foyer, library, guest room and children’s playroom occupy the first floor, while the master bedroom suites and exterior terraces on the elevated upper level emerge above the trees to take in sweeping vistas of the surroundings.

The scheme’s two main components are connected via three structural concrete columns, with a transparent glass elevator and staircase situated between two of the columns. The columns intersect the roof at the first floor, defining skylights and a double-height main entrance. The roof is supported by a double-curved cast concrete structure, serving to frame views of the forest from the living room while also dividing the living spaces.

The Capital Hill Residence is, in a way, a celebration of early visionary modernism, from expressionism through constructivism and the visual dematerialization of architecture, making it appear as something fast-moving and organic, rather than fixed and static. Including organic intricacy, complexity of spatial arrangements, and outstanding craftsmanship within its shape and form. But even more than that, it is, in the words of both architect and client, a “dream house” — as much fantasy as reality, an idea of architecture that still seems somehow impossible. -Financial Times 

News via: Zaha Hadid Architects

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扎哈唯一私人住宅项目，流体几何形‘漂浮’在莫斯科森林中

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Capital Hill Residence, Moscow, Russia by Zaha Hadid- A “fantasy house”

Designing a residence is a massive challenge because there is nothing more than designing the most intimate space of a person or a family. It’s an immense responsibility. You control the thoughts of the people who wake up in a room, designed, and to the view, it is directed to. The empathy in an architect can be seen, as if looking with a microscope, is reading the residences designed.

The Capital Hill, more like an aircraft floating over the treetops and glittering like a spaceship, is an ethereal abode which traces its foundation to a lunch table in London. The scene of The Capital Hill’s birth was a cliché in the architectural world because the Pritzker Prize-winning architect sketched, on a napkin, the home for a Russian real estate developer. His idea of the house was simple. He wanted to see the blue sky from a place where the landscape was dotted with Pin and Birch, which were 25 meters high. 

Vladislav Doronin, the owner of the house, wanted to work with Zaha. When he failed to work with her on massive projects, he commissioned her to build him, not only a sanctuary to escape to, above the treetops, but also a great entertainment space. Her visions allowed him all he wanted. He valued her intellect, vision, her enormous skill, and also her friendship.

Capital Hill flaunts Hadid’s mark components—swapping bends, cantilevering rooftop shades, and glass spreads, to give some examples—however, the home, all in all, is an exciting encounter. Seeming desolate, it inclines toward the woods, getting one with it.

The house’s type is obtained from its unique geology, bringing about liquid calculations like rising out of the scene and remaining halfway inserted inside the slope. Vertically composed more than four levels, the lower levels include relaxation and recreational offices. The essential family room, feasting, kitchen, engaging spaces, and indoor pool are argued on the ground floor to collaborate with common geography.

On the main floor, the planner structured passageway hall, library, a visitor room, and kids’ room to effortlessly be available, while the main room suites, with outside porches, are arranged on the upper level over the treetops. Three substantial segments are associated with the two primary segments of the house, making an immediate discourse between these levels while also working as auxiliary components.

As consistently found in Hadid’s design , the house includes an unpredictable calculation orchestrated with vertical and parallel windows, making it like a “streaming” impact inside wild timberland. Some fundamental pieces of the house turn out to be thick, while some vertical parts appear to be slender and guileless. However, in the house, the harmony between the lighting and generally massing is proportional to uncover itself as a “spaceship” on a sensible scale.

Hadid set vertical shafts for flow and administrations between two sections and joined a straightforward glass lift and flight of stairs. The principle passageway of the living arrangement is structured on the main floor, where the three substantial sections converge with the rooftop, characterizing bay windows, and twofold stature space. A two-fold bent cast solid structure outlines the view to the woodland from the front room while also supporting the rooftop by partitioning the living territories.

“I met Zaha in London a decade ago at an event,” explained Doronin. “We were both impressed by and attracted to the works of Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky. We spent the rest of the evening speaking about art and design. It was during this meeting I decided I wanted to work with her on a real estate project.” Says the Russian James Bond.

Capital Hill Residence is additionally a tribute to the Russian vanguard and references artist and architect El Lissitzky’s Wolkenbugel proposition from 1924. The Wolkenbugel, or ‘sky-holders’, was a progression of eight low high rises intended to be made of glass and steel.

Including raised piers set above open-confronted lift-shafts, Lissitzky’s high rises were proposed to check the significant crossing points of Moscow’s Boulevard Ring, where the most unusual traffic was produced. Everything would be conveyed to the structure by level traffic, which would then be shipped vertically by lift, before being redistributed an even way. Hence, Lissitzky, who worked with Swiss architect Emil Roth on the proposition, planned the pinnacles to be a progression of spatial advances: the even volume would be ‘indeed useful.’ At the same time, the vertical would be ‘the help’ or ‘the important.’ This would include lucidity for the inside design, the architects accepted, which would be utilized for workplaces. Likenesses in auxiliary format between Hadid’s Capital Hill and Lissitzky’s Wolkenbugel proliferate. 

Capital Hill’s two principal segments are associated with three substantial sections, which build up progression between the three levels. Vertical shafts required for flow and services are situated between two segments and consolidate a straightforward glass lift and flight of stairs. Furthermore, the principal access to the home is situated on the primary floor, where the three sections meet with the rooftop and characterize bay windows and a twofold tallness space. From the family room, the timberland’s perspective is encircled by a two-fold bent cast solid structure, which bolsters the rooftop while also isolating the living regions.

Conceived in 2006, the first conceptual visuals were revealed in 2008. The Capital Hill Residence is, as it were, a festival of early visionary innovation, from expressionism through constructivism and the visual dematerialization of engineering, causing it to show up as something quick-moving and natural, instead of fixed or static.

Patrik Schumacher, Hadid’s previous colleague and now top of her eponymous design studio says of the house: “It has Zaha’s mark highlights of natural, multifaceted design, unpredictability, of spatial game plans, a great deal of shocks, a ton of cunning and excellence in the sharpening of the shape and structures.” But significantly more than that, it is, in the expressions of both architect and clients, a “fantasy house” — as much dream as the real world, a thought of engineering that despite everything appears to be some way or another unthinkable.

Sana, an architecture undergrad at Jamia Millia, is a staunch believer that the world owes it's beauty to architects. The ever-expanding concrete jungle is aesthetics, from the thoughts of an architect behind it. Foodie by nature Sana loves traveling, music; and an empty canvas is all that makes up an ideal day for her. She can binge-watch documentaries in sweatpants nights down. She aspires to live a life less ordinary.

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Harris Chooses Walz

A guide to the career, politics and sudden stardom of gov. tim walz of minnesota, now vice president kamala harris’s running mate..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

Hey, it’s Michael. Before we get started, I want to tell you about another show made by “The New York Times” that pairs perfectly with “The Daily.” It’s called “The Headlines.” It’s a show hosted by my colleague, Tracy Mumford, that quickly catches you up on the day’s top stories and features insights from “The Times” reporters who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes or less.

So if you like “The Daily”— and if you’re listening, I have to assume you do — I hope that means you’re going to “The Headlines” as well. You can now find “The Headlines” wherever you get your podcasts. So find it, subscribe to it, and thank you. And now, here’s today’s “Daily.”

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today, the story of how a little known Midwestern governor became Kamala Harris’s choice for a running mate. My colleague Ernesto Londoño walks us through the career, politics, and sudden stardom of Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota.

It’s Wednesday, August 7.

Ernesto, over the past few days, we watched Vice President Harris bring the final three contenders for her running mate to her house in Washington, DC, for a set of in-person interviews. And then we watched as she seemed to narrow her pool of choices down to a final two — the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, and the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz. And now, of course, we know that she has made her choice. What has she told us about her campaign strategy, the way she views this race, in ultimately choosing Tim Walz?

Michael, I think what the choice tells us is that Kamala Harris was drawn to two qualities that Governor Walz brings to the table. And what’s interesting is they may seem to be in tension. For starters, here’s the ultimate everyday man, somebody who grew up in a small town in Middle America, served in the National Guard, was a high school teacher, a football coach, very plain-spoken, goes to campaign events wearing T-shirts and baseball caps, is a gun owner and very proud about it. He sort of embodies the Midwest.

And she clearly thinks that that is going to bring the kind of moderate, white, working class voters that the campaign needs in swing states to come to them, to make this feel like a balanced ticket and something that will give her enough of the crucial votes to defeat Donald Trump in the fall.

On the other hand, as governor, he passed a slew of pretty progressive legislation in the past couple of years, everything from abortion rights to gun control. So these things are likely to appeal to bread and butter Democrats.

But the question is, when voters have examined these two facets of Tim Walz, may it bring them enough enthusiasm from the base and enough undecided voters that the campaign desperately needs, or at some point, do these two aspects of him start canceling each other out?

Right. In short, you’re saying Harris is betting on a dual appeal from Walz to two essential constituencies, but the risk is that the appeal to one of them is just much, much greater than to the other.

Right. You could definitely see a scenario where voters, once they’ve examined Tim Walz’s story and legacy, may conclude that both of these candidates are quite liberal.

OK, so tell us the story of Tim Walz, a story that I think a lot of us don’t know because we really don’t know Walz all that well, and how he has come to embody these two qualities and that tension that you just described.

Michael, the origin story of Tim Walz’s political career is quite fascinating.

He and his wife were teachers in a small city south of Minneapolis. And in 2004, when George W. Bush was running for re-election, Walz took a group of his students to a political rally in his hometown. They wanted to just see the president make his case. And a strange scuffle happened when they were trying to get in.

Well, one of the kids had a John Kerry sticker on his wallet. And this is where the individual says, well, you’re not going to be allowed to enter. You’ve been deemed a threat.

Apparently, one of the students had a sticker for Bush’s rival, John Kerry, on his wallet. And security officials at the rally didn’t want to let them in.

And I said, oh, it’s OK. They’re with me. And who are you? And I said, I’m Tim Walz. I’m their teacher here, and showed them my ID. And they said, well, you two have been deemed a threat to the president. And I said, well, that’s not true. And it kind of escalated.

And this really ticked off Tim Walz. He was really upset. There was a fight and a confrontation at the rally.

At this point in time, I’m kind of nervous. I’m getting arrested. So I’m like saying, well, I’m Teacher of the Year in Mankato. And they didn’t care about that. And it was kind of a sad epiphany moment, how it felt for people to be looked right through by people. These people didn’t see me. And this is happening.

And ultimately, he sort of walks away from this moment feeling really sick of the Bush administration, the politics of the day. And he turns around and volunteers for the Kerry campaign.

And then the more interested he becomes in politics in this era, he starts looking around his congressional district, and there’s a Republican who’s held the seat for many, many years. This was a largely rural district in southern Minnesota. And there’s no reason to believe that a newcomer to politics, somebody without a donor base, could make a run for this seat and win.

But Walz signs up for this weekend boot camp, where expert campaigners train newcomers who want to run for office. And he gets really enthused by the idea that he can pull it off. So he starts raising money with the support of an army of students who become so thrilled and energized by the prospect that their nerdy and kind geography teacher is making this uphill bid for a congressional race.

So his campaign staff is basically his former students.

That’s right. And he proves to be a formidable candidate. He draws a lot of attention to his experience in the classroom and as a coach.

When I coached football, these stands held about 3,000 people. That’s a lot. It’s also the number of American soldiers who have died fighting in Iraq.

He’s a very strong advocate for pulling out of the war in Iraq.

Serving right now are kids that I taught, coached, and trained to be soldiers. They deserve a plan for Iraq to govern itself, so they can come home.

And one thing that happens in the campaign that is really surprising to people is he comes out as being in favor of same-sex marriage. Now, it’s useful to remember that this is 2006, when the vast majority of Democrats, Democrats running for most elected office, were not ready to come out in favor of same-sex marriage.

And here’s a guy who’s new to politics, who’s trying to unseat a Republican who’s held on to his seat for more than 12 years, taking what appeared to be a reckless position on something. And when he was asked about it at the time, Tim Walz told a supporter, this just happens to be what I believe in. And I’d rather lose a race that I’ve ran being true and consistent to my values than try to run as somebody I’m not.

And of course, he wins.

Yes. To everybody’s surprise, he pulled it off.

So from the get-go, he shows a kind of maverick, “politics be damned” quality, taking stands that he knows may be unpopular among the voters he’s trying to win over. But he’s got some innate political gifts that are all making it work.

Yeah, I think that first campaign showed us that Tim Walz had real political chops. He was a very effective campaigner. And people really liked him. When he was knocking on doors, when he was introducing himself to voters, they saw him as somebody who was very genuine and who was admirable.

So once he gets elected in this conservative leaning district in Minnesota, what does he actually do in Congress?

In Congress, he develops a reputation for being somebody who can work across the aisle. And this is a period where Democrats and Republicans were deeply polarized over the Iraq War. He spends a lot of his time lobbying to expand benefits for veterans, so it’s easier for them to go to college after their service, and also becomes a leading voice in the quest to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the policy that prohibited openly gay servicemen from serving in uniform.

And he remained really popular. He easily won re-election five times. The last time he runs for his seat happens to be 2016, when President Trump wins his district by about 15 points.

And still, voters kept Tim Walz in office.

I think it’s important to note what you just said. Walz is distinguishing himself as a Democrat who can take some pretty progressive positions, as he did in that first campaign on gay rights, as he did with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and keep winning in very Trump-friendly districts of his state.

That’s right. And as he’s serving his sixth term in office, he sets his sights on the governor’s mansion and decides to run for office in 2018. He wins that race easily. And early on, during his time as governor, the eyes of the world are on Minnesota after a police officer kills George Floyd. And what we see is massive looting and protests in Minneapolis.

Right, and remind us how Governor Walz handles that violence, those protests.

Yeah, I think that’s a crucial chapter in Tim Walz’s political career and one that will come under scrutiny in the days ahead.

After George Floyd was killed on a Monday —

People are upset, and they’re tired. And being Black in Minnesota already has a stigma and a mark on your back.

— protests took root in Minneapolis.

Y’all want to sit out here and shoot off your rubber bullets and tear gas.

And they got progressively larger and more violent.

There comes a point where the mayor and the police chief in Minneapolis plead for help. They ask the governor to send in the National Guard. And crucially, that request was not immediately heeded.

This is the third precinct here. There are fires burning to the left of it at the —

And at the height of the crisis, a police precinct building was abandoned.

There’s someone climbing up the wall right now, kicking the window in, trying to climb up the wall.

Because city officials grew concerned that protesters were about to overrun it and may attack the cops inside their own turf.

[EXPLOSIONS]

And the building is set on fire.

Right, a very memorable image. I can recall it happening in real-time.

Yeah, and in the days that followed, I think there were a lot of questions of why the governor didn’t send in troops earlier and whether a more muscular, decisive response could have averted some of the destruction that spread through the city.

And how does Walz end up explaining his decision not to send in the National Guard more quickly?

The governor and his administration have said that they were really, really dealing with an unprecedented challenge. And I think there was a concern that sending in troops into this really, really tense situation could have done more to escalate rather than pacify things on the street.

But in the weeks and months that followed, there were a lot of questions about Governor Walz’s leadership. And there were critics who said, during what may have been the most challenging week of his life, we saw a governor who was indecisive and who waited too long to send in resources that ultimately allowed the city to get to a semblance of order.

Right, and it feels like this is a moment that will almost assuredly be used against him by Donald Trump and JD Vance, the Republican ticket, which has made law and order so central to their message in this campaign.

Yeah, absolutely. And here in Minnesota, that was certainly a liability for him when he ran for re-election in 2022. But voters kept him in office, and he won that race handily. And not only did he win, but Democrats managed to flip the Senate and have full control of the legislature on his watch.

And that sets in motion one of the most productive legislative sessions in Minnesota history, where Tim Walz and his allies in the House and the Senate managed to pass a trove of really progressive legislation, oftentimes on a party vote.

Tell us about some of that legislation.

Well, Minnesota becomes the first state in the wake of the Supreme Court ending the constitutional right to abortion to actually codify this right under state statute. And they did a lot more stuff. They had a huge budget surplus, and they used that, for instance, to fund meals for all school children.

They managed to pass a couple of gun control laws that were very contentious. They gave the right to undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses. They legalized recreational marijuana. And finally, the governor takes a pretty bold stance on this issue of gender affirming care for transgender kids and teenagers, and says that Minnesota will be a safe haven for people who want that health care.

So, Ernesto, so how should we think about that blitz of legislation and the largely progressive tone of it, given the way that Walz had campaigned and succeeded up to that moment as somebody with such broad appeal across the political spectrum?

When the governor was asked whether this had been too much too quickly in terms of progressive legislation, his answer was that these were broadly popular policies, that these are issues Democrats had campaigned on. And here, Democrats had a window of opportunity where they were in control of the governor’s mansion and control of the House, the Senate, and that when you have political capital, you spend it.

But when you start listening to Republicans in Minnesota, they say, here’s a guy who campaigned on this mantra of “One Minnesota.” That was his campaign slogan. And he sort of came into office with this promise that he would govern in a bipartisan way, reach across the aisle.

But when they had all the votes they needed to pass their policies, Republicans felt that Walz was not bothering to bring them into the fold and to pass legislation that was going to be palatable to conservatives in the state. So I think people who once regarded him as a moderate now start seeing him as somebody who, when he had the power, acted in ways that were really progressive and liberal.

So at the height of his power, Governor Walz emerges as somebody who, when given a shot at getting done what he really wants to get done with a Democratic legislature, is a pretty progressive leader, even at the risk of being somewhat at odds with his earlier image as more moderate, because in his mind, enough people in the state are behind these policies.

Yeah, and I think he assumed that he had banked enough goodwill and that people across the state liked him enough to tolerate policies they may have disagreed with. And I think it’s safe to say, among the people who cover him here regularly, there was never any real hint that Tim Walz was eyeing a run for higher office. He’s not somebody who has written the kind of political memoir that oftentimes serves as a case of what you would bring to a national ticket or to the White House. And he seems pretty happy with a state job.

So it was a huge surprise when Tim Walz starts going viral through a string of cable news appearances right after President Biden drops out of the race, and the Democrats are scrambling to put Harris at the top of the ticket. And what becomes clear is that Walz is very forcefully auditioning for the role of vice president, and Vice President. Harris starts taking him very seriously.

We’ll be right back.

So, Ernesto, tell us about this cable news audition that Governor Walz undertakes over the past few weeks and how, ultimately, it seemed to help him land this job of being Harris’s running mate.

I think Walz does something really interesting, and that is that he says that Democrats shouldn’t be talking about Trump and Vance as existential threats. He kind of makes the case that Democrats have been in this state of fear and paralysis for too long, and that it’s not serving them well. So the word he latches onto is “weird.”

Well, it’s true. These guys are just weird.

It is. It is.

And they’re running for he-man women hater’s club or something. That’s what they go at. That’s not what people are interested in.

And I think one other thing we see in Walz is somebody who’s putting himself out there as a foil to JD Vance.

That angst that JD Vance talks about in “Hillbilly Elegy,” none of my hillbilly cousins went to Yale, and none of them went on to be venture capitalists or whatever. It’s not —

I think the case he’s making is that Tim Walz is a more authentic embodiment of small town values.

What I know is, is that people like JD Vance know nothing about small town America. My town had 400 people in it, 24 kids in my graduating class. 12 were cousins. And he gets it all wrong. It’s not about hate.

And behind the scenes, people from Tim Walz’s days on Capitol Hill start calling everybody they know in the Harris campaign and the Harris orbit and saying, here’s a guy who has executive experience as governor, but also somebody who has a really impressive record from his time on Capitol Hill and somebody who could be an asset in helping a Harris administration pass tough legislation. So you should take a hard look at this guy.

Which is, of course, exactly what Harris ends up doing. And I want to talk for a moment about how Harris announces Walz as her running mate on Tuesday morning. She did it in an Instagram message. And it felt like the way she did it very much embraced this idea that you raised earlier, Ernesto, that Walz contains these two appeals, one to the Democratic base, one to the white working class.

Harris specifically cites the work that Walz did with Republicans on infrastructure and then cites his work on gun control. She mentions that he was a football coach and the founder of the high school Gay Straight Alliance. She’s straddling these two versions of Walz.

But I want to linger on the idea for a moment of Walz’s vulnerabilities, because once he becomes Harris’s running mate, Harris and Walz are going to lose a fair amount of control over how they present him to the country, because he’s going to become the subject of very fierce attacks from the Republicans in this race. So talk about that for just a moment.

Yeah, I mean, it’s important to keep in mind that Governor Walz has never endured the scrutiny of a presidential race. So the questions he’s going to be asked and the way his record is going to be looked at is going to be different and sharper. I think the Harris campaign is billing him as, first and foremost, a fighter for the middle class. And I think that certainly will have some appeal.

But I think in coming days, there’s going to be a lot of attention drawn to parts of his record that may be unpopular with many voters. For instance, giving undocumented immigrants driver’s licenses, which Governor Walz championed. It’s likely to provide fodder for an attack ad.

The very dramatic footage of Minneapolis burning in 2020 is also something that I think people will be drawn to. And there’s going to be interest in reexamining what the governor did and what he could have done differently to avert the chaos.

And on Tuesday, we saw that the Trump campaign wasted no time in trying to define Tim Walz as soft on crime, permissive on immigration policy. And they also made clear they wanted to relitigate the era of George Floyd’s killing. And specifically, they want to try to tie him to the effort at the time to defund the police, which is a movement that Walz personally never endorsed.

So the Republican attack here will be pretty simple. Walz is liberal. Harris is liberal. So, in their efforts to speak to especially white working class and rural voters in swing states, the Trump campaign is going to say this is not the ticket for that group of voters. This is the ticket of burning police precincts and gun control. And of course, that may not be fair, but that’s very likely going to be the message over the next couple of months.

Right. I think there’s going to be effort to portray him as a radical liberal who has used his small town roots to put on this sort of veneer of being a moderate and a really sort of understanding and being part of the segments of the electorate that I think are critical in this election.

I want to speak for just a moment about the person Harris did not pick when she chose Walz because many Democrats had felt that Walz was a potentially too liberal seeming running mate for a candidate, Kamala Harris, who herself comes from a blue state and is caricatured by the Republicans as liberal herself.

And the person she didn’t choose was Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who was seen as having a huge appeal in that particular key swing state, but also presented risks of his own of alienating parts of the Democratic base with his well-documented support for Israel and his criticism of campus protesters. How should we think about the fact that, ultimately, Harris chose Walz over Shapiro?

Yeah, I think in the final stretch of this campaign to be the vice presidential pick, we started seeing a lot of acrimony in pockets of the Democratic base, drawing attention to the fact that Governor Shapiro could be divisive on Gaza, which has really sort of split the party in recent months.

So I think at the end of the day, they made a calculation that Tim Walz would be more of a unifying figure and would be somebody who would inspire and energize enough pockets of the electorate that they need, particularly in the Midwest, to make him the stronger and more exciting pick and somebody who wouldn’t force them to go back to defending and relitigating the Biden administration’s record on Israel and on the war in Gaza.

Right, and then, on Tuesday night, we got our first glimpse of Harris and Walz together on stage for the first time at a campaign rally. I’m curious, what struck you about their debut together.

Good evening, Philadelphia.

I think everybody was watching the opening scene of this rally to see what the chemistry between these two people was going to be like. And they both seemed giddy. They were literally, at times, bouncing with enthusiasm.

Since the day that I announced my candidacy, I set out to find a partner who can help build this brighter future.

So Pennsylvania, I’m here today because I found such a leader.

Governor Tim Walz of the great state of Minnesota.

They soon got down to business. And that business was how to define Tim Waltz for voters who don’t know him well.

To those who know him best, Tim is more than a governor.

And right off the bat, we saw that Kamala Harris really highlighted a lot of pieces of his pre-political career.

To his former high school football players, he was Coach.

She repeatedly called him Coach Walz, Mr. Walz, evoking his time in the classroom, and even used his military title from his days in the Army.

To his fellow veterans, he is Sergeant Major Walz.

And then when it came time for Tim Walz to introduce himself on this massive stage —

Welcome the next vice president of the United States, Tim Walz.

— he drew a lot of attention to his small town roots.

I was born in West Point, Nebraska. I lived in Butte, a small town of 400.

He said something that he said repeatedly recently in campaign appearances, which is —

In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and their personal choices that they make. Even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves, there’s a golden rule — mind your own damn business.

The golden rule of small towns is you mind your own damn business, which is something he said in the context of his argument that Republicans have been limiting, rather than expanding, people’s rights. But he also drew attention to the fact that he’s a gun owner.

By the way, as you heard, I was one of the best shots in Congress. But in Minnesota, we believe in the Second Amendment, but we also believe in common sense gun violence laws.

And then when it came time to draw a sharp contrast with their opponents, Tim Walz said, these guys are phonies.

Donald Trump is not fighting for you or your family. He never sat at that kitchen table like the one I grew up at, wondering how we were going to pay the bills. He sat at his country club in Mar-a-Lago, wondering how he can cut taxes for his rich friends.

He said it’s actually people like me and Kamala Harris who come from humble origins and showed what is possible in America when you hail from a working class background, and you seize opportunities that were available to you.

Thank you, Philadelphia. Thank you, Vice President. God bless America.

So when it comes to this question of Walz’s dual identities and dual appeals, what did we learn on day one of this new Democratic ticket, do you think?

I think the campaign is trying to convey that these two facets of Tim Walz’s life are not mutually exclusive, that they don’t need to be in tension. They don’t cancel each other out. They’re both part of Tim Walz’s story. And I think that’s how they’re going to present him from now until Election Day.

Ernesto, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

It’s my pleasure, Michael.

Here’s what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, Hamas said that Yahya Sinwar, one of the masterminds behind the deadly October 7 attacks on Israel, had consolidated his power over the entire organization. Until now, Sinwar had held the title of Hamas’s leader in Gaza. But with the assassination of Hamas’s top political leader by Israel last week, Hamas said that Sinwar would take on that title as well. Sinwar remains a major target of Israel and is believed to have been hiding in tunnels underneath Gaza since October 7.

And the US Department of Justice has charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran with trying to hire a hitman to assassinate political figures in the United States. The man recently traveled to the US and was arrested in New York last month. American authorities believe that his potential targets likely included former President Trump.

Today’s episode was produced by Alex Stern, Eric Krupke, and Olivia Natt. It was edited by Lisa Chow and Patricia Willens, contains original music by Pat McCusker and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Nick Pittman and Minnesota Public Radio.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

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Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Ernesto Londoño

Produced by Alex Stern Eric Krupke and Olivia Natt

Edited by Lisa Chow and Patricia Willens

Original music by Marion Lozano and Pat McCusker

Engineered by Alyssa Moxley

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Earlier this summer, few Democrats could have identified Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.

But, in a matter of weeks, Mr. Walz has garnered an enthusiastic following in his party, particularly among the liberals who cheer on his progressive policies. On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris named him as her running mate. Ernesto Londoño, who reports for The Times from Minnesota, walks us through Mr. Walz’s career, politics and sudden stardom.

On today’s episode

Ernesto Londoño , a reporter for The Times based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest.

Background reading

Who is Tim Walz , Kamala Harris’s running mate?

Mr. Walz has faced criticism for his response to the George Floyd protests.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Michael Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson, Nina Lassam and Nick Pitman.

An earlier version of this episode misstated the subject that Walz’s wife taught. She taught English, not Social Studies.

How we handle corrections

Ernesto Londoño is a Times reporter based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest and drug use and counternarcotics policy. More about Ernesto Londoño

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