Hale House

Craig Ellwood born in 1922 was an influential Los Angeles - based modernist architect whose career spanned the early 1950s through the mid-1970s. Although untrained as an architect, Ellwoodfashioned a persona and career through equal parts of a talent for good design, self-promotion and ambition. He was recognized professionally for fusing of the formalism of Mies van der Rohe with theinformal style of California modernism.

Some of his works are: Case study house (1,2,3) Courtyard apartments Smith House

The Hale house is located in Beverly Hills, California.

Ellwood alwaysregarded his career as starting with the Hale House. It was built on Yokum Drive, Beverly Hills, in 1951. “The Hale House was a turning point for me. The Hale House was my first house in which thearchitecture was strong expression of the structure.” – Craig Ellwood. The Hale House was an economical house, costing only $9.87 per square foot; the owner Braynt Hale taught at Beverly Hills Highschool.

The structural expression of the building was of great importance. The steel is used in an unceremonial manner. The metal sections are inclined to be skinny and they are not treated as beingof any great visual consequence Hale House is very much a builders house in steel, although the use of flash-gap detailing shows a thoughtful, craftmanly mind at work in the relationship of materialto material.

Although the steel frame of the Hale House is expressed externally, the interior experience is very much that of a timber building. It contains exposed timber beams supporting thetongueand groove ceiling and it is projecting it beyond a 64 foot long glazed rear wall.

In the Hale House was first introduced the concept of “shadow line”. Since the architecture was ostensiblymodular, based upon a grid and composed of units of wall or window assembled one against the next, Ellwood could pick up on the rhythm of the structure and express the individual components by the...