For Emerson Krull ’19, the topic of her senior thesis was as near as her father’s business and as remote as the post-World War II era.

An environmental studies major with a concentration in art history, Krull has spent much of this year researching the so-called Case Study Houses of Southern California: a series of designs  intended to model efficient, affordable housing for military veterans coming home after the war.

Specifically, Krull’s thesis analyzes ways in which those designs have inspired today’s environmentally sustainable houses.

Emerson Krull ’19 poses at the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art, where she was a curatorial intern for exhibitions including the current Anthropocenic. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Thirty-seven were designed, of which 25 were built (seven were later torn down or substantially remodeled). Most of the finished houses were photographed by Julius Shulman, whom Krull describes as “an iconic photographer of modern architecture generally, and specifically of the buildings of Southern California.”

Shulman, for instance, was responsible for a Case Study House image that has become emblematic of Los Angeles luxury (bottom image): two women taking their ease in the glass-walled living room of Case Study House No. 22, seemingly hovering in space high above the city lights.

And Shulman, who died in 2009, was represented by Craig Krull Gallery, located in Santa Monica and owned by Krull’s father. It was through her father and the gallery that Emerson Krull became aware of Shulman’s Case Study House work and the project itself.

Shown in a period photo by renowned photographer Julius Shulman, Case Study House No. 22 (the Stahl House) has become an icon of California architecture. (Julius Shulman Photography Archive, 1936-1997 © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles)

“I always loved the photos and the simple, clean-lined modern design” of the Case Study Houses, she says. “They weren’t really thinking about it as sustainable back then — that wasn’t even a term — but today they can be good examples of sustainable design.”

A Santa Monica native, Krull is passionate about the Southern California landscape at its best, notably the visual harmony between its natural and built environments — a harmony, she says, that she discovered through Shulman’s images.

No. 22, the Stahl House, may be the best-known example of a characteristic shared by many of the Case Study Houses: their thoughtful placements into the natural setting and their expansive use of glass to visually integrate outdoors and indoors.

“That integration is so perfect for the Southern California landscape,” says Krull, whose thesis research last summer included a visit to the Stahl House (which is still in the hands of the Stahl family). “We have pretty good weather, so it makes sense to utilize the land around the house and not just have it be a box on a street. Those architects really used the land and used the views they were given.”

A contemporary view from the Stahl House. (Emerson Krull ’19)

The houses were a project of Arts & Architecture magazine and editor John Entenza, who recruited a host of notable architects, including such eminences as Charles Eames Jr. and Ray Eames, Richard Neutra, and Pierre Koenig — designer of No. 22 — to try to set a course for postwar housing in LA.

“[C]hosen not only for their obvious talents, but for their ability to evaluate realistically housing in terms of need, [they] have been commissioned to take a plot of God’s green earth and create ‘good’ living conditions for eight American families,” Entenza wrote in his announcement of the program, in the magazine’s January 1945 issue. (Of course, the eight-house goal fell by the wayside.)

In general, “the designs balance a consideration for the economy, society and the environment,” Krull explains.

Reflecting the optimism and energy of the time, they would employ building technologies that emerged from the war, and they would be replicable — “in no sense…an individual ‘performance’” by the architect, Entenza stipulated.

Each would seek to fulfill “the specifications of a special living problem in Southern California,” such as the peculiarities of a given site or the needs of a specific family. For instance, Case Study House No. 1, designed by J.R. Davidson with Greta Davidson, needed to be easy to clean and maintain to accommodate the busy lives of its inhabitants, a childless two-career couple.

The Case Study Houses program outlasted the postwar circumstances that inspired it, and the houses were built, mostly in and around Los Angeles, from 1948 until 1966. (Koenig’s CSH No. 22 was built in 1960.) Yet the program retained its experimental outlook.

Sustainability as we know it was not on the radar of Entenza and the CSH architects. But, as Krull shows in her thesis, aspects of CSH design did anticipate contemporary thinking about green design in aspects like functional efficiency, respect for natural aspects of the building site, openness to natural light and ventilation, etc.

This Julius Shulman image gives a sense of the immediate surroundings of the Stahl House. (Julius Shulman Photography Archive, 1936-1997 © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles)

Though an ES major, Krull is approaching her thesis from a visual art perspective. (A curatorial intern at the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art in her sophomore and senior years, Krull helped put together this winter’s major exhibition, Anthropocenic). In an unusual cross-disciplinary arrangement, her thesis adviser, in fact, is Ned Harwood, associate professor of art and visual culture.

Harwood, she says, “really helped me understand the historical precursors or precedents to the Case Study House program. He’s provided me with knowledge on the context of the Great Depression, European functionalism, and even early socialist thought, and how these all came to influence the program.”

The Stahl House living room and pool today. (Emerson Krull ’19)

“Emerson’s smart, very engaged, unbelievably well-organized, and a self-starter,” says Harwood. He adds, with a laugh, that students often proclaim plans to do thesis work the summer before senior year —  “but Emerson actually did it.”

Starting before she arrived at �ֲ���ý, Krull has undertaken a variety of internships related to the visual arts in the Los Angeles region — notably a 2017 stint at the Getty Research Institute, where she did archival work on a collection of images by the noted architectural photographer Lucien Hervé.

The thesis research has given her a head start in understanding sustainable architecture in her home state, a place on the cutting edge of green consciousness. “I’m increasingly interested in working in that field after �ֲ���ý,” she says.

She adds, “Personally, doing this thesis has been the most inspiring and uplifting project in my time at �ֲ���ý — an opportunity to research a very specific topic that combines all of my passions, interests, and experiences.”

Photographer Julius Shulman took this Case Study House image that has become emblematic of Los Angeles luxury. (Julius Shulman Photography Archive, 1936-1997 © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles)

For the first time, AIA Maine invited another New England chapter of the institute, AIA Vermont, to jury the awards, and will in turn jury that chapter’s awards. For more information about the exhibit, call Judith Harvie of the AIA at 207-623-1218.

The museum’s Lower Gallery houses an exhibit titled Elizabeth Donoff: Two Photographic Promenades: The Villa La Roche-Jeanneret and the Villa Savoye. Through her 1993 images of two influential buildings by the pioneering modernist architect Le Corbusier, Donoff examines how photographs control our perception of architecture. Donoff graduated from �ֲ���ý in 1989 and holds a master’s degree in architecture from Washington University, in St. Louis.

There is no opening reception for the AIA Maine exhibit. Donoff will give a lecture about her work at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 11, followed by a reception.

The �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art is located in the Olin Arts Center at �ֲ���ý, on Russell Street in Lewiston. It was founded to preserve the nation’s largest repository of Marsden Hartley drawings and other items relating to this important American artist, a Lewiston native. Its other holdings include a robust print collection and notable works by Maine artists with national significance, such as Dahlov Ipcar, the late William Thon, Neil Welliver and Charles Hewitt.

Admission is free. The museum is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. and 1 p.m.-5 p.m. Sun. The museum is closed Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. For additional information, please call 207-786-6158.

Isaacson’s interest in reaching out to children, combined with his ability as a photographer, earned him a Horn Book award for his acclaimed work, Round Buildings, Square Buildings & Buildings That Wiggle Like a Fish, a study of the aesthetics of architecture for young readers. He has also written on the aesthetics of art, including A Short Walk Around the Pyramids and Through the World of Art. Isaacson is a frequent lecturer, contributor of essays, and a book reviewer on a variety of art-related subjects.

As an attorney and advocate for the arts, Isaacson has been actively engaged in the practice of law in Lewiston since 1950. He is currently senior partner in the firm of Isaacson & Raymond. His legal career has included roles as president of the Androscoggin County Bar Association, corporation counsel for the City of Lewiston and assistant county attorney for Androscoggin County.

Isaacson earned his bachelor’s degree from �ֲ���ý College in 1947 and his law degree from Harvard. Known as “the dean of Maine art critics,” he has reviewed for the Maine Sunday Telegram since 1966.