THE HOME AND STUDIO OF PHOTOGRAPHER JULIUS SHULMAN, WHOSE DOCUMENTATION OF MIDCENTURY ARCHITECTURE FUELED THE MCM MOVEMENT, HAS RECEIVED A LOVING RENOVATION.

By KATHRYN DRURY WAGNER

Photo: IWAN BAAN Schematics and Archival Images Courtesy of LORCAN O’HERLIHY ARCHITECTS (LOHA)

“I felt that it was important to recognize that these iconic properties need to continue to live, to not simply be relics of the past.”—Principal architect Lorcan O’Herlihy

The LOHA team, led by the firm’s founder and principal Lorcan O’Herlihy, tread carefully but confidently.

The genius of midcentury photographer Julius Shulman is that he didn’t capture images.

He captured moments in time. You’ve almost certainly seen his masterpieces, such as Case Study House No. 22, where two women seemingly float above Los Angeles in a glass box house, or Kaufmann House, Palm Springs, 1947, where a Richard Neutra-designed home is surrounded by a dusk that’s descending in a way so tangible, it’s like fabric. Over his nearly century-long life, Shulman, who was born in New York in 1910, became as important a force in Midcentury Modernism as the famed architects whose work he depicted.