Hacia Arts & Architecture. La revolución editorial de John Entenza (1938-1945)

Abstract

In January 1945 Arts & Architecture launched the Case Study House program, an experiment devised by John Entenza that would reserve for him and his magazine an important place in the history of modern architecture of the twentieth century. From the moment he took over the direction of Arts & Architecture in 1940, Entenza knew how to seduce creators and artists such as Alvin Lustig, Ray and Charles Eames, Herbert Matter and Julius Shulman, who contributed to raise the graphic standard of his publication and gave it an innovative identity that visually supported the avant-garde intellectual discourse of commitment to modern architecture and design that it defended in its pages. This article analyzes the origins, the strategies of transformation and the proper names that made the magazine a reality that, fifty years after its disappearance in 1967, continues to be as attractive and radical as when it was published.