Donald C. Hensman, Architect Styled Home Designs, 78
DGH
Donald C. Hensman, whose award-winning designs helped further the
development and influence of the Modernist style in Southern California
architecture, died December 9, 2002, at his Pasadena, California, home,
the cause of death not being reported, at the age of 78.
In decades-long collaboration with architects Conrad Buff III and,
later, Calvin C. Straub and others, Hensman created hundreds of
contemporary homes ranging from budget-minded dwellings to opulent
celebrity sanctuaries.
Among them were two of the legendary Case Study Program houses, No. 20
and No. 28. Conceived by John Entenza, editor and publisher of the
avant-garde monthly magazine Arts & Architecture, the Case Study project
was intended to foster the creation of modern, easily constructed and
affordable housing prototypes.
Hensman's partnership with Buff and Straub "produced a number of very
graceful and elegant and inexpensive modern homes in the area," said
Elizabeth A.T. Smith, chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in
Chicago, Illinois, and author of a book about the Case Study houses. "It
was [Hensman's] and his colleagues' use of materials, and especially
their integration with the sites, which made him an attractive and
appropriate figure for inclusion in the Case Study Program."
A graduate of USC, where he later taught, Hensman was strongly
identified with what the architectural writer Esther McCoy termed "the
Pasadena School." This was a generation of architects, many associated
with USC's School of Architecture, who combined an interest in new
technology and experimental solutions with a sensitivity to the Southern
California landscape and the history of modernism. Their work also took
into account California architectural predecessors, such as Greene and
Greene and the Craftsman tradition of design.
As a group, they responded to the crisis in affordable housing that
followed World War II, when millions of U.S. servicemen and women came
home looking for work and low-cost but stylish contemporary dwellings.
Hensman and his partners directed many of their efforts toward meeting
that challenge.
"They're very symbolic of that whole Case Study Program, the idea of
being responsible not just to the wealthy people, but to the broad
middle class," said Victor Regnier, a USC architecture professor.
Architect Pierre Koenig of Los Angeles, California, a fellow Case Study
designer, said Hensman's risk-taking approach to architectural practice,
like that of many colleagues, had been influenced by his wartime years.
"We'd all been in the armed services," Koenig said, "so we were older
and we had a lot of experience in back of us, good and bad. And so we
were willing to take chances. That was one of the key elements of the
growth of architecture in Southern California. The war put everything in
perspective, so nobody was much afraid of anything."
Born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1924, Hensman attended Hollywood High
School, leaving in 1943 to join the U.S. Navy. He became a parachute
rigger in the New Hebrides.
After receiving an honorable discharge in February 1946, he decided to
take advantage of the G.I. Bill by attending Los Angeles City College.
He soon transferred to USC, where he received his bachelor's degree in
architecture and became president of the Scarab Society, a national
honorary architectural fraternity.
It was at USC in 1948 that Hensman first met Buff, commencing an
intensely productive working partnership that lasted until Buff's death
in 1988. Before graduating from USC, both men began their professional
careers by designing more than 600 tract and model homes near Long Beach
for Brittain Development.
Eventually, Hensman was named an assistant professor within USC's design
curriculum and was chairman of the joint USC/American Institute of
Architects education committee. Among the students of Hensman and Buff
are Frank Gehry, designer of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and
the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; and Jon Jerde, whose
projects include the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.
Almost every California architect educated since the early 1950s has
been influenced by the work of Hensman, Buff and Straub in one way or
another, Regnier said. "They formed the dominant philosophy of the [USC]
School of Architecture in the 1950s," she said. "It was their thinking
and their passion for architecture in Southern California after the war
that made people come to school at the time."
Pasadena architect and friend Randell L. Makinson said that Hensman was
"an extraordinary detailer" who often sketched out ideas spontaneously
on the back of cocktail napkins or whatever else was handy. Recalling
the symbiotic workings of the Hensman-Buff partnership, Makinson said it
was not unusual to see the two men "using two soft pencils, drawing on
the same drawing at the same time, and dialoguing, creating together."
"Conrad liked being inside, and Donald loved being outside," Makinson
said. "So the aspect of Don often out on the construction site and being
able to carry the whole philosophy of the drawing clear out to the site,
and Conrad sticking pretty close to the office -- that worked out very
well."
Described by friends as intensely loyal to people and institutions he
cared about, Hensman acquired a number of celebrity clients. Even after
retiring in 1998, he continued to design and build homes on a smaller
scale.
"He was just a really sweet personality -- funny, and a very passionate
and caring individual," Regnier said.
A new book chronicling the work of Hensman and Buff is expected to be
published by the USC Architectural Guild Press next year.
LA Times
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