SOUTH BAY DIGS | Digital Edition Online

32 DIGS.NET | 7.23.2021 P R O F I L E | W I L L I A M F . C O D Y A R C H I T E C T U R E + D E S I G N Richard Neutra's Kaufmann Desert House and the Case Study Houses, Cody emerged as one of the most influential modernists of the period. His buildings were original; rather than adhere to a specific modernist vocabulary, Cody experimented with form and material—wood, stone, steel, concrete. What's more, "My father was a perfectionist with his designs," says Catherine Cody. "He wasn't satisfied with just good." He was exacting. "It had to be perfect—Bill Cody's way. Colleagues and people who watched my father draw were impressed by how fluid and fast he could come up with ideas and design solutions," she adds. One even observed that Cody "could draw his ideas upside down for the client's perspective across the table." Among Cody's contemporaries was architect and USC alumni William Krisel, who in a letter to Catherine affirmed the architect as "a known and admired legend." In doing his "best to learn from [Cody's] techniques," Krisel summed it up this way: "Seeing his drawings were the best education I got." Master of the Midcentury is equally edifying, attesting to "Cody's inherent artistic ability, illustrated by many stunning images of his original plein air sketches and watercolours, and his development as a draftsman, beginning with the dramatic architectural drawings from his USC studio design classes all the way through to the professional presentation drawings he created for clients," says Jo Lauria. Among this collection of material are Cody's recreational facilities, restaurants, motels, civic structures, and private residences. There is a memorable midcentury gas station, a Brutalist library building, and master plans for shopping centers, recreational parks, residential planned communities and country club developments—one, the Eldorado Country Club, Catherine describes as " the Taj Mahal of golf clubs." "He didn't have a personal style as much as a personal approach—he saw each project as a unique opportunity, which meant that there is remarkable variation in his projects," notes Don Choi. "St. Theresa Catholic Church in Palm Springs is, other than his own house, probably Cody's most personal work. He used materials to powerful effect, ranging from the wood of the pews and glulam beams to the travertine of the altars and baptismal font. Graceful curves appear everywhere, from the exterior concrete walls to the upswept ceiling over the crossing to the cut-outs in the wooden beams. The variety of forms and materials speak to Cody's mastery of architecture—his work here transcends what we usually think of as midcentury modern or desert modern." Cody was "an 'architect of his time' in relating principles of contemporary architecture, structural engineering, and new technologies he had learned at USC School of Architecture and had expanded upon in his professional practice," adds Lauria, "but he applied these tenets, most notably, in his designs of residential commissions," such as the Dorothy Levin Residence, which Cody christened with full-height windows and a glass- roof solarium. Design features of his homes promoted a West Coast lifestyle via "structurally thin rooflines that would make the house seem to float on the landscape, and walls of glass

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