Jay McCafferty , Coy Howard - GARDEN WALL #1

by Orhan Ayyüce

Coy Howard's Ellen and Jay McCafferty House in San Pedro was built in 1980, just around the pivotal, transforming times in California architecture. This is when experimentation with form and materials inspired the whole generation of architects as fresh ideas were beaming from Los Angeles. Group of young architects led by Frank Gehry were making buildings with plywood and drywall but were doing them outrageously. It quickly caught on by the students as most of the group were teaching architecture in UCLA and newly opened SCI-Arc.
Unofficially, Coy Howard was the house poet of that dynamic, exploratory and highly mobile group of the moment.

Coy's biggest contribution was that he connected the philosophy of his architecture to artistic "making."

Although McCafferty House was one of the most evolved ones of the ground up projects of the genre, it remained elusive to the architectural community and it still keeps its distance.

In one of its rare public appearances, the house was picked up by the ever so architectural connoisseur Charles Moore in his guide to LA architecture, "The City Observed, Los Angeles," in which Mr. Moore included the McCafferty house among the handful of carefully chosen contemporary homes. I think the only other houses he talked about were Frank Gehry's own Santa Monica House and Larry Gagosian's House in Venice that was designed by Robert Mangurian, regarding the particular times.

McCafferty House - was and is - a major work.

Last summer Coy Howard and I drove to McCafferty House in San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles. Jay McCafferty, Coy's client/friend and one of the legendary Cirrus Gallery artists has joined us in the living room. As we sat down around a small round oak table, I thought this could be an interesting conversation between the writer, architect and his artist client, all interchangeable.

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People & Blogs

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• Orhan Ayyüce
• Frank Gehry
• SCI-Arc
• Charles Moore
• Robert Mangurian
• Larry Gagosian