Sad news. According to Curbed LA, John Chase passed away this morning.
John was one of the smartest and most innovative thinkers I met in Los Angeles during my decade there. I met him soon after I got to SCI-Arc and he had a huge impact on the way I thought and could reduce me to tears of laughter in a few minutes when he described some hilarious architectural perversity.
His book Exterior Decorations: Hollywood’s Inside-Out Houses is still one of the most radical reconsiderations of architecture to this date. To me, it was neither an appreciation nor camp, rather it was the architectural equivalent of a Throbbing Gristle song. I will never forget his incredible deadpan description of a Case Study House turned into “hairdresser baroque.” I will greatly miss his keen insight, humor, and extraordinary capacity to make us revalue what we meant by such categories a “taste.”
