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- Gregory Ain,
FAIA, was born in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1908, but it was in Los
Angeles that he studied architecture at the University of
Southern California from 1927-28. His impulse to study
architecture came from an acquaintance as a youth with
R.M. Schindler's Kings Road house, and his
dissatisfaction with his Beaux Arts training determined
him to work in the office of Richard Neutra. Combined in
all his early work, which is his finest, are Neutra's
repetitive windows and monoplanar surfaces and
Schindler's broken planes and accommodation of shell to
plan.
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- Ain's interest in group
housing for middle- and low-income families began in his
1937 Dunsmuir Flats, his most frequently published work.
The best known view is of four staggered two-story whicte
blocks, the ceiling levels defined by continuous ribbon
windows; not seen are the private porches and patios. The
panel-post construction was an early effort to reduce
cost, followed in 1939 by prefabricated plywood walls for
a model house.
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- In 1940 Ain received a
Guggenheim Fellowship to continue his researches in
low-cost housing, and throughout the 1940's he designed,
with the participation of clients, a number of projects
for attached and detached housing that were notable for
site planning and innovative floor plans. Few were built
because lending agencies opposed multiple ownership. One
of the several schemes to be built was the 1948 Avenel
housing for a musicians' union whose members worked in
films. The twenty attached units were broken into two
blocks for a shillside site, alnd private patios off the
living rooms face the view.
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- For his more elaborate
houses he borrowed freely from the flexible plan of his
low-cost housing, and in most cases the alcove sleeping
room became a library or guest room. Ain also adapted
many contractors' practices for large or small houses to
save construction time and reduce cost. Aside from Irving
Gill, Gregory Ain was the first architect in California
to refine and dignify the low-cost house.
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