The Billy Wilder House

1950

In late 1949, when the Eames/Case Study House 8 was nearing completion, film director Billy Wilder commissioned Charles and Ray to design a home in Beverly Hills, California.

Their plans for the project extended the ideas and principles that defined the Eames House.  It had a large modular structure made of prefabricated, off-the-shelf steel parts.  Like the Eames House, the space also featured high ceilings and glass walls that flooded the interior with natural light.

Charles and Ray designed this home for a different lifestyle and on a grander scale than the Eames House (the plans called for approximately 4,600 square feet), but their objective was nonetheless the same: to provide what they called an “unselfconscious” enclosure.

The Billy Wilder House represents one of the last architectural commissions that Charles and Ray undertook.  While they constructed a model and drew up preliminary plans, the house was never built.