Marcel Sedletzky: Architect and Teacher

The buildings of Marcel Sedletzky are a discovery. Working primarily on the central coast of California from 1960 to 1973, Sedletzky left a small but intensely interesting corpus of structures, almost all domestic. Sedletzky was a European refugee who made his way to Los Angeles, where he worked from 1952 to 1958, in the offices of Victor Gruen Associates. He opened his solo practice in Carmel in 1960, where he began to design the handful of houses that made his reputation. His years in Los Angeles were apparent in his work, also reflections of Breuer, Rudolph, and Gropius, but Sedletzky's work was entirely his own, entirely Californian—organic, modernist, with carefully articulated interiors and bold exteriors. This beautiful and comprehensive book is based on the Sedletzky archive now held in the Special Collections of the University Library, University of California Santa Cruz. The book contains archival and recently commissioned photographs as well as a good selection of Sedletzky's fluent and confident working drawings. It is a welcome treat to add another architect to the roster of these who made the mid-century built environment of California so rich, especially with such a fine monograph on his life and work. Also included is a CD-ROM of the original manuscript of Sedletzky's renowned course on architectural perspective.