Color Facade Concepts

This set is interesting not only because it gives some indication of the color schemes Ain may have had in mind for the street facade, but it also reveals an unrealized constructivist abstraction of the exterior planes.

In these images above, we have multiple sets of garage pairs in sketch format. If you look back at the streetscape concept posted a few days ago (that dark, black rectilinear geometry, also shown in pale blue on the google overlay), you can see how the two street-facing walls for each pair of houses is sharing a common wall. For each house pair on the street, each upper garage originally included a small rectangular window near the roof line, while the lower garage was a blank wall. So when viewing at eye level on Highview, those two garages show as pairs of step-down planes with alternating windows as the viewer progresses down the sloped street.

Ain obviously thought of these two planes as both a singular entity as well as one that could intersect in ways not governed by the break point of the higher and lower roof. It's curious that these sketches show this extension of the lower garage into the upper garage by way of color, and by dealing with the space next to the window as a kind of void that blurs the line between beginning and end. Probably just a curiosity for the project in the end, but it's a great artifact nonetheless.

Although color plans were undoubtedly realized for both interior and exterior (see the Mar Vista Tract site for unprecedented documentation of the color plans), it's not clear if the Park Planned Homes were ever painted anything but white in their final state. Period pictures only ever reveal a white, smooth-coat stucco finish on all of the homes. Residents have obviously painted the stucco surface over the years, some even opting to add a layer of texture as was the trend for the last few decades. Some still maintain or have been restored to a smooth coat finish; It's harder to keep up, but for a few of us, it's definitely a more aesthetically pleasing acknowledgement of the home's simplicity.