The colorful architect, who passed away last week at the age of 88, looked to the city’s expansive stock of mid-century modern showcase pieces to inform his own designs, including the Wimbledon House and later in his attempts at urban planning, referencing the city’s notorious sprawl repeatedly in his 1998 book Cities for a Small Planet.

“The Eames House is one of the prime exemplars that have shaped my mind,” he said in a 1989 interview of the Pacific Palisades Home built by the Eameses in 1949. “Its amazing simplicity and economy of style, that seems to have sprung fully fledged from Eames’ head, is a model of perfection in Modern design.”

Rogers was hooked after a trip he made with fellow Yale classmate Norman Foster in the late 1950s, according to the LA Times’ Carolina Miranda. 

"We raced around California, seeing as many of the Case Study houses as possible," Rogers recalled in his 2017 memoir A Place for all People. "I had written my thesis at Yale on Schindler, so I felt like an expert when I went visiting."