October 1, 5 PM
ICA Miami welcomes Homay King, Professor of Art History and Digital Media at Bryn Mawr College, to the Art + Research Center (A+RC) for a virtual lecture presented in conjunction with the A+RC Fall 2026 semester, New Approaches to Cinema. The lecture is free and open to the public with advance RSVP.
In “Better Living in Eichlerville: California Modernism’s Influence on Apple,” King examines the suburban tract housing developments built by Joseph Eichler in California from the 1950s through the 1970s and their unexpected connection to the design of the personal computer.
Working with architects influenced by California Modernism and figures such as Richard Neutra, Eichler sought to bring Bauhaus-inspired principles of modern living to middle-class Californians, particularly in Silicon Valley and along the San Francisco Peninsula. His mass-produced post-and-beam homes, constructed with natural materials, became a recognizable feature of the California suburbs. Their flat, opaque, nearly windowless front facades and transparent glass backs challenged the dominant suburban model centered on front-facing picture windows.
King argues that this architectural language also shaped the aesthetics of emerging digital technology. Steve Jobs grew up in an Eichler look-alike and later cited its influence on his design sensibility. According to King, the design of personal computers drew on California Modernist principles of seamless minimalism, privacy, private property, and “indoor-outdoor living.”
The lecture also addresses Eichler’s public advocacy for open-access housing, which contributed to more diverse neighborhoods at a time when many American suburbs were shaped by legally enforced segregation.
The presentation is drawn from King’s book manuscript in progress, Go West: A Mythology of California’s Silicon Valley.
| Event DetailsDate: Thursday, October 1, 2026 Time: 5 PM Location: Virtual This lecture is free and open to the public with advance RSVP. |
Homay King is Professor of History of Art at Bryn Mawr College. She is the author of two books: Lost in Translation: Orientalism, Cinema, and the Enigmatic Signifier and Virtual Memory: Time-based Art and the Dream of Digitality. Her essays have appeared in Afterall, Discourse, Film Quarterly, October, and other publications including the catalogue for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s China: Through the Looking Glass and The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné. She is working on a book project entitled Go West: A Mythology of California’s Silicon Valley, for which she was awarded an Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellowship at the National Gallery of Art. She is a member of the Camera Obscura editorial collective.
