John Lautner houses

John Lautner, a Frank Lloyd Wright disciple, is probably best know for Chemosphere House, the flying saucer like house that he designed in 1960. It has been a landmark architecture in Los Angeles for nearly half a century. When the decaying house was purchased and restored by well-known German publisher Benedikt Taschen in 2000, I remember Brad Pitt, an architecture buff, visited the house a few times during the restoration. I’m sure Brad Pitt would have wanted to do the same thing that Benedikt Taschen did if he had had the time to focus on such things.

The Goldstein House, another house by Lautner which was originally designed in 1963 for the first owners was later purchased by a billionaire “NBA superfan” James Goldstein in 1989. In keeping with the original design philosophy, Goldstein closely worked with Lautner till the architect’s death in 1994 to renovate and expand the original structure using new technologies which were not available when the original part had been built.

This weekend I discovered that Segel House (1979), a more recent house by John Lautner on the beach of Malibu, was for sale – an astounding thirty three and a half million dollars!