There are a lot of weird and wonderful perks to my work. Admittedly, most are weirder than they are wonderful. But then there are those moments that are so wonderful that I have to stop and look in a mirror just to confirm that it’s all real. Is this really happening?
For the last few days, I’ve been showing LA to the the publishers of Metropolis, Horace and Eugenie Havemeyer, thanks to the recommendation of my dear friend Jade Chang, who had been Metropolis‘ West Coast editor for years (up until, you know, the Troubles, and even now she still writes for them regularly). They were swinging through town on their way to pick up an award from the AIA at the national convention in San Francisco this week.
Since they founded the magazine in 1981, Horace and Eugenie have been closely involved in every aspect of the content and production; as Horace said, “I’ve read every single word we’ve ever published.” And I believe him. They’re possibly more up on everything design and architecture in LA than most people I know who live here. I simply served as kind of a design ambassador. An architectural attaché, if you will.
In Pasadena we embarked upon a Greene & Greene treasure hunt after touring the Gamble House (“Run for it, Marty!“) and saw Bungalow Heaven. In addition to the magazine, Metropolis publishes a few great books a year like Fritz Haeg’s Edible Estates, which Horace and Eugenie were such big fans of, they were booing the lawns and cheering for any grass-less landscaping in the front yards. I was completely charmed from this moment on.
We stopped by Heath Ceramics to visit Adam Silverman, who stopped spackling bright blue glazes on top of classic Heath vases long enough to give us a wonderful studio tour. Coincidentally, they’re having an open studio at Heath this weekend if you want to try your hand at glazing.
The store is something to behold, designed by Commune to feel like working potter’s studio (which, actually, it is). As I perused the racks of pretty summer plates in shimmery pink and orange, Eugenie demonstrated the height difference between her and Adam.
After a quick lap through Twentieth, we then headed to one of their can’t-miss-it stops, the SLS Hotel, which I’d recently written about in a hotel feature for the Architect’s Newspaper. Coincidentally, I had just been for breakfast the morning before, and it’s a good thing I went back because it took all my concentration to focus on a meal that considers this a “bagel with lox” (which I ordered because it’s kind of a rule that I order any food offered in an ice cream cone presentation). But I hadn’t had much time to consider the decor.
Anyway, this part of the trip was even more surreal, as we dipped into the lobby (more and better photos over at the AN story), swished through the ballroom and entered the clubby darkness of the Moss at SLS boutique, which is a completely different experience when you’re looking at all the wacky wares with people who like, know all these designers and every little story behind each object. We met Josh, who was arranging some Vitra miniatures in a case. Horace mentioned he was surprised that Josh was allowed to stage the products for the notoriously picky Murray Moss. “Well, I do get to set it up, but then I have to send a photo to Murray and he says, move that a little that way,” he laughed. “But he lets me set it up the first time.” Which may mean Moss is loosening up just a bit?
We then headed west to Living Homes, the platinum LEED-certified prefab prototype inhabited by company founder Steve Glenn. As Horace and Eugenie oohed and aahed over the lean, green living space, Steve diverted all the praise to Ray Kappe, the legendary architect who designed it. “Actually, if you think this house is great, you should go see Ray’s house,” he said. Fifteen minutes later, we were.
To reach the home of Ray and Shelly Kappe, you must first drive down a street lined with many other houses that Ray designed. When you arrive, you must then ford not one but two of the legitimate waterfalls which flow underneath it, fed by natural springs that trickle over the concrete steps and down into the street. Once you’re inside, you walk up a few dozen more. And after that, you walk down and up and down and up and down and up to get to the various elevations of each room. It’s what you might call treacherous-modern. There are no handrails, and no railings between the split levels, and there are a few places you might feel the need to hold your breath as you step over legitimate gaps in the walkways. (You, too, can cheat death in the name of architecture: On May 18 the Kappe House is on a walking tour of the street led by led by Leo Marmol, who also designed some houses in the neighborhood.)
I asked Ray how many people had, say, tumbled headfirst into that gap in the carpet down to his studio a story below after too many martinis. “None,” he said with a sly smile. “You know, most people actually don’t want to kill themselves. Even kids.” Yes, Ray and Shelly raised their kids in this house, the kind of last-stop-before-the-ER playground that would give most parents chronic hives. But they were able to torture their kids in another way, he soon revealed, as I gawked at the lap pool located in the hill above the house. “It’s about a mile down to the ocean so we made the kids hike down if they wanted to swim,” Ray said, that devious smile returning. “As soon as they moved out, we built the pool.”
Standing here with Ray (here talking to our awesome driver, Alex, who was loving the architecture lesson he was getting by carting us around), in what is widely known to be the greatest house in Los Angeles, maybe California, maybe in all the world, I had a lot of questions. But the single most important thing I had to ask Ray about was David Duchovny. See, the Showtime show Californication that features Duchovny as, well, a Californicator (and soon, my friend Diane Farr as a “horny grad student”) stars a Kappe-designed Benton House (and lots more modern architecture). Ray was prepared for such queries: The house had been published a few years ago and he went to get the magazine to show me how it really looked. He walked me through each shot showing me how it had been restaged for the show.
It’s just your typical Monday afternoon. I have now said “fornication” three times to Ray Kappe. Shelly Kappe’s sitting on the stairs exchanging stories with Horace and Eugenie about Charles and Ray Eames, who lived just up the hill in Pacific Palisades. It’s enough to make one a little woozy. So I wandered into the bathroom, which didn’t help much at all. With its stacks of towels in alternating coral and orange and red, its raw concrete cut with warm wood beams, and a shower that reaches up so high into the sky it probably feels like you’re simply rinsing off with the moisture shaking down from the trees…my knees got even weaker. This was the world’s most perfect bathroom. A cathedral of cleansing.
And of course, in a moment like that, I had to confirm this was indeed all really happening. So I had to look in the mirror, just to make sure.
