On the heights of the posh district of Beverly Hills, a house grafted into the rock soars above the void. Its angular hull, open like a large bird’s beak, embraces the entire horizon of Los Angeles. No border between interior and exterior, only a bay window that can be operated remotely. No railings at the end of the terrace. Nothing that could hinder the exhilarating feeling of floating in the sky above this flat immensity barely disturbed in the distance by the small growth of the towers of Bunker Hill, the financial district.
Vegetation rushes in everywhere, in the open-air bathroom, in the body of water that runs along the entrance to the house, along the rock against which it leans, where frogs splash around between the water lilies… Daylight seeps into the cracks, all the way to the back of the cave where a shower of rays falls on the benches from small holes drilled in the vault.
Welcome to the Sheats Goldstein Residence, one of the most mind-blowing modern homes in Los Angeles. It was designed in 1963 by John Lautner (1911-1994), a pupil of Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), the architect of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, who very early contributed to establishing the city of cinema as one of the most fascinating form laboratories of the XXe century. The residence owes its notoriety to the photos of Julius Shulman (1910-2009), a local from the stage, who magnified so many masterpieces of modern architecture. But also to the Coen brothers, who made it, in The Big Lebowski (1998), the residence of a pornographer played by Ben Gazzara, to Snoop Dogg, Pharrell Williams and the many rappers who shot music videos there, as well as many fashion photographers who made him a true icon of the pop culture.
Futuristic and organic
This isn’t Lautner’s first house to starlet. The Chemosphere, built in 1960 on the 45-degree slope of a Hollywood hill, plays a prominent role in Double Bodysuit (1984), by Brian DePalma. This panoptic structure, resembling a flying saucer placed on a 9-meter concrete pillar, was cut to unleash the paranoia of the main character. A few years earlier, the Elrod House (1968), in Palm Springs (California), hosted an epic fight between James Bond and two gymnasts looking like models in Diamonds are forever (1971), by Guy Hamilton.
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