Game On!
Who An eclectic array of guest came out for the inaugural MAK Games, a “tennis invitational” to benefit the art-and-architecture think tank the MAK Center at the Sheats Goldstein Residence, the architect John Lautner’s Modernist masterpiece in Beverly Hills. The event, chaired by Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s in-house architect Priscilla Fraser and the... More
Desert By Design
Some architects want their work to be admired; John Lautner wanted his to be experienced. “He designed from the inside out,” says interior designer and hotelier Tracy Beckmann. “He wanted you to feel.” Beckmann and her partner Ryan Trowbridge opened the Hotel Lautner, a small boutique property in Desert Hot Springs, last September after a... More
Space Invader
For the L.A.-based painter and installation artist Sarah Cain, space is more than just physical; it’s also psychic and emotional. “I try to morph the three,” says Cain, whose site-specific works incorporate existing elements like wind and light and dip into a playfully vivid palette that defies her contemplative nature. Cain developed her style creating... More
“Electric Car” Director Greens Events
“The greenest event is no event at all; just everybody stay at home,” says “Who Killed the Electric Car?” director Chris Paine. “But,” he adds, “I’m not a purist like that.” Paine, in fact, is a regular fixture on Hollywood’s green social scene, often pulling up to premieres and parties in his show-stopping Tesla, but... More
Arts & Architecture Redux
Its pages may espouse the principles of modernism and minimalism, but in its presentation, Taschen’s Arts & Architecture, the Complete Reprint 1945-67, is as maximal as it gets – in the publisher’s standard fashion. After distilling seven decades of the Italian design journal Domus into 12 hardbound volumes, Taschen took a different approach with A&A,... More
Blast Off!
“Where should I put the test tubes?” asked one confused chef’s assistant. It’s not a question normally heard at a dinner party, but then again, Materials & Applications—the landscape/architecture research center in Silver Lake where the bash was being held—doesn’t do “normal.” And that includes this retro-futuristic-themed dinner celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Russian... More
Natural Order: Restoring John Lautner’s Harpel House
Mark Haddawy wasn’t born a stylish man about town, zipping through the Hollywood Hills in the 1964 Ferrari Steve McQueen used to drive, his rocker-skinny frame clad, more often than not, in Dior Homme and limited edition Nikes. Through the second grade, Haddawy’s German-born mother dressed him in lederhosen — “you know, those leather shorts... More
Making Waves with West Coast Style
“OOHHH! Aahhh!” went the chorus round the P.S.1 meeting room when Ball-Nogues Studio unveiled the model of “Liquid Sky,” its winning entry in this year’s Young Architects Program competition at the Museum of Modern Art affiliate in Queens, N.Y. With showmanship befitting a project inspired by spectacle, psychedelia and the circus, Echo Park architects Benjamin... More
Auction House
In December, among the lots in the Important 20th-Century Design auction at Wright in Chicago is a house to put them in. Four and a half years ago, Mark Haddawy, an owner of the Resurrection vintage boutiques, purchased Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House No. 21 (above) in Los Angeles, sight unseen. Now, after essentially curating... More