As part of the John Lautner one hundredth birthday celebrations, the Lautner Foundation and the MAK Center opened up four of Lautner's houses for a tour this past weekend. On Monday we visited the Sheats-Goldstein House, on Tuesday we poked around the Harpel House in the Hollywood Hills, yesterday we saw the Jacobsen House in the Cahuenga Pass, and we end our week-long odyssey in Benedict Canyon with the Schwimmer House.
Photos by Elizabeth Daniels While John Lautner designed some dramatic spaces, we're not sure we'd think of him as the go-to guy for a castle in the hills. But that's what Dr. Alden Schwimmer wanted, and the result is the 1982 Schwimmer House in Benedict Canyon. The whole thing is a sort of rainbow shape, with a hallway hugging the hillside, then an arc of public spaces and master suite, a row of huge stone towers, and a long terrace curved around the outside. On the lower level, a pool cantilevers over the hill. The six towers (some contain bathrooms, one's a bar, another's a pantry) are pretty castley, and so is the spiral front staircase (carpeted in red). If you wanted, you could even imagine Marimekko-clad sentries posted along the outdoor walkways, which feel like they go on for miles.
· Inside John Lautner's Dangerous Sheats-Goldstein House [Curbed LA]
· Outside John Lautner's Painstakingly Resurrected Harpel House [Curbed LA]
· Inside John Lautner's Little Hexagonal-Framed Jacobsen House [Curbed LA]
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