Touring Designer Rodney Walker's Transparent House in Ojai, Now With $1 Million Price Chop

In Beautiful Losers, Curbed documents the great Los Angeles architecture that can't seem to find the right buyer. Previously: John Lautner's Schaffer Residence. Nominations to the tipline please.

Somehow, designer Rodney Walker's old personal residence up in Ojai manages to be both dizzyingly lovely and nearly invisible--there's so much greenery and glass in the house that it hardly feels like there's any indoors there at all (good thing it sits high on a hilltop). But then it's hard to miss those take-no-prisoners triangular roof lines. Walker, who's best known for the three houses he designed for Arts & Architecture's Case Study House program, wasn't a licensed architect, but he was a very hands-on guy: listing agent Crosby Doe tells us he worked on everything for the Ojai house down to clearing the land. The hexagonal house was built in 1959 and has four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a media room, and an outdoor kitchen on 3.4 acres (just above Reese Witherspoon's Wallace Neff-designed house, which is also on the market). It's also got an enormous fig tree draped over its great room; apparently the tree is so old now and the roots go so deep that it doesn't even need to be watered.

The ceilings in the Walker are made of a kind of fiberboard called Celotex and the skylights have light fixtures in them for nighttime use; the stained concrete floors still have original radiant heating underneath.

The Walker Residence went up for sale in September 2011 asking $3.995 million (then, eventually, $3.5 million). It was just pricechopped last night down to $2.95 million. The current owners, who bought the house from the Walker family, are moving back to Los Angeles. Doe tells us there's been one offer made on the house so far, but it's still looking for Mr. or Ms. Right.
· The Walker Residence, 1959 [Crosby Doe Associates]
· Case Study Designer Rodney Walker's Ojai Shangri-la [Curbed LA]
· Touring John Lautner's Incredible Schaffer House and Talking About Why It Isn't Selling [Curbed LA]