From the Archive: 35 Years Later, They Hired John Lautner to Tweak a Project From His Past

As a part of our 25th-anniversary celebration, we’re republishing formative magazine stories from before our website launched. This story previously appeared in Dwell’s February 2002 issue.

Restoring a classic—which requires little more than original plans, a brilliant contractor, and a king’s ransom—is easy. Renovating one is another matter entirely. Faced with reconciling personal need with the responsibilities of preservation, every homeowner cursed/blessed with a masterpiece has, during one crisis or another, wondered, "What would [insert name of genius here] have done?"

Anne Friedberg and Howard Rodman actually got an answer—and from one of the icons of Los Angeles architecture, John Lautner. In a city renowned for the quality of its residences, Lautner’s achievement is singular: More than any of his contemporaries—including his teacher, Frank Lloyd Wright—he found the essence of the city he claimed to loathe and converted it into architecture. Lautner’s 60-odd residences, which include the world famous flying saucer-shaped Chemosphere, seem to have coalesced out of L.A.’s sexuality and corruption, friendliness and inscrutability, its capacity for fantasy and its hard, dark power. Often described as "observatories," equally are Lautner’s works observations—of an actual, cultural, and imaginative topography of the L.A. state of mind.

Given the force of his vision, it’s surprising to learn—as Friedberg and Rodman did—that Lautner cared less about how his creations looked than about how they felt to those who lived in them. In 1992, the couple purchased the Zahn house, a two-bedroom structure designed by Lautner in 1957 for an elderly homeopathic doctor. Much as they appreciated its singularity. Friedberg and Rodman, writers who work at home—she authored Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern, he wrote the screenplay for Joe Gould’s Secret—knew the residence needed significant remodeling to accommodate their needs, and ultimately approached Lautner himself. The results proved transforming—not only to the structure but to the clients as well.

Ironically, given the outcome, Friedberg and Rodman weren’t looking for a house at all. "We were reading the Sunday real estate ads, which we did as entertainment," Friedberg recalls. "And Howard said, ‘Hey! First time on the market. John Lautner.’ We'd never gone to look at a house before." They contacted theagent, the splendidly monikered Crosby Doe, of Mossler, Deasy, and Doe, an L.A. real estate firm specializing in classic architectural properties. Doe proved to be a bit of a classic himself. "He is an extremely dapper man with a little moustache who often wears ascots."Rodman says. "And he drives either a vintage Facel Vega, Jaguar, or a 1966 International Harvester Travel-All restored to a fare-thee-well." Doe’s flair for presentation extended to his work. "Crosby was showing the house in December, January, one of those monthswhere the air is very clear and the view really pops out at you," Rodman recalls. "He chose the hour," Friedberg adds. "Twilight. You walked up the driveway and you could see the ocean. The siting was just incredible."

And the house, in Beachwood Canyon, above Hollywood, is a minor gem. Trapezoidal in shape, the exterior is distinguished by twin rows of adjustable, perforated steel screens, which provide shade, privacy, and ventilation. Within, a light-filled central atrium begins at the glass-enclosed entry, from which a staircase winds up to the main floor, and climaxes in a generous skylight supported by a cross of steel beams.

Rodman "was very taken with it as a kind of fantasy," which combined the villain’s lair in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest with an embrace of futuristic (for 1957) gadgetry. Lautner had fitted the house with an intercom that connects the kitchen with the primary bedroom, entrance, and carport (and featureda police band), and what Rodman describes as "one of these future-that-never-quite-came-to-pass low-voltage relay systems. The virtue is, you can turn certain lights on and off from any of five places. The downsides are—we now know—there are only a couple of electricians who still understand this. Parts are really hard to get. And if one of the relays jams, then every light in the house that’s on stays on, and every light that’s off stays off."

Having arrived as tire-kickers, Friedberg and Rodman departed as potential buyers—and, embracing their role, decided they couldn’t take the first place they saw. "We went around with Crosby and looked at about thirty-five other houses," Rodman says. "And we got the best architectural education you could possibly get." Doe’s knowledge of the development of the city and its styles dispensed from the Jaguar’s driver’s seat over three months of Saturdays increased Friedberg and Rodman’s appreciation, not only of L.A.’s superlative residential architecture, but the uniqueness of Lautner’s creation. "We came back to it three times," Rodman recalls. "There was a day that we realized that the driveway spirals a certain way, the stair spirals in the same direction, and in fact it’s a chambered nautilus. Or you’s see details, like the way the walls float." With a nudge from Doe, who invoked Beachwood’s literary past, the couple took the plunge.

As structured, however, the 1,800-square-foot second-floor living quarters (with an additional 500-square-foot utility room on the ground floor) couldn’t accommodate the couple’s need for office space and bookshelves. When all the architects they approached, including such heavyweights as Eric Owen Moss, and Henry Smith-Miller and Laurie Hawkinson, proved unwilling to tamper with a classic, the Rodmans turned to the maestro himself.