Archinect - News

Ray Kappe's Rustic Canyon marvel lists for $4.99 million in Santa Monica

2024-08-26T16:40:00-04:00

A significant Ray Kappe design, the 1984 Borghei-Cookston Residence in Rustic Canyon, is available for purchase after listing for $4.99 million recently in Santa Monica, California. The 3-bed, 4-bath home is 3,574 square feet and offers a dramatic vaulted glass half-domed facade with concrete masonry massing and steel featuring prominently throughout an atypical (for Kappe’s palette) and vertically-oriented design beset by several outdoor balconies.

Its listing follows that of the SCI-Arc cofounder's 1991 Keeler House in nearby Pacific Palisades for $12 million. Another late Kappe, his final residential design in Los Angeles, went on the market last November for $4.2 million. Kappe died in 2019 with a portfolio of around 100 private home designs. Our 2016 Archinect One-to-One interview with the late architect is available here.

Image courtesy Christie's International Real Estate SoCal

Image courtesy Christie's International Re...

Ray Kappe's Keeler House lists for $12 million in Los Angeles

2024-04-05T18:23:00-04:00

Late SCI-Arc founder Ray Kappe’s Keeler House design has hit the market in Pacific Palisades, California, for $12 million.

The split-level, 4,142-square-foot Post and Beam design was built over four and a half years using Kappe’s nearby personal residence as its model. A rich palette of redwood, teak, Douglas fir, concrete, and glass feature carefully throughout the home, which sits on a 7-acre hillside lot and is replete with a two-car garage, four bedrooms, three baths, a storeroom, and separate guest quarters.

Kappe designed the home in 1991 for a local jazz musician. Its interior layout is centered around its open-plan living/entertainment area that is cantilevered to extend over the hillside. A pleasing layered effect composes the interior, with glass inlay floor and ceiling blocks included to further incorporate the presence of natural light deeper into the structure via a vaulted skylight. Six concrete towers work to elevate the home above the tree line, allowing for a floati...

SCI-Arc founder Ray Kappe's final residential design hits the market for $4.2M in Los Angeles

2023-11-29T18:24:00-05:00

Late SCI-Arc founding director Ray Kappe’s final residential design has hit the market in Venice Beach, California, for a listed price of $4.2 million.

The 2,482-square-foot home has three bedrooms and was originally built in 1947. Kappe began the commission in 2019 (the same year he passed away), designing for the owner a two-story addition that added a garage and small recreation room to the property at 938 Amoroso Place. The renovation was completed earlier this year at an undisclosed cost. Tracey Becker of COMPASS is the listing’s agent.

Image courtesy Realtor.com

“When he came to look at the property, he was impressed with the concept of the tree fern garden and how to incorporate the house within that context,” the anonymous seller told Realtor.com. “Ray was also interested in designing a home that went beyond the normal postage-stamp-sized lot home, by continuing his signature style of getting lost in a space — where everywhere you looked, an importan...

SCI-Arc founding director Ray Kappe’s first Los Angeles area home hits the market in Glendale

2022-08-26T14:33:00-04:00

A historically significant mid-century modern home designed by SCI-Arc founding director Ray Kappe has hit the market in Glendale, California, for an asking price of just under $2.2 million.

The Pasadena Star is reporting the recent listing of Kappe’s Goetschel House, a 1954 commission that was recently restored to reflect its original design by HabHouse owner Andreas E.G. Larsson. Thanks to an archive of Kappe’s drawings and sketches for the home kept at the Getty Research Institute, Larsson hastened a yearlong renovation that added new elements such as a pergola and an outdoor shower to the property, which had been partly demolished. At the end of the restoration, the home had appreciated in value by nearly seven figures over the original sale price of $1.33 million.

Image: Cameron Carothers courtesy Unique California Property

The residence was the first designed ...

Ray Kappe, founding director of SCI-Arc, and master of Southern California modernism, has died

2019-11-22T11:55:00-05:00

Architect and educator, Ray Kappe FAIA, passed away yesterday. The renowned architect experienced lung failure due to many bouts with pneumonia in recent years.

Kappe founded the Department of Architecture at California Polytechnic State University of Pomona before leaving in 1972 to start what is today known as the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Along with his wife, Shelly Kappe, and other students and faculty, Kappe helped pioneer a new approach to architectural education. Today, SCI-Arc has thousands of graduates working and teaching across the globe and is considered one of the top architecture schools in the US.

An early SCI-Arc class in the school's "main space" at 1800 Berkeley St.

Archinect had the honor of interviewing Kappe back in 2016 in his own house. Check out "Modern Scientist: SCI-Arc founder Ray Kappe on Archinect Sessions One-to-One" to listen.

A true master, Kappe's legacy follows those of early SoCal architects such as Schindler, Neutra...

Modern Scientist: SCI-Arc founder Ray Kappe on Archinect Sessions One-to-One #18

2016-04-11T17:36:00-04:00

We visited Ray Kappe in his breathtaking home in Rustic Canyon, Los Angeles, to hear his thoughts on the shifting grounds of architecture education, and how architecture seems to always play catch-up to the historical zeitgeist. In a career spanning 60+ years and counting – including his roles as co-founder of Cal Poly Pomona's architecture department, and the founding-director of SCI-Arc – Kappe has not only been an impressive force of architectural practice (often referred to as an under-the-radar southern Californian modern master), but an educator constantly seeking to bring science and the world at large into architecture.

Listen to One-to-One #18 with Ray Kappe:

iTunes: Click here to listen and subscribe to the new "Archinect Sessions One-to-One" podcast
SoundCloud: click here to follow Archinect
RSS: subscribe with any of your favorite podcasting apps via our RSS feed: http://onetoone.libsyn.com/rss
Download: this episode

Photos of the Kappe Residence:

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In Residence: Ray Kappe

2014-11-23T23:39:00-05:00

A modern masterpiece of glass and redwood, the home of architect Ray Kappe is often referenced as one of the greatest residences in Southern California, looks much the same today as it did a half-century ago—a contemporary extension of the early SoCal glass-house tradition, begun decades earlier by architects like Rudolph Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, and Harwell Hamilton Harris.

I remember writing this back in 2006 for an AIA convention piece.

"Kappe Houses are interesting in that they visually take you to places without you physically moving an inch. His spaces don't stop. You can look but you won't see a line that doesn't depart, travel, connect or fly away into the canyons. He is daringly modern, moving you through the bottlenecks of organized combustion before dropping you in his poetry of space, architectural construction, scale, light and experiment."

ILLUSIONIST

2012-08-28T16:22:00-04:00

THE HYPE OF THE SCHOOL IS WAY DEEPER THAN WHAT I BRIEFLY EXPERIENCED LAST SEPTEMBER. WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY I HAVE MENTIONED TO ERIC, BUT NOT IN DETAIL. ERIC SHOWED NO INTEREST IN ME ELABORATING.

Another take on Sci Arc. This time from the horse's mouth... Glen Small was one of the original and visionary founders of the school. Particularly interesting first person up close and personal storytelling in which Eric Moss referred as "ILLUSIONIST". Excuse some of the name spellings.

Archinect Sessions kicks off with Ray Kappe on Oct. 22

2011-10-14T01:35:00-04:00

We're excited to announce the next round of Archinect Sessions, to kick off on Saturday, October 22nd, at the Neutra VDL House, in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, collaborating with Cal Poly Pomona.

Archinect Sessions is a series of discussions with architects, academics and other interesting individuals from the tangents of architecture, in and around Southern California, moderated by Archinect's Orhan Ayyuce.

For our first event we're very honored to host Ray Kappe, to talk about his impressive career as a practicing architect and academic.

Click here to reserve your seats.

For those of you who can attend, and for those of you who can't we'll be posting videos on Archinect shortly following each event.

Short Essay: Thank you Esther McCoy

2011-09-30T11:52:00-04:00

I met Esther McCoy in1978 AIA Regional Conference, Newport Beach, California. I was there as a young wonderer hoping to find information on architecture and study it.
Unknowingly and randomly I walked into one of the conference rooms and listened an inspired young architect, Eric Moss, showing kind of buildings I have never seen before.
After the presentation to roughly twenty people, the audience moved to a small patio area outside the room. This is when I lit the cigarette of this silver haired elegant and youthful lady who asked for a match and we start to talk. I responded to her curiosity and in few minutes I told her my story about wanting to go to architecture school. This was right around time I was rejected by "American citizens and California residents only" Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo for being a foreign student. I described her my birthplace Izmir and the Aegean architecture of Turkey. She was taking a great delight of my story, description of architecture I grew up wit...

Cal Poly Pomona ENV40 Celebration

2011-04-12T15:09:02-04:00

Event includes panel discussions featuring leaders of the environmental design professions including: Marvin J. Malecha, Ray Kappe, Richard Chylinski, Frank Clementi, Stefanos Polyzoides, Deborah Sussman, Michael Rotondi, Ken Smith, Rick Bishop, and Lorraine Wild.

SCHEDULE OF ENV 40 PANELS, Saturday April 16th 2011

10 – 11 am: The early years

Dean Emeritus Marvin J. Malecha, FAIA, 2009 President of the American Institute of Architects
Professor Emeritus Ray Kappe, FAIA, former Chair of the Architecture Department (who went on to found SCI-ARC)
Professor Emeritus Richard Chylinski, FAIA, former Chair of the Architecture Department (who helped establish the department in 1966)
Professor Emeritus Ken Nakaba, FASLA, former Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department
Professor Emeritus Bob Perry, Landscape Architecture Department
Professor Emeritus Charles Loggins, Urban and Regional Planning Department, former Associate Dean of ENV

11 – 11:45 am: Years of growth

Dean Emeritus Barry Wasserman, FAIA, former California State Architect
Professor Emeritus Rod Tapp, FASLA, Landscape Architecture Department
Calvin Abe, FASLA, AHBE Landscape Architects
Steven A. Preston, FAICP, City Manager, City of San Gabriel
Bob Kain, AIA, Healthcare Principal, HMC Architec...