Archinect - News

Pierre Koenig’s last completed project, the Schwartz House, listed for over $4 million

2023-12-21T11:48:00-05:00

Pierre Koenig’s Schwartz House has been listed for sale in Rustic Canyon, Los Angeles. Built in 1994, the home is the last project Koenig completed, uniquely built on four structural steel beams.

Image credit: Cameron Carothers

Externally, the home takes the form of a steel cube held aloft by four 40-foot-tall structural steel columns. The cube is rotated 30 degrees on an axis to face the canyon and ocean and clad in bright steel with a blend of full-length and half-length windows. By contrast, the four columns and external staircase are finished in black paint.

Image credit: Cameron Carothers

Inside, the four-bedroom home features two main levels floating above a garage and sheltered courtyard. The upper and lower levels are connected by a yellow spiral staircase wrapping around one of the structural steel columns, offering a colorful departure from a pure material palette of hardwood and glass.

Image credit: Cameron Carot...

Frank Lloyd Wright’s final residential design lists for $9 million in Arizona

2023-02-08T19:16:00-05:00

The private home considered to be Frank Lloyd Wright’s final residential design has hit the market in Arizona for $8.95 million, according to the Robb Report and several local real estate listings.

The 3,095-square-foot Norman Lykes House, also known as the "Circular Sun House," was first designed by Wright shortly prior to his death in April 1959 and eventually completed by Taliesin architect John Rattenbury nine years later.

Image courtesy Deanna Peters/HomeSmart

It stands on a 1.3-acre plot overlooking the Phoenix Mountain Preserve in Palm Canyon and had previously been sold at an auction for $1.7 million in 2019 before being re-listed in September of 2020 for just under $8 million.

Image courtesy Deanna Peters/HomeSmart

Rattenbury’s 1994 renovation reduced the home’s capacity to three bedrooms from the original five. Its circular design was credited by Wright to the surrounding landscape.

Image courtesy Deanna Peters/HomeSmart

The home includes original furnishings made by Wright...

Frank Gehry's 8 Spruce Street goes up for sale

2021-11-04T18:11:00-04:00

Lower Manhattan’s 8 Spruce Street, the Frank Gehry-designed rental tower instantly recognizable for its one-of-a-kind undulating surface, is for sale with an equally eye-catching price tag.

Owner Brookfield Property Partners and Nuveen, the real estate arm of insurance company TIAA, have put the 76-story building on the market for $850 million. At the time of its opening, the approximately 900-unit tower was the tallest residential building in North America.

The building struggled during the pandemic as residents fled the city, leaving a quarter of its units vacant, according to The Real Deal. However, the building’s occupancy has since reportedly recovered to 94 percent.

Iconic Joshua Tree "starburst" shipping container home is officially on the market

2020-12-18T16:56:00-05:00

London-based architecture studio Whitaker Studio designs a three-bedroom, three-bath single-family residence near California's Joshua Tree National Park. While soothing desert views are always a plus, what makes this particular home so appealing is its looks and configuration.

The project idea was unveiled in 2017, and since then, visuals for the "starburst house" became a media sensation with its unique shape and clustered shipping container construction. Each shipping container segment ends with windows providing views of the surrounding landscape. Each shipping container is positioned at varying angles as it comes together at the center of the home.

Image courtesy of Whitaker Studio

With its stunningly realistic visuals, the home has not even started construction yet, the house is up for sale and listed at $3.5 million. An ideal desert getaway the studio interest for the property has only continued to increase.

Santa Monica real estate firm engel...

Does owning a Frank Lloyd Wright home come with a secret curse?

2019-08-19T18:00:00-04:00

With only 400-some Wright structures still standing, surely these listings must erupt in bidding wars from eager buyers as soon as they hit the market, right? Wrong. On the contrary, Wright homes tend to sit on the market for years. Often with numerous price cuts!

Owning a home designed by a famed architect may be a dream for many. However, what are some of the unforeseen factors that come with owning such a home? According to Adriana Velez from realtor.com, owning a Frank Lloyd Wright home comes with its fair share of obstacles.

Velez explains, "for starters, keep in mind that most Wright homes were built in the early to mid-1900s. So these homes are up in the years, and often in dire need of upkeep and repairs." She continues, "Repairing or restoring a Wright house is even more difficult if it has landmark status. That means any renovation plans must be approved by the local landmarks commission, and are subject to restrictions meant to preserve the historical accuracy of the structure."

Norman Lykes - Interior. Image courtesy of The Agency

Other challenges buyers of Wright-designed homes face can include the unconventional floor plans, furniture, and specific color schemes used during Wright's heyday. Potential buyers should anticipate th...

For the first time in 69 years, John Lautner's Sherman Oaks house is on the market

2019-07-16T13:44:00-04:00

One of Frank Lloyd Wright's most notable disciples, John Lautner made a distinct impact in California, specifically in Los Angeles. Known for his residential works, Lautner's exploration of space and material echoes Wright's organic architectural influence. The eye-catching curvilinear Louise Foster House, for example, considered to be one of Lautner's earliest commissioned works, resembles the David and Gladys Wright House, an elevated, circular home Wright completed for his son in 1952.

The 1,200-square-foot Foster House, complete with a redwood-clad exterior and a grand sunburst ceiling showcasing a tantalizing wood finish, is currently for sale.

Image © Junwan Li/Courtesy of Compass

A perfect getaway for someone looking to escape the busy city, the house sits on a 5,556-square-foot lot.

The two-story home has gone through some renovations over the years. According to usmodernist.org, Lautner decided to t...

Ai Weiwei-designed home goes on the market for $5.25M

2019-07-01T13:21:00-04:00

Ai Weiwei, artist and activist, has dabbled in architecture more than once in his career. From his Bird's Nest collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron to his work on the Jinhua Architecture Park, Weiwei's interests in architecture would eventually draw him towards a residential project. Located in Ancram, NY, the home's first owner had built it as a vacation retreat for Chinese-American businessman and renowned art collector, Christopher Tsai.

Rear view of main house. Image © Michael Bowman Photography

Guest house. Image © Michael Bowman Photography

Weiwei collaborated with the Swiss architecture firm HHF to design the art enthusiasts getaway home. Built on 37.5 acres, the house comprises a large main house consisting of 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. The main house is a connection of cube-like sections equaling to 3,700 square feet. In addition to the main house, Weiwei designed an additional guest house with a timber structure and corrugate...

Putting its future preservation into question, owner of Alvar Aalto's Paimio Sanatorium in Finland extends bidding period

2018-09-25T17:54:00-04:00

Considered one of Alvar Aalto's most important works, it came as little surprise that news of a Finnish district's plan to sell the architect's Paimio Sanatorium was met with shock and attempts at appeal.

Architects from the Finnish Association of Architects formed the Pro Paimio Committee and, along with the Alvar Aalto Foundation, have been working to ensure that any future owners commit to preserving the original architecture, interiors and furnishings in their entirety.

Photo: Maija Holma, Alvar Aalto Museum.

The Sanatorium is a protected site and any buyer will have to abide by the restrictions this implicates. However, those advocating on behalf of the key work of modern architecture are concerned that certain new usages could wreck the original interior, which was uniquely tailored to the needs of tuberculosis patients for whom the facility was built.

"Paimio is an integrated oeuvre d’art of architecture: only when all these parts are kept together, do they show the beauty ...

Alvar Aalto's Paimio Sanatorium is now for sale

2018-06-06T15:44:00-04:00

Alvar Aalto's Paimio Sanatorium in Finland is now for sale. Currently owned by the Hospital District of Southwest Finland, the district has announced its plans to sell the building by fall of 2018. The bidding period will end on August 23.

Paimio Sanatorium by Alvar Aalto, 1933, located in Paimio, Finland. Image: LeonL/Flickr.

Considered a national heritage site, Aalto's Sanatorium was completed in 1933 bringing international recognition to the country. His modern design was carefully tailored to the needs of tuberculosis patients for which the facility was built.

Paimio Sanatorium by Alvar Aalto, 1933, located in Paimio, Finland. Image: LeonL/Flickr.

Paimio Sanatorium by Alvar Aalto, 1933, located in Paimio, Finland. Image...

Here's your chance to own an apartment in Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse

2018-03-13T13:50:00-04:00

A duplex apartment in Le Corbusier’s Modernist icon La Cité Radieuse has hit the market for €598,000. [...] This 140 sq m apartment sits on a high floor of the colourful Modernist landmark, built from béton-brut concrete and declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016. The Marseille property is on the market via 20th and 21st century architecture specialists Architecture de Collection.

Photo © Architecture de Collection

Be it the béton brut appeal or the prospect of owning an appartement in the South of France, now's your moment to get both: a 1,500-square-foot unit on a higher floor in Le Corbusier's iconic Unité d’Habitation housing block in Marseille just hit the market, and it's pretty sweet. The asking price is €598,000 ($741,000).

Photo © Architecture de Collection

More interested in Corb's pre-Modernism oeuvre? Check out our From the Ground Up episode about his very first completed architectural design: Villa Fallet, completed in 1906-1907 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.

dRMM’s Stirling Prize-winning, revamped Hastings Pier is already for sale

2018-02-21T17:47:00-05:00

Property firm GVA said it was open to offers after being asked to find a buyer for the transformed Sussex coastal landmark. The charity behind dRMM’s much-loved refurbishment of the pier went into administration last year. Now the administrators have appointed GVA to sell the asset.

The charity responsible for restoring and running Hastings Pier—the once derelict landmark whose £14.2 million rebuild won this year's RIBA Stirling Prize—has been forced to put the property up for sell after experiencing some financial difficulties. According to the Architects' Journal, last year, the charity failed to agree a new three-year business plan with the Heritage Lottery Fund, Hastings Borough Council and East Sussex County Council in order to become self-funding.

Due to the charity's insolvency, administrators Smith & Williamson were appointed back in November in hopes of ensuring the pier's future. They have now put the property firm GVA in charge of selling the 145-year old pier, which will remain open throughout 2018 with funds from HLF already allocated to the project.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed Olfelt home is now for sale at $1.3M

2017-12-28T18:56:00-05:00

A rare find on the housing market: The Olfelt House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright can now be yours for $1.3 million. Located in St. Louis Park, Minnesota this rare find includes 3 beds and 2 baths set on 3.77 acres of private, grassy meadows. The house features a vaulted great room, walls of glass, and extensive built-ins. This 2,647-square-foot house was designed by Wright in 1958 and completed in 1960 for Paul C. Olfelt, a radiologist. The Olfelts worked with Wright personally before the architect’s death in 1959.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s upstate mushroom-shaped house asks $1.5M

2017-11-06T14:46:00-05:00

In Pleasantville, New York is a 1947 Usonian community of 50 houses that blend in with their surrounding landscape. All were approved by Frank Lloyd Wright, but three were built by the architect himself, the Sol Friedman House being one. Famous for its mushroom-shaped roofs and carport, the incredible home is now for sale asking $1.5 million.

courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

This private island with two Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes is on the market for $14.9 mill

2017-08-03T18:33:00-04:00

Most homes don't have their very own Wikipedia page, but then again, most homes aren't located on their own private island either. Based 50 miles north of NYC, a simple 15-minute helicopter ride away, the Massaro House sits atop the heart-shaped Petre island in the middle of Lake Mahopac and has quite the backstory, hence the free encyclopedic page in its honor.

Google Earth.

Back in 1949, the famed architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, was commissioned to design a home for the island by the engineer A.K Chahroudi. Due to money issues, the house was never built and a modest cottage, also designed by Wright, was put up instead until about 50 years later, when Joseph Massaro bought the whole property for $700,000. Instead of just getting an island, Massaro, who made his money as a sheet metal contractor, also acquired the blueprints and renderings of the original home. In 2000, he decided to sell his business and focus on the creation of the house and hired Wright historian Thomas A. Heinz t...

The Booth House, Philip Johnson's first constructed commission, now up for sale

2017-04-17T17:35:00-04:00

Built in 1946 in Bedford, New York, the 1450 sq. ft. Booth House was Philip Johnson’s first constructed commission. In 1955, photographer Robert Damora and his wife, the architect Sirkka Damora, moved in, intending for it to serve as temporary housing until they could build a home of their own design. After falling in love with the spare design, they stayed—until now. At age 93, Sirkka Damora is unable to manage the home physically or support it financially. The Booth House has been put up for sale and Damora is on the hunt for a new owner respectful of the value of the design.

The Booth House is similar to the Glass House in many ways. It’s built on a wide, grass-covered podium and features a large central fireplace as well as lots of glass. Unlike the Glass House, the Booth house has private rooms as well as generous storage. The Damora family were respectful of the original design even as their family grew. So they expanded by adding a subterranean lower level. They also built a s...

Jose Oubrerie's legendary and innovative Miller House on the market for $550K

2017-04-13T14:34:00-04:00

According to a listing on Zillow, Jose Oubrerie's visually complex, materially innovative Miller House is now on the market for $550,000. Each room is a study in unusual and exactingly executed detail; cabinets transition seamlessly into L-shaped shelving, while doors become hosts for asymmetrically placed conduits latched with what appears to be matte-finished silver nickel. Vivid bursts of color abruptly appear among otherwise natural-toned wood, from an electric blue wall to a wild red kitchen cabinet.

The effect is something akin to traveling through an architect's unbridled imagination; although the house does possess its own internal logic, the constant visual stimulus delivers perpetual surprise.

The Zillow listing possess a link to a 3D photographic tour of the house, which allows one to get a fuller sense of how the elements interlock, and just how dizzying it is to stride from one floor to another.

Looking to buy a small town? This Nevada desert gem could be yours for $8 Million

2016-04-27T13:58:00-04:00

An hour south from the bright lights of the Las Vegas strip, a tiny town in Nevada is up for sale. Cal-Nev-Ari, Nev. (pronounced Cal-Nev-Air) is off a lonely stretch of Highway 95, surrounded by distant mountains and endless desert. The town isn't far from the California and Arizona borders [...]. If you can afford the $8 million asking price, you'll get the airstrip, the diner and the town's only casino. That includes a dozen old slot machines and a smokey bar. This place has character.

The house that a "calculus rock star" built

2015-10-06T14:45:00-04:00

[The Canadian mathematician James] Stewart was...an unlikely architectural trailblazer. He devoted many years of his life, and much of his income, to building his dream home in an upmarket Toronto neighbourhood. Integral House – named after the 'integral', a concept in calculus – is a shrine to calculus, the mathematics of flowing change. Stewart died last December, aged 73, and Integral House is now for sale at £11.4m [approx. $17.4 million]

More about mathematical design on Archinect:

The Golden Ratio: Relevant or not?

Mesmerizing Mosque Ceilings built by Muslims

Win a copy of MORPHING by Design Topology Lab founder Joseph Choma

This modernist Rudolph Schindler church in South LA could be yours for $1.85M

2015-03-26T19:01:00-04:00

Prolific Los Angeles Modernist Rudolph Schindler designed dozens of timeless duplexes, apartments, houses, and office buildings, but he only ever designed one church. Bethlehem Baptist Church in Central-Alameda was built in 1944 for a small, black church congregation. Now, just after a much-needed restoration to what was for many years a pretty rough-looking building, the architecturally significant church—an official Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Landmark—is up for sale.

Chicago's Willis Tower sold for $1.3B to Blackstone Group

2015-03-19T13:20:00-04:00

Blackstone Group LP agreed to buy Chicago’s Willis Tower, the second-tallest building in the U.S., and plans to upgrade the retail and observatory space in a bet on growth in the city. [...] On a per-square-foot basis, the valuation for the more than 40-year-old Willis Tower is lower than deals for newer buildings. The Blackstone price is about $342 a square foot, based on about 3.8 million square feet (353,000 square meters) of rentable space.

Previously: Need a skyscraper? Chicago’s Willis Tower just hit the market.

Need a skyscraper? Chicago’s Willis Tower just hit the market.

2015-03-05T17:29:00-05:00

Chicago’s Willis Tower, once the world’s tallest building and one of the city’s top tourist attractions, is up for sale. [...] The 1,450-foot (442-meter) building, formerly known as the Sears Tower, is the second-tallest in the U.S., and was the world’s highest from its completion in the early 1970s until 1998 [...] “It’s iconic in the size and how it dominates the skyline, [...] As an office building, however, it’s 1970s construction.”

London's Gherkin is put up for sale

2014-07-29T11:21:00-04:00

London's Gherkin skyscraper has been put up for sale, with interest expected from Chinese, other Asian, and US buyers, estate agency Savills has said. The City of London tower is expected to fetch offers in the region of £650m, the firm said.

Greece protests over government plans to sell off historic national buildings

2014-03-19T20:55:00-04:00

Greece's cultural gems have become the focus of renewed protest on the streets of Athens following the cash-strapped government's announcement of plans to include prime properties around the Acropolis, and other landmark buildings, in its privatisation programme. Furious opponents marched through the city centre at the weekend to denounce the "illegal sale" of the country's heritage.

Where Are The Heroes To Save Pittsburgh's African-American Center?

2014-02-24T14:07:00-05:00

In 2009 a gleaming performing arts space opened to great fanfare in downtown Pittsburgh. The distinctive is as long as the block it occupies, and the corner of the building looks like the sail of a ship made in glass and stone. The August Wilson Center for African American Culture was meant to be a hub for African-American theater, art and education, named after renowned playwright and native son . Today the Center is for sale, unable to pay its bills.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Cincinnati Tonkens House For Sale For First Time

2013-02-11T11:45:00-05:00

Designed by the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1955 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991, the Gerald B. and Beverley Tonkens House was listed for the first time ever this week, with an asking price of $1.788M.

Eric Owen Moss' first built project is for sale

2012-10-03T18:43:00-04:00

1977 Contemporary Addition and Renovation was the first built work of Architect Eric Owen Moss. Zoned as Duplex, but divided into 3 Spaces, all with Kitchen Area, Guest Bath, W/D, and Fireplace. Top Space is light and bright multi-story Luxury Loft with 1.5 Baths, 4 Outdoor Decks, and Ocean Views Throughout.

Moss' "Triplex Apartments" in Playa Del Rey (LA) have been listed at $1.925M

Christopher Hawthorne, LA Times Architecture Critic, put his home on the market

2012-06-12T17:42:00-04:00

Although as a preservation-minded fellow, he probably wouldn't suggest that the two-bedroom, one-bathroom house off Colorado Boulevard is a teardown: "Now is your chance to live in the cottage and oversee construction, or you can just move in, enjoy the charm, the seclusion, the views--and write that novel."

Frank Lloyd Wright's Heller House is on the market for $2.5m

2012-01-31T18:08:00-05:00

Its astonishing 6,100 sq ft of outrageous opulence - including 33 stained glass windows, four fireplaces, several wood panelled walls, seven bedrooms and its very own working elevator - has allowed its residents to live in spectacular splendour for almost 120 years. Now prospective home-owners have the chance to buy into bliss as Chicago's luxurious Isodore H Heller House goes on the market for $2.5million.

House of Davids

2011-08-16T01:20:18-04:00

I am a fighter and you're not gonna get rid of me..

'The House of Davids has been an L.A. landmark of sorts ever since Norwood Young put a line of statues in his yard in 1997. Now he’s selling. He’s done with the Davids.'

Famous Wright home goes for $4.5m

2011-07-22T18:39:33-04:00

A house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the style of a Mayan temple has sold for US$4.5 million (Dh16.5m) after two years on the market. The buyer was Ron Burkle, a supermarket magnate and investor who is known for preserving historic properties.