there was a video on the homepage of yahoo featuring a really spacey real estate agent.

apparently, you can hire a really bad architect with $75 million.

i live in orange county and see brion jeannette's houses going up everywhere. i haven't heard about a 75m house though, but in this area, i certainly believe it. if you interested, this is jeannette's website...

http://www.customarchitecture.com/

i kid you not, this is his website...i especially like how the residential projects are broken down as "traditional", "contemporary", "mediterainian", etc.

what was that Philip Johnson said, something along the lines of "Architects are whores"? This guy strikes me as a definate architectural crackwhore. And as such probably makes way more than the rest of us, I don't know wether to hate him or congratulate him.

Aw, c'mon...
He's just the current incarnation of Mike Brady!

The most disturbing thing about the architect's site is that he touts his designs as energy effieient. If you're designing 30,000 SF houses you're totally missing the point of the whole sustainability thing, unless maybe your clients happen to have 60 kids.

As for the house, the architect admits it's a freakin portabello mushroom! The roof would make a cool skate park. The shell looks cheap, like shotcrete sprayed on chicken wire. I wonder what the actual cost of construction was...probably a fraction of the asking price. Even allowing a ridiculously high $1000/SF construction cost, the total would have "only" come to 30M.

and don't forget prime SoCal coastal property like that might be another cool$20 mil

sounds like a hype.

nice article Orhan, ... it voices my exact sentiments !!

"It's a joke. It's an image thing. It's an ego trip to sell the most expensive home on the market, but at the end of the day, you've got to sell the … thing."

The Portabello Estate

4627 Brighton Road

Corona del Mar, CA

Check the Listing Agent Website:

John McMonigle

I admire the guy. He's obviously seizing the opportunity to make mad cash. We should too, but of course we should do it better.

People like to brag about how much they paid for this and that. It's a gimmick, but such a huge price gives a product higher status in people's minds.

Hey, if this guy is making all this money, what are we doing wrong? Are we going to wait forever for society to wake up to good architectural taste? People love their McMansions and love categorizing into "Spanish Colonial", "Mediterranean," "Tuscan", "Tudor" and what have you.
How do we stick to our design sensibilities and not sell our souls to appease our ignorant clients? If only we'd give them what they think they want, we could stop complaining about meagre pay, and start complaining about selling out.

At 30k sf and $75mil, that's $2500 per square foot!

For you multi-millionaires looking for a winter retreat, I recommend the $880 per square foot Campbell Cliffs:

link

"i pay maria the housecleaner, 450k per year! nyah, nyah!"



ok, we'll never hear that kind of bragging.

for that visual theme, and that much money, all of the glass should have compound curves.

and how much did it cost to build the Monterey aquarium? i want that when i buy my 75mil home. :-)


notice that the building's spread obliterates the lot's topography. that's sooooo mcmansion.

and notice the not-so-subtle wording of the pr brag: "record-setting listing price."