Chris Pratt has drawn ire from architecture aficionados after news broke that the actor and his wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, had razed a historic, mid-century modern home to make way for a sprawling 15,000-sq-ft mansion.
Architect Ken Ungar, whose portfolio largely features high-end modern farmhouse-style residences, will design a home for the couple, Architectural Digest reported. The property [...] will also feature a three-car garage and a secondary unit near the pool.
— The Guardian
As The Guardian reported, plans for a demolition went mostly under the radar until the Los Angeles Conservancy issued a warning last January. Actor Chris Pratt and his wife Katherine Schwarzenegger purchased the home later with the apparent intention of replacing it with an oft-reviled “modern farmhouse” design and have yet to respond to any other news outlets or critics, who are framing this as a loss tantamount to the destruction of Marcel Breuer's binuclear Geller I house on Long Island in January of 2022.
6 Comments
If any, let the Justice speak! You never know!?:))
The city or cities must pass stricter and broader ordinances preserving the culturally significant architectural stock.
National and local AIA should take a public position on this and other similar cases. Typically architect's chambers often fight similar cases in some foreign countries.
AIA would never risk offending the architects of the new junk like the "farmhouse" McMansion replacing things like a Craig Ellwood classic.
To replace a Craig Elwood with a “design” by Ken Ungar is laughable.
I am not surprised that the two of them don’t know any better, …. what surprises me is that they are not smart enough to hire somebody that can advise them to do the right thing.
You have to know what you don’t know.
What's the right thing? That is nothing and only opinion. There is no such thing as the "right thing". That is just an opinion of one mind set. Craig Ellwood was a building designer if I recall, correctly. Throughout his career he was basically a building designer. I don't recall if he ever actually was licensed as an architect during his actual career. I think he was a registered building designer, in California. Now, the problem with historic preservation, the "right thing" for them is not the same as what is the "right thing" in the minds of those who don't give a shit about historic preservation. To them, its a old house that sucked for energy efficiency and probably outlasted its useful life to them. It probably cost more than its worth to modernize it. They want a house that suits their desires and needs not some dead person from ~70 or so years ago that doesn't meet modern codes. They wanted the site more than the house. It was the land that was more valuable to them when they bought it. To them, the house was antiquated garbage. The "right thing" in their mind is going to be different than that of historic preservationists. You also have architects that support historic preservation and those who are on the opposite end of the spectrum. There are architects that believe if a house is older than 30 or 50 years old, tear it down and replace it. So you have two diametrically opposing paradigms of thoughts on the issue.
All you will answer with is one school of thought. It is not going to be reconciled. There will always be these two different paradigms that will be opposing and governments will always be swinging back and forth on these paradigms as they also do with regards to Republican and Democrats. This is because we are not a nation of one mind.
From what I see, the house was too small for their taste. They want a mansion not a 3000 sq.ft. house. In fact, it was designed by a Emiel Becsky, working from Craig Ellwood's office, who was probably involved in some capacity but if I recall Craig Ellwood was a building designer not a licensed architect but became a registered building designer in 1964, I think when California established the registered building designer (RBD) program until the RBD program was terminated in the 80s (IIRC).
First thing I'll say, the house was a beautiful house. It was probably 5 times too small for what they wanted. They loved the site and location but not the house so they bought the site with the house so they can build what they wanted there and get rid of an old house that probably has significant heat loss and they didn't want to be boxed into some heavy handed restrictions on literally everything. They didn't want to live in a museum artifact. They didn't want to keep spend money preserving it and keeping it intact to the 1950s where 80% of the stuff no longer is produced. A lot of preservationists with these hallmark houses, they want them to be preserved museum pieces and conserved exactly the way it was when it was built with exact original fixtures or sourced replacements that are of the exact same make and model... not even replicas. They want the exact same glass and trims. They want nothing changed but intact as original as conceivably possible. That's not a house these two wanted. They want a house they can live in, change and modify and alter as they feel. Historic homes can be quite restrictive especially if you yield to the most vocal and usually most extreme of historic preservationists.
So we have this issue. Property owners who bought this property that doesn't want to live in a museum with people coming by all the time photographing it. They wanted the site because they wanted the view and the location's environment. They just didn't want to be in a museum.
So that's the problem you may get with houses that are so prized that they can no longer be homes for people. You might as well make all these places no longer allowed to be occupied as homes and turn them literally into museums.
There are more than 2 paradigms in looking at this scenario. They could have respect the legacy by integrating the design into the existing structure or given it away to some preservationist who might want to relocate to another site. They are many ways to approach it but this is not sustainable towards our planet.
No one seems to acknowledge the ecological damage its doing. The amount of carbon and construction waste it produces. It should be no surprise that the house demoed was sent to a land fill and any habitat that might be there is destroyed and gone.
They are not the only rich celebrity couple who are buying property, demoing buildings, eliminating trees, removing dirt and build a new 10,000 to 50,000 sq ft fortress to fit their lifestyles so they could be on Architectural Digest. You see more construction in Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Bel Air and Hollywood Hills where homes are being destroyed, and then build bigger homes than any parts of the world.
What I find annoying is how these influencers or celebrities or movie stars (even architects) are tooting themselves as environmentalist when they are a bunch of hypocrites, especially one is a Kennedy and her father has his last name on the academic department of USC addressing climate change.
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