#476/John Lautner: Jan-Richard Kikkert + Tycho Saariste + David Mauer + Elizabeth Godley + ADFF's Kyle Bergman + Musical Guest Nicole Zuraitis

USModernist Radio - Architecture You Love

This episode of U.S. Modernist Radio explores the dedicated efforts to document and preserve mid-century modern architectural legacies. It features

Key takeaways

• Jan-Ricard Kiekert and Tycho Saariste use Google Earth and archives to track down undocumented John Lautner properties.
• The restoration of the Mount Washington house involves clearing 30,000 pounds of accumulated debris and hoarding.

Main topics

• John Lautner architecture
• Mid-century modern preservation

Notable quotes

Architects never enter a room. They experience a spatial sequence.

Conclusion

A profound look at the intersection of architectural history, personal

Transcript preview

Speaker 6 (0:00) Hi, I'm Carol Wedge, the CEO of American Institute of Architects, and you're listening to U.S. Modernist Radio. Speaker 1 (0:16) Oh, I don't care what Mama don't allow, gonna draw mine modern anyhow. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Welcome to U.S. Modernist Radio, where we talk and laugh with people who enjoy, own, create, dream about, preserve, love, and hate modernist architecture, the most exciting and controversial buildings in the world. I'm Tom Geyl, and with us today, two special guys from the Netherlands, Jan-Ricard Kiekert, and Tico Cerist, the Lewis and Clark of architectural exploration. They are on a mission to visit nearly all the John Lautner houses in the world. Next, David Maurer and Elizabeth Godley are bringing one of those Lautner houses back from decades of decline. We'll wrap up with returning podcast guest Nicole Zeraitis, the Grammy-winning jazz singer-songwriter with a new album. But before that, Kyle Bergman shares what's up for this fall's Architecture and Design Film Festival in New York. And now, the guy you'll see in the audience on opening night of that film festival, Mr. Modernism, George Smart. Hey, thanks, Tom. The ADFF is always a great experience. I love going every year. But if you can't make it, the ADFF travels to cities all around the world. Today, let's talk about architects. They're highly trained to bring order to disorder, to take ideas to reality. You can spot one at pretty much any party. They're the ones gently repositioning things on your bookshelf into a meaningful yet asymmetrical composition. When asked about popular culture, they explain that they don't watch television. Instead, they engage with media environments. Architects never enter a room. They experience a spatial sequence. They don't design a hallway. They choreograph a procession. A window. is a moment of transparency, and a porch is a threshold condition negotiating a landscape. Ask an architect where the bathroom is, and you'll only find out after they describe the tectonic honesty of the route to the bathroom, which mere mortals like me call a hallway. Meanwhile, I've really got to go. It's enough to make you head towards the threshold condition or sneak out through a moment of transparency. Besides language, There's some pretentiousness. Architects believe IKEA is a complete moral failing. They believe that a wall gap that casts a small shadow can redeem a soul. They wince at the word cozy because cozy was never an element in their studio classes in school. And they have opinions about gravel. So many opinions. Yet no profession yearns more to be publicly appreciated than architecture. Every architect secretly dreams that strangers will stop them in the street and whisper, your credit union changed my life. But that rarely happens. Every 10 years, the profession has an existential crisis about being unloved and convenes many meetings on how to engage the public. Every damn time, they decide that only by significantly educating the public and elevating them will architects finally be appreciated. Needless to say, this strategy fails every damn time because the public is really not interested in being elevated. For the public, architecture is 8, 9, 10, or lower in their list of life priorities. Architecture will never be at 1, 2, or 3 like it is for architects. The public just wants to have fun, see some cool buildings, ask a few questions, and move on to their other priorities or a martini. In short, To be loved, architects have to get in that conceptual elevator and go down a few floors instead of trying to wangle all the public to get in and come upstairs. Otherwise, architects will continue to want to be understood by the public in a way that is impossible. U.S. Modernist Radio is underwritten by the Brent R. Harris Charitable Trust, restorer of Richard Neutra's Kauffman Desert House in Palm Springs and six other houses in California. By the E. Fay Jones Conservancy, preserving the legacy of modernist architecture in Northwest Arkansas, efayjonesconservancy.org. And by Diane Bald and the Budman Family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu, and Palm Springs. My next two guests were on the show early on for U.S. Martyrs Radio, and I love these guys. They are like the Batman and Robin of the architectural world. They fly around, they solve mysteries, they're all over the place, and they have found just about everything there is to know about John Lautner. But we're going to find out if there's any new information about it. Welcome, Tico and Jan-Ricard. Thank you. Happy to be here again. Let's go back. What started this crazy thing, this adventure that you went on now at least, what, 20 years ago, 25 years ago? 20 years ago. Yeah. It's a long story, actually. Speaker 8 (5:34) But I worked in an office, and I was asked to take care of the library. And I agreed to do this, though. But I said, I want to buy at least one book a week, you know, to expand our library. And I happened to be having the office around the corner of a very great architecture bookstore, Architectura Natura in Amsterdam. And I bought a book on an architect whose work was fascinating, something totally outside the average Dutch condition. I looked at it, I stored it, I put it away and I ingested it and that was it. My wife happened to come from the US. We were there at Christmas time and my brother-in-law said, I want to show you an island which has the most fantastic decorated houses. So we went to the island and we passed the one magnificent place after the other. And one was there laying there like a fish on the seashore with minimum decoration. And I thought, ah, I recognize the thing. But I didn't know exactly what it was. It turned out to be a John Lautner house. After that, I got the question to organize a trip with students to see architecture. So I thought I can go to a city and visit all the architecture there. But then I thought, oh, maybe it's nice to just focus on one career, an excellent career, and try to visit everything that's possible. So the conditions should have been excellent work, progress, more or less located in reasonable driving time. So then I thought that's a great idea to do so. But the problem was that the addresses were never published of Lautner's work. A handful, like we could find eight addresses. So that's where the story stalled a bit. Well, if I don't have addresses, we cannot go there. Then I found in this book of Tarsian, a big Tarsian series, and in the back of the book was a map where Lautner indicated all his built works. So then it was easier because of the introduction of Google Earth to start looking for it. But I thought, oh, this will take years. I need a companion to help me doing this. So then I happened to talk to Tycho. Yeah, that's Speaker 3 (7:37) all Speaker 8 (7:37) right. Speaker 3 (7:38) Step in. So I knew Lautner a little bit because I was with the university. We did a trip to the US, to LA in 1994. And on our list were, by coincidence, two Lautner houses, the Wolf House and Silvertop. And Silvertop, it was right after the Northridge earthquake. So it was in a very bad state. And so it was like a building site at the time. But then we went to the Wolf House. And the Wolf House, I completely was flabbergasted. I loved it. It was so different than all the modern architecture. It was all so different from the neutrals. And I loved it, just the way, the organic architecture of it. It felt like this is a place which is not only to show off, but it's really nice to live in. But then I didn't know a lot of them. And then it took years before then the Lautner monography came out, or at least that it was for sale in the Netherlands. And somebody gave it to me as a present. And I looked at this book and was like, wow, I need to see this. And shortly after, Jan-Richard called me with this plan of doing this excursion. And I said, well, if you're going to see Lautner, I'm going to join you, whatever it takes. Of course, I was not involved with the academy where Jan-Richard was a teacher. But I said, well, I'm not a student either, but whatever it takes, I will join you. So then he said, well, you can help me look up some addresses and we can see what we can organize. Speaker 1 (9:02) And that's when it really took off. And you guys were poring over Google Earth maps and scouting rooftops? Absolutely. Everything Speaker 3 (9:12) we could find, white pages to see the original names. If they were mentioned, they're calling people with the same names as the owners. looking at things like Property Shark to see who could be the owner to contact them. Actually, it was a time that my wife was always going to sleep very early because she was pregnant. And then I was like, okay, just continue looking for houses on Google Earth. And I wouldn't go to sleep until I found one. Sometimes it was like 3 a.m. in the night. And then we texted each other immediately, I found one. Speaker 1 (9:44) And Speaker 3 (9:45) he wouldn't go to sleep either before finding one. So it's a great adventure. Speaker 8 (9:50) It went back and forth finding these places. And then we combined, like the Google Earth, we combined it with the information in the books, like the map from the Tashin book and the floor plans from Lautner's own monograph. And then it was also helpful that there was a list of names of the projects. Sometimes it said just a name, you know, and then we looked it up. And it was like, for instance, a connection of a name of a person who won an Oscar. And the next year there was a Lautner building with the same name. So that has to be a connection. And then looking through family members of that person that passed away in the meantime, some people had a very original name, so single name. So it was easier to find them. And in the end, we literally found everything. There was not one house that we did not find. So also, of course, with the help of the archives. There was this big exhibition on Lautner's work in the Hammer. And on the blueprints was actually often the address so we could write it down. Or we went to the archives and we took out rolls. And like for some clients, there were more locations. So we quickly looked it up and then we found them. Like for instance, the first house in our book is the Oldrich. And it was interesting because there were several designs for A. Oldrich, also on different addresses. And then at the moment, we looked at Google Earth and said, oh, God, this has to be. It was like a pool and a little extension to a house. So we drove to that address. And then, yeah, there was a big garden wall. It was difficult to see. And then Tico took his camera over the edge of the wall, straight into the face of the guy who was enjoying his poolside afternoon. So the guy ran out and said, what's going on here? And then we said, oh, you know, don't you know you live in the real John Lautner designed building? And he didn't know. And just a few years later, the house was for sale saying, real John Laudner design. Speaker 1 (11:39) You've got to turn this into a movie, guys. I mean, you've got all the elements here of a great film, a great buddy movie across America, finding all the Laudners. Yeah, Speaker 8 (11:51) yeah. Speaker 3 (11:51) How Speaker 1 (11:51) long did it take you to find most of them? Speaker 3 (11:56) Well, the first, we had this excursion planned that was in May and we started, I think, just before Christmas in 2006. So May 2007, the excursion was there. We had like four months or five months to find everything. And then we found maybe the first 60 houses. And after this excursion, we just continued because we thought, well, the quality of work was so high and it was so amazing that we want to do this again. So the next year we tried again with students, but then not enough people signed up. And we were very disappointed, of course, because we knew how fascinating this work was. But then we decided to just do the two of us and just continue. And then we could also concentrate a bit more and really focus a bit more on finding these addresses and not do side work like Neutras or Schindler's. Right. Speaker 8 (12:45) Actually, the director of the school, the Academy of Architecture in Arnhem, Oh, Jakobs. And he said, well, maybe it's better if just the two of you go, because then you can also see the obscure ones, you know, the carport and the pool extension. And then you don't have to repeat what you did last year, but you can really dive into the full body of work. And he sponsored also part of our trip. So we owe great thanks to him. Absolutely. Speaker 1 (13:07) Yeah. Are there any houses by Lautner left that you haven't gotten into that are on your unicorn list? Yes, there are still a few. That's a Speaker 3 (13:18) very Speaker 1 (13:18) painful question. Speaker 3 (13:21) There's, of course, the Malibu Cliff House, or Pacific Coast House, or Levy House, or whatever you call it. Yes. That one is just a fortress. It's impossible. We tried everything. We contacted everybody who would possibly know him. Yes. And we came very far, very close. But in the end, always, when he found out that it was these guys from Amsterdam, then he just said no. Yeah, and Speaker 8 (13:47) the last time we were in the US, we went to the US after we finished our first edition. And then we passed the house and there was just a car with a guard in it, you know, with his blackout windows. So we stepped out of our car and immediately this sort of gorilla guy jumped in our neck, you know, to get rid of us. So it's Speaker 1 (14:04) really well protected. Did you give him a book? I imagine if you handed the gorilla guy a book, you would have gotten in. Probably not. I'm not the kind of guy who would be charmed Speaker 3 (14:14) by a Speaker 1 (14:15) book. I don't Speaker 8 (14:16) think he was able to read, actually. Okay. Okay. And then there's the Siegel house, which also has turned out to be rather difficult, earned before by Courtney Cox, who bought it from the original client. And then we were close of getting there, and they were moving houses, and then they said, ah, no, it's not so convenient. And then the house got sold, so we said, okay, now we get a new chance to visit the house, but it got more difficult even. Speaker 3 (14:42) It's Ed Norton Speaker 8 (14:43) now, right? No, Speaker 3 (14:45) no. Oh, Speaker 1 (14:45) that Speaker 3 (14:45) one's Jamie McCourt. Okay. At Northland, I want to see the Stephenshounds. Speaker 8 (14:50) All Speaker 3 (14:50) right. Yeah, that we've seen. Speaker 8 (14:52) But there's always a reason why we're not allowed. So it's the uber-rich who don't want to be bothered by a tooth-flying Dutchman. And there's people who own houses that were in the family, but they're very poor-conditioned houses. And I always thought they feel ashamed. And for us, it doesn't matter, of course. We prefer a house. which needs a bit of paint than the ones that are being remodeled. So, for instance, Zimmerman always, we tried him forever. And I once talked him to the phone. And then he said, well, you can see the house after I'm dead. So, yeah. Well, at least there's an opening for you. I think you guys will probably be around for that. That house has a funny story because we could see who were the neighbors. And then... We also found the phone number of the neighbor. So I found a lady who lives next door to the Zimmermann house. And she said, oh, that's interesting. She says, but, you know, neighbor. And, you know, in the back of my garden, we have a little wooden shed, a treehouse. And if you climb the treehouse, you can look actually straight from the treehouse into the Zimmermann. So that's what we did. Wow. That Speaker 1 (15:58) is resourceful. Yeah, I know. Speaker 1 (16:02) You really are superheroes. You'll just make anything happen. I don't know. Speaker 8 (16:07) I'm always surprised that we never got shot, actually, because, you know. Speaker 1 (16:12) Now, between the first edition of Lautner A to Z and this new edition, have you found any new information or houses or things surprising? Yeah, I mean, some houses were remodeled after Speaker 8 (16:24) they were sold. A lot of houses changed hands, actually. A lot of people passed away also. So in that sense, there was a very strong reason to revisit the Lautner houses. Like Silvertop has been remodeled, but also other houses, houses that we never managed to get into. Suddenly we were able to see, like Lautner's own house. The lady sold the house and it's now being renovated by Frank Escher. And then we were able to see the house for the first time. So we