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Stephen Kanner reveals his Modernist lineage in a new family home.
By Randy Gragg
Photography by John Ellis for Metropolis
May 2002
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For his Pacific Palisades home, self-described Pop Modernist architect
Stephen Kanner employed a subdued version of his typical style--with
whimsical touches like these portholes accenting an elegant modern
design.
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The exterior surface, covered by a "scratch coat" of plaster
punctuated by rebar spacer cubes, was left deliberately unfinished. The
house's open plan and seamless indoor-outdoor transitions place it in
the tradition of neighboring Modern homes by Richard Neutra, Charles
Eames, and Eero Saarinen.
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Kanner mixed high and low materials, using plywood for the floating
partition between the living and dining rooms (above) and marble slab
in a bathroom (below).
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Between the Charles and Ray Eames house in Pacific Palisades and Westwood's
In-N-Out Burger lie 50 years and a traffic-jammed L.A.-style drive.
But for architect Stephen Kanner, the buildings are as close as the two
sides of his brain: he's long been inspired by--and neighbors with--the
Eameses' famed abode; and he designed that In-N-Out Burger, which is right
around the corner from his office. Now the two have merged in a bold
new house he recently completed for his family.
With all the drive-through verve one might expect from the designer of an
award-winning burger palace, the house rises from a postwar Pacific
Palisades subdivision in angular forms surfaced in white plaster and blue
tile. But in every corner the exuberance follows function.
The modest 3,200-square-foot house offers a restrained, if decidedly unsober,
antidote to turn-of-the-new-century architectural excesses, from the McMansion
to the Blob. For Kanner it's also something of a homecoming. During the
last decade he's been known by the self-coined label Pop Modernist, designing
everything from children's day-care centers to apartment houses in colorfully
eccentric geometric forms, often punctured with enough porthole windows
to look like big blocks of Swiss cheese. Now 46 and at midcareer, Kanner
is returning to the basics he first studied in the work of pioneering
Modernists from Gerrit Rietveld to Richard Neutra. And then there is the
architect he grew up with: his father, the late Charles Kanner, designer
of such subtle Modernist structures as the Biltmore Fashion Park, in Phoenix.
"I thought with enough restraint I could balance Pop and Modernism
for something unique," Kanner says of his 1990s buildings. "But
we always saw the architecture in plan and section, effectively wrapping
them in a more flamboyant aesthetic. The house is a really good metaphor
for a more serious shift toward clarifying the architecture."
"It's a transitional house and a very beautiful one," according
to one of Los Angeles architecture's more influential insiders, Bernard
Zimmerman, organizer of LA 12, a much anticipated, once-every-dozen-years
exhibit devoted to the city's top rising stars. "Steve has a mixed
bag, and he needs to get that bag to mean something," Zimmerman adds.
"The house is a breakaway from his Pop Modern to a new modern."
Kanner's shift is gaining attention. Though he failed to make the most recent
LA 12, he is soon to be included in LA 20/New York 20, a traveling
exhibit Zimmerman will co-curate featuring emerging talents from Los Angeles
and New York. And last year Richard Meier invited Kanner to join the star-studded
list of 33 architects designing spec homes for real-estate investor Harry
J. Brown Jr.'s 100-acre subdivision, Houses at Sagaponack, on Long Island,
New York.
Ironically the design of this "breakaway" project was brought
on not by the freedom of being his own client but by the limitations. The
budget, of course, enforced a degree of discipline, but even more imposing
was the site: a sloping lot just the size of a tournament tennis court,
tightly surrounded on three sides by five other houses and facing the
usual banal suburban streetscape of alternating front lawns and driveways.
Yet having lived for years just down the street, the Kanners had come to
love both the walkability and friendliness of the neighborhood, not to mention
the charm of the community. "There's a million kids, and the streets
have sidewalks," he says. "It's like going back in time. The little
Fourth of July parade is hilarious. But then there's also the history of
the Case Study houses."
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