LISA YAMADA
Staff writer
Gone are the shanty beach cottages that once dotted Malibu’s pristine coast. Where more and more homes are reflecting the design aesthetic of entertainment mogul David Geffen’s Malibu Beach Inn, the cozy beach cottages that line Pacific Coast Highway are becoming ancient relics of a life that once was: when the city was a much quieter, a less pretentious sort of place, an escape from the hustle and burn of the hectic Los Angeles lights.
Although Malibu still remains a haven away from city life, the architectural design of homes and businesses have shifted.
“All the casual beach cottages [that once speckled the Malibu coast during the ’20s and ’30s] are being replaced by larger, more expensive homes,” said Dr. Michael Zakian, director of the Weisman Museum, the most recent replacement being Geffen’s million-dollar monster. “David Geffen transformed a casual beach hotel into something more formal, with a higher sense of style.”
With the price of real estate continuing to soar near the ridiculous, better-designed buildings and more expensive construction will inevitably emerge.
Even before Malibu became associated with extreme wealth, swarming paparazzi and celebrity rehabs, it carried a secret allure, a dream-like quality that appealed to celebrities, as well as to those who idolized them.
Despite Malibu’s growing celebrity status during the 1930s, the price of real estate was not nearly as astronomical as it is today.
The first architecture, according to Zakian, was essentially tents being rented out on the beach to celebrities who would flock to Malibu for the weekend or during summer months. Malibu architecture subsequently evolved from the function of living at the beach.
Naturally, as buildings were built, the designs were suited for and centered around easy beach living. These “cottages” or “single bungalows,” as Zakian calls them, were simplistic and practical in form.
The beach cottages were rented out by May Rindge, wife of Massachusetts millionaire Frederick Hastings Rindge in 1926. The Rindges had bought 13,300 acres of Malibu ranch land for $10 an acre in 1892. Eventually, May built a little summer home that came to be known as the Adamson House as a wedding present for her daughter, Rhoda, and husband, Merrit Huntley Adamson.
May began renting out 30-foot lots on the beach in the Malibu Colony to the Hollywood stars during summer months at a rate of $1 per beachfront foot, about $30 per month. She also enlisted Hollywood carpenters to build cottages for about $2,600, equal to about $29,000 today. The narrow 30- foot lots served a very practical function, allowing more people access to the beaches, according to Zakian.
Remnants of the days of beach bungalows influenced much of the design in the years that followed, although form began dominating function. While much had changed in Malibu, some of the Colony’s original impossibly narrow, 30-foot lots remained, and in 1968, architect John Lautner designed the first of his many Malibu homes — the Stevens House — on one such lot. His design was highly unconventional at the time. The frame of the house followed the high, sloping curve of a wave about to break. Floor-to-ceiling glass walls literally touching the sand give way to magnificent views of the Pacific.
Surrounded by the beauty of the sea, glass became a heavily-used medium in design. Architects swathed homes in panels of glass, providing sweeping panoramic views of the ocean.
Harry Gesner’s Eagle’s Watch House sits perched high above on La Costa, wide glass windows capturing the ocean’s deep, blue expanse. Although originally built in 1955, Eagle’s Watch, resembling something out of a Dr. Seuss book, still incites inquisitive second looks from drivers below on PCH.
Glass as a medium also became important because it brightened homes by emitting natural light. Before architect Frank Gehry, the golden-boy of titanium and metal, designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, as well as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, he drew out the plans for the Davis House in 1972. Irregular patterns in the glass skylights washed the interior in soft, natural light and cast artistic shadow lines on clean, white walls.
Although Malibu design has evolved over the years — from modernism and the ranch-style home to post-modernism and art deco — and is far from the simple beach cottages of old, there is one thing that unites the city’s architectural style.
“All the homes are built with the idea of providing a common beach lifestyle,” said Zakian.
Richard Olsen in “Malibu, A Century of Living by the Sea,” wrote, “Malibu has always been relatively remote from the rest of LA … Location is still the main reason that dozens of superstars continue to live [here,] maintaining Malibu’s indelible association with the mythology of celebrity eighty years after it began.”
Malibu will continue to see its share of Geffens, Britneys, Mels and Halles, but it is this fascinating celebrity that makes Malibu architecture, as well as the city itself, so unique.
03-20-2008
