Restoring a ‘lost’ modern gem in California

California couple seeks to restore the work of a famous architect

LOS ANGELES — Three years ago, Trina Turk, a fashion and housewares designer who channels the sunny optimism of California, logged onto the real estate website Curbed. com and felt her blood pressure spike. On that day, the site ran an item about a house designed by the late midcentury architect John Lautner that had mysteriously slipped off the radar for 65 years.

The story was brief and the details sketchy: The house was built in 1948, it was in the Echo Park neighborhood, and it had been owned by one family for decades. Curbed quoted a listing agent and told readers that the “long-lost” Lautner would hit the market within days.

Along with her husband, Jonathan Skow, Turk is passionate about architecture and design. The couple own two historic homes: a Streamline Moderne built in 1936 in Palm Springs and nicknamed Ship of the Desert for its yachtlike scale and swooping lines, and a 1940s postand-beam in Silver Lake designed by J.R. Davidson that serves as the couple’s main residence.

Each house was painstakingly and expensively restored by the couple, and each got the full-color shelter-mag treatment. For one visiting journalist, Skow — a photographer and the designer of the couple’s menswear line, called Mr. Turk — mixed up lime sours while Trina Turk, dressed in a bright print caftan of her own design, showed off the desert view from the “ship” windows.

“It’s almost a stewardship for them — they really love taking care of these gems,” Barbara Bestor, an architect who designed the couple’s Los Angeles showroom, said. “Trina said to me once, ‘Well, we didn’t have children, so we like taking care of these houses.’”

For house collectors in Southern California, there is no better score — no child more golden — than a Lautner dwelling. The architect’s bold, experimental, sui generis houses are marked by floating concrete roofs and forests of redwood paneling, and suggest a master of the universe in residence. Perhaps that’s why Lautner houses are a favorite of Hollywood directors, who have cast the Garcia House as the lair of an international drug dealer in “Lethal Weapon 2,” and the Sheats-goldstein Residence as the bachelor pad of pornographer Jackie Treehorn in “The Barbara Bestor, architect