Bradley Wheeler
Fotografo e giornalista di architettura, risiede a Los Angeles; ha pubblicato su diverse testate a livello internazionale, tra cui The New York Times e Architectural Record. I recenti incarichi per KPF, Pei Cobb Freed, Perkins Eastman e Bank of China lo hanno portato a New York, Milano e Pechino. An architectural photographer and writer based in Los Angeles, he has been featured in numerous publications including the New York Times and Architectural Record. Recent assignments for KPF, Pei Cobb Freed, Perkins Eastman and the Bank of China have taken him to New York, Milan and Beijing.
In the neighbourhood of Hollywood Hills, in Los Angeles, a villa designed by Frank Gehry in the 1970s has been refurbished by Dan Brunn Architecture to help it fit in with Southern Californian lifestyle’s in the 21st century
Secluded from the madness that can be Los Angeles, the “Hide Out” house renovation lives up to its name, thanks to the design work of Dan Brunn Architecture (DBA). This structure, originally designed by Los-Angeles-based architect Frank Gehry for a noted L.A. contemporary art-collecting couple, is considered to be the famed architect’s first single-family home design. Decades later, the new owners, a well-known visual artist and family, decided the time had come to reboot the original 1970s Gehry project. Their intended goal was to accommodate and also soften the typical frenetic and digitally overloaded Southern California lifestyle in the 21st century. From the street, one enters the structure via an oversized copper-clad entry portal that clearly indicates ingress. Inside, a walnut stair element screens the threshold from the interior private sanctum sanctorum. The hand-crafted stair sculpture is comprised of multiple-ribbed units that vertically define each of the stair risers
and divide each stair tread in half. Light pouring down the stairwell and through the dynamic angular “slates” accentuates motion and seems to lead the way into the space. Following the entry sequence, DBA conceived a more spacious and light-filled main area. By removing walls and reorganizing the Gehry ground floor around the original centralized skylight, the firm transformed the previous living area into a mega home/studio/gallery space, one that enhances the artist-owner’s workand-entertainment lifestyle. Integral to the design part is the ample wall space, which serves
to exhibit the artist’s newest work and other changing displays. Throughout the design, DBA’s reinterpretations of residential tropes become stand-out design features that mark out the key features of this bespoke project. For example, a standard partition wall (at the far end of the main space) is rethought as a pivoting element that creates a myriad of interior spatial geometries. The floor-to-ceiling 4.3 meters by 3.7 meters (14 feet by 12 feet high) wall swings effortlessly to and fro, allowing artistic flow to continue into an even more hidden multi-purpose room that can double as a guest bedroom (complete with fold-up Murphy bed), and library with a floor-to-ceiling bookcase