INTERIOR DIVINER
MEET THE VISIONARY QUEEN OF L.A.’S HOTTEST REAL ESTATE MARKET.
Meet the visionary queen of LA’s hottest real estate market.
While Venice Beach real estate is now beating Beverly Hills and Bel-Air in per-square-foot prices, the community has its own code of cool when it comes to architecture. Here, in the hood celebrities like Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke and Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel call home, cookie-cutter compounds need not apply. And perhaps no one translates the city’s penchant for one-of-a-kind style into walls and windows better than designerbuilder Kim Gordon. The longtime local resident has quietly become the area’s go-to guru of luxury-loving homes that still channel the area’s bohemian roots and preference for the handmade over mass-produced.
“The idea of California design became a bit stuck in the Midcentury aesthetic,” says Gordon. “This is home to SciArc, after all, and we’ve seen an abundance of houses with a certain feeling. Flat roofs, wood on the ceiling, no closets, low ceilings… zero drama. I want homes to feel sophisticated and grown-up, and at the same time to capture a feeling that is quintessentially Californian. I also like to live indoors and outdoors and explore materials and texture—to add embellishment but not in a traditional way. So I started to design and build them [myself]. Luckily, other people appreciated and wanted the same things.”
In the past three years, Gordon has completed half a dozen residences in her usual manner: overseeing the entire process,
from materials collection and construction to the smallest details of the interior design. And while her style varies from home to home—some feel more like a modern take on a Belgian farmhouse while others are more evocative of Big Sur by way of SoCal beach—the through-lines are consistent: soaring, steelframed glass walls, total indoor/ outdoor integration, and no shortage of drama.
Each house has sold for above its asking price—snapped up by a Silicon Beach power list of Google executives (one recently purchased a home on a coveted walk street for $4 million) and creatives such as music industry exec Neil Jacobson (will.i.am, Fergie, Robin Thicke), who had purchased another Kim Gordon home on the same street in 2012 and sold it last year for $6.1 million. More recently, Gordon completed a farmhouse-style home on Milwood Avenue, down the street from hipster haven Gjelina. The buyers were Grammy-winning Norwegian producers Tor Erik Hermansen and Mikkel Eriksen (the duo behind hits such as Wiz Khalifa’s “Black and Yellow” and Katy Perry’s “Firework”), who purchased the four-bedroom residence for significantly more than its $5 million price tag.
Total time on the market? 16 hours. Beat that, BH. kimgordon designs.com; @kimgordondesigns