The Wright Stuff : In Malibu, a New House by the Master Designer Will Be Built From Plans That Were Never Used
New Mexico developer Charles Klotsche fell in love with the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright by chance. Looking for a way to set his life on a new course after a divorce in the early 1980s, Klotsche came across Wright’s work while idly leafing through a published copy of one of the Master’s sketchbooks.
“I was overwhelmed by Wright’s talent,” he said. “At the same, time my developer’s nostrils twitched with a fresh scent when I discovered that a number of Wright’s house designs had never been built.”
As a resident of Santa Fe, Klotsche was particularly struck by Wright’s drawings for a unique adobe dwelling known as the “Pottery House.” He wangled an introduction to the architect’s widow, his third wife, Olgivanna, and, after much persuasion, cut a deal to buy the Pottery House plans for $125,000 from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which she controlled at the time. Klotsche built the adobe dwelling near Santa Fe, and sold it to fashion designer Calvin Klein for a handsome profit in 1985.
Now Klotsche is planning to build a second Wright residence, known as the “Boulder House,” on a spectacular site in Point Dume, Malibu, which he hopes to sell for around $7 million when completed next year. Working with Taliesen Associated Architects of Scottsdale, Arizona--the practicing inheritors of Wright’s old studio in Taliesen West--Klotsche is as faithful to the original design in Malibu as he was in Santa Fe.
Both the Santa Fe and Malibu houses were planned for different cities than the ones that finally gave them a home. The Pottery House was designed for a couple in Santa Fe in 1939, but the husband’s death in World War II canceled the project. The Boulder House, designed in the early 1950s a few years before Wright’s death, was intended as a winter retreat for Pittsburg, Pa., department store magnate Edgar Kaufmann in Palm Springs. Because of a family divorce, the house was never built, and the plans remained buried in the Wright Foundation archives at Taliesen West until Klotsche unearthed them.
“Fallingwater,” the house Wright designed for Kaufmann in Bear Run, Pa., in 1935 is one of the most famous modern residences in the United States. Poised spectacularly over a waterfall in a forest, Fallingwater’s cantilevered terraces seem to strain at anchor like a high-spirited yacht eager to set sail. “Inhabit the place that you love,” Wright told Kaufmann, to persuade his client that his favorite spot beside a wooded stream was a suitable site for an expensive house.
The Boulder House, as it was designed and as it will be built, is also surrounded by water, but in static pools, as befits a desert design. Transposed to a Malibu canyon above Pacific Coast Highway, the house is a series of sweeping arcs embracing long views. The boulders that give the design its name are featured in a dramatic chimney tower. Three copper roofs, resembling upturned boat bottoms, give the 6,200-square-foot residence the air of a beached ship upended to shelter shipwreck survivors.
The biggest of the house’s three boat-shaped sections encloses the curved living room and the master bedroom suite. The ovoid west wing has two more bedrooms, and the east wing houses the dining room with its arc of french doors overlooking the moat that runs the length of the main frontage. A second floor study over the master bedroom has a huge balcony that cantilevers over the pool. An extension beside the rear motor court entry completes the spectacular layout.
“All Frank Lloyd Wright’s dwellings had kitchens and bathrooms that are too small for today’s requirements,” said Charles Montooth, the Taliesen Associated Architects designer who has worked with Klotsche on adapting both the Pottery and Boulder houses. “Expanding these facilities without damaging Wright’s original concept is one of the challenges we face. Plus the fact that Frank Lloyd Wright left no details (detail drawings for cabinetry and other finishes) for the Boulder House, so we must draw upon the design vocabulary evidenced in the archives.”
Montooth commends Klotsche as a “truly sympathetic client.” He remembers that Mrs. Wright, who died in 1985, was suspicious of the developer at first. “Olgivanna had the last word in these matters,” Montooth said, “and it took all of Charles’ charm to convince her he was the man to carry out the holy task of completing the Master’s conception.”
In discovering that around 140 of Wright’s 700-plus designs had never been built, Klotsche feels he has struck gold. “I found at least a dozen house plans that made my mouth water,” he recalled. “If I manage to continue, it could become a lifetime’s mission to realize most of these superb residences.”
And a profitable one. Advised by local real estate agents, Klotsche decided on Malibu as the most potentially lucrative location for the Boulder House. The raw three-acre Point Dume site, located close to Barbra Streisand’s estate, ran a cool $1.2 million, and Klotsche estimates the house will cost a similar amount to construct. He expects to clear around $3 million on the Boulder House project.
Klotsche, 47, moved to Los Angeles six months ago to take advantage of the burgeoning local high-end real estate market. “The Santa Fe property scene is more or less played out,” he said, “but L.A. is a bonanza for people who do things right. People will pay the limit for the right location with the right estate and a Wright house.”
The fashion for Wright’s “organic” architecture, which fell out of favor among architects for several decades after World War II, has revived strongly in recent years. Wright’s furniture is now being reproduced with great success, and his career as a great American original has begun to be appreciated by a new generation of designers in this Post- and Late-Modern period.
“Organic means, in a philosophic sense, entity,” Wright explained in a 1953 NBC-TV interview, “where the whole is to the part as the part is to the whole, and where the nature of materials, the nature of the purpose, the nature of the entire performance becomes a necessity . . . (so that) it graces its environment rather than disgraces it.”
Put more simply, an organic house design is all of a piece from its concept to its details, and should seem as if it grew out of the landscape as naturally as a tree or shrub. In this way, Kaufmann’s dramatic Fallingwater was inspired by the stream it bridges. “I think you can hear the waterfall when you look at the design,” Wright said.
Given the profound marriage of house and site that distinguishes Wright’s architecture, how does a developer justify transferring a design from the dun-colored Palm Springs desert to the seaside slopes of Malibu?
“I feel you can transfer the design and update it to a more contemporary setting if you are faithful to the original idea,” Klotsche claimed. “You just have to take great care not to compromise the authenticity of the concept. If I hadn’t been able to convince Mrs. Wright that I would honor her husband’s architecture all the way, no matter what the cost, she would never have let me loose on either the Pottery or the Boulder house.”
