My home is a Los Angeles apartment designed with loving care by modernist architecture master Richard Neutra in 1937. It’s one of eight, grouped around a jungly courtyard and stepped back up a steep slope, a few blocks from the UCLA campus. The complex, titled Strathmore Apartments, updates the local typology of the bungalow court and was also inspired by the stepped profile of the Taos Pueblo. It respects the topography and the privacy of the residents while promoting sociability.
When new, locals found it as startling as if a spaceship had landed on the hillside, but now it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. Mine is the topmost apartment and was once home to Charles and Ray Eames, serving as a laboratory in which they conceived their early projects. For a design aficionado, that’s the equivalent of ‘George Washington slept here’. I only wish that I believed in ghosts.
A tour of Strathmore apartments reveals its modernist legacy
I moved here from Washington DC in 1978, inheriting a tabula rasa of freshly painted white walls, ribbon windows and hardwood floors with no trace of previous occupants. Initially, I camped out, revelling in the clean lines, natural light and cross breezes. Later, I acquired furnishings that complemented the architecture, including chairs by Alvar Aalto, Poul Kjaerholm and Charles and Ray Eames, a 1950s tea trolley from Turin, and a Warren Platner table.
A wild silk rug from Fort Street Studio mimics the grain of the floor. Philippe Starck dining chairs flank a truncated oval of glass atop the steel base of a Le Corbusier airplane tube table. Paper lamps by Ingo Maurer add a warm glow to the streamline moderne ceiling light. Built-in shelves and Levolor blinds echo the scheme that Neutra devised for the apartment’s first occupant: the Oscar-winning actress Luise Rainer.
Writer Michael Webb at his home at Strathmore Apartments
My bedroom has become a homage to De Stijl, and I wake to an azure sky, a prospect of sunny yellow and a backdrop of glowing red. The office, where I spend most of the day, is painted a calming celadon. Douglas fir shelves flow out of a closet to accommodate books and files. Over the years, I’ve commissioned pieces from friends: a cantilevered bedroom chest from architect Lorcan O’Herlihy, a steel-clad kitchen door from metalsmith Tom Farrage, and Rudolph Schindleresque furniture from designer Michael Boyd.
The spaces in between have gradually filled up. Having spent most of my life writing about architecture and design, I’ve surrounded myself with images and objects that inspire me, possibly to excess. The apartment has become a showcase of my passions, stirring vivid memories of people I’ve known, chance encounters, favourite galleries and faraway places. I have a fondness for black and white photos by the likes of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sebastião Salgado and Michael Kenna. Luisa Lambri, the Italian photographer who focuses on the details of modern interiors, was inexplicably captivated by one of my Levolor blinds, creating a set of images that evoke the paintings of Agnes Martin.
Rarely has a mundane feature been put to such good use. There’s a row of turned wood bowls that exploit different grains of wood, Japanese bamboo sculptures, wind drawings from the Outer Hebrides, a massive Shigaraki pot from Japan, an Australian Aboriginal painting, and a hand-carved forcola from Venice. A deconstructed cabinet of curiosities includes fragments of buildings that I’ve visited while they were under construction.
When threatened by wildfires a few months ago, I wondered which irreplaceable piece I would choose to save if I could carry only one. My first choice was a drawing by the late Zaha Hadid of coloured shards zooming across an expanse of black paper, a competition entry inspired by Russian constructivism. But then I couldn’t leave behind Chuck Jones’ pencil sketch of Bugs Bunny as Brünnhilde in the Warner Bros cartoon What’s Opera, Doc?, a reminder of the years I spent programming films at the Kennedy Center, and the job that brought me to LA in the first place.
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