John Lautner Returns to Sheats Goldstein Residence

Photo from Curbed LA by Elizabeth Daniels

One of Los Angeles's most celebrated works of organic architecture recently gained a fitting new guardian — a life-sized abstract sculpture of the man who designed it. In May 2013, French artist Xavier Veilhan brought his traveling exhibition Architectones to the iconic Sheats-Goldstein Residence in Beverly Crest, Los Angeles. The project — a series of interventions Veilhan staged between 2012 and 2014 across seven major modernist buildings around the world — had already visited the Neutra VDL Studio and the Bailey House. But its stop at the Sheats-Goldstein felt distinctly personal. The centerpiece of the installation was an abstract metal sculpture of architect John Lautner, positioned in the master bedroom gazing out over the city below. The pose was not invented — it was drawn directly from a 1961 photograph of Lautner himself, taken in that very spot during the home's construction. The gesture closed a loop across six decades: the architect surveying a structure still being born, now frozen in steel and looking out over the same Los Angeles skyline he helped define.
Photo of John Lautner in Sheats Residence master bedroom during construction 1961





The Sheats-Goldstein Residence is among Lautner's most iconic works. Designed and built between 1961 and 1963 for Helen and Paul Sheats, the concrete-and-glass structure hugs a sandstone ledge in the Santa Monica Mountains, with its cave-like geometry opening into sweeping views of Benedict Canyon and Beverly Hills. The design blurs the boundary between interior and exterior — a hallmark of Lautner's approach to organic architecture. In 1972, businessman James Goldstein purchased the home and spent the following two decades working closely with Lautner to refine and expand it, a partnership that continued until Lautner's death in 1994. It was Goldstein who, after the Architectones exhibit closed, made the Lautner sculpture a permanent fixture. Acquired directly from Veilhan, the piece now stands along the pathway leading to the home's entrance — the architect, in abstracted form, welcoming visitors to the building that defined much of his legacy. Veilhan, a French artist known for sculptures that reduce figures and architecture to bold geometric volumes, used this same approach throughout the Architectones series to explore the relationship between landmark modernist spaces and the people who conceived them.

Architect Duncan Nicholson with sculpture of Architect John Lautner by Xavier Veilhan

The result is a quietly powerful tribute: Lautner back inside his own masterwork, not in memory, but in matter. Published Articles on Event:
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Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 6, 2024 at 6:51 PM

    Do you know where I can find a file of the image or a print copy of John Lautner in the Sheats residence in 1961?

    ReplyDelete

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