Goldstein Office by John Lautner

Goldstein Office Image from cover of Lautner Book

Among John Lautner's most celebrated works — the Chemosphere, the Sheats-Goldstein Residence, Silvertop — there exists a near-unknown masterpiece that most architecture lovers have never seen. The Goldstein Office, designed by John Lautner for James Goldstein and completed in 1989, is an 850-square-foot room that consumed a year and a half of labor, the finest tradespeople in Los Angeles, and a level of craftsmanship that most architects never get to ask for — let alone build. It has been sitting in a warehouse ever since.

An Office Born in Century City

The project was originally conceived as a tenant improvement for a high-rise office building on the 20th floor in Century City. On paper, it was described as "simple and easy." In practice, as the builder Roban Poirier quickly discovered, John Lautner's definition of those words bore no resemblance to anyone else's.

Lautner designed an interior that treated the space as a complete architectural environment — not a decorated room, but a unified piece of art. Every surface, joint, and detail was resolved with the same rigor he brought to his residential work. The carpentry joinery was executed to within 1/64th of an inch. Master mason Floyd Darrensbourg, cabinet maker Charley Rausch, master glazier Lee Whiteside, and master carpenter Alan Stassforth — each a specialist at the top of their trade — gave the project their best work. It shows.

The Challenge of Building Lautner

What makes this story particularly instructive for any architect is what the process reveals about the relationship between design and construction. The most difficult part of the job, Poirier later noted, wasn't the joinery or the materials — it was the management of the building's own superintendent, described memorably as "Napoleonic," and the constant battle for access to the freight elevator. Great architecture, even at the scale of a single room, has always had to fight its way into existence.

The office was completed. It was installed. And then it was dismantled.

80 Crates in a Warehouse

The completed Goldstein Office was eventually taken apart and packed into 80 large crates, where it sat in a warehouse awaiting a future home. In the meantime, James Goldstein commissioned a new office from architect Duncan Nicholson — the man who would later train the founders of Conner & Perry Architects — built as the Goldstein Tennis Pavilion at the Sheats-Goldstein Residence.

LACMA currently holds the crated office and has long planned to reassemble it as a permanent installation — at one point rumored as the office of director Michael Govan. That day has not yet arrived. When it does, it will be one of the most concentrated examples of built craft on display in any museum in the world: an intact Lautner interior, complete, in a city that loves him but rarely gets to experience his work up close.

The Space Itself

The office occupied the northern side of the 20th floor at 10100 Santa Monica Boulevard in Century City, with views toward the Los Angeles Country Club and the Santa Monica Mountains beyond. Lautner divided the 850 square feet into two zones: a reception and secretary area clad entirely in black slate — walls, cantilevered desk, and floor — and Goldstein's private office, whose walls are sheathed in copper. Partial-height walls between the two zones are topped with glass that rises to meet an undulating Douglas fir ceiling. Every material choice is load-bearing in a design sense: the slate grounds the entry, the copper warms the inner sanctum, and the timber ceiling moves like a wave above it all.

The video below, produced by the John Lautner Foundation, gives a rare look at the space before it was dismantled:

"In designing a building or solving an architectural problem, the major element is the interior space that you create, which is first of all a human space, a free space. From that derives the structure and the detail and the whole thing." — John Lautner

"There's very little drawing, there's a lot of thinking. I beat my brains out about how to do whatever is necessary for the whole project. Sometimes I sit for hours before I draw anything." — John Lautner

Why This Matters

The Goldstein Office is a reminder that architecture at its highest level is not a product — it is a collaboration between a visionary designer, a courageous client, and craftspeople who refuse to accept anything less than their best work. Lautner never compromised. Goldstein never asked him to. And the tradespeople who built it understood that they were making something that would outlast all of them.

That standard is what Organic Architecture demands. It is also what makes it so rare.

John Lautner in 1993 said about the space... " A new working environment the client could enjoy over the years - created the feeling of an unconfined space, eliminating any sense of the box."

Related: Interview with James Goldstein, Owner of the Sheats-Goldstein Residence | Gravity-Defying Design: The Engineering of Lautner's Chemosphere