The Stevens House: How John Lautner Fit a Five-Bedroom House on a Narrow Malibu Lot.
Every Room a Desirable Room
The Stevens House, Malibu Colony, 1968. On a narrow beach lot that had already defeated one architect, Lautner kept the rectangle and broke the box in section.
Architectoid · John Lautner · Stevens House · 1968
The beach side at dusk, with the ocean-facing shell and its glass wall. Photo by Julius Shulman. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10). Job 4584.
A Long, Tight, Narrow Lot
Malibu Colony lots are long and thin. The Stevens lot, at 23524 Malibu Colony Road (the address in its National Register nomination; the house was listed for sale as 78 Malibu Colony Road), is about 37½ feet wide and 110 feet deep, with houses close on both sides, the Pacific Coast Highway and the mountains to the north, and the ocean to the south.
Mr. and Mrs. Dan Stevens hired John Lautner to design their family home, and the drawings are dated 1967. The foundation permit was issued in May 1967, and the house was finished in 1968. By Lautner's account, their program was large for the site: living room, dining room, kitchen, five bedrooms and five baths, a maid's room, a playroom, a painting studio, and a swimming pool. They had already tried it with another architect, who could not fit it on the lot. Lautner later recalled that architect's answer as, "You can't have this and you can't have that."
The usual response to a lot like this is a long box with glass at both ends and blank walls along the sides. The middle rooms get little light and no view. That was the problem Lautner was handed.
In His Words
"Just Give Me the Problem"
Lautner talked about this house at SCI-Arc twice that we have on record, in 1978 and in 1991. Both times he started with the program, not the form.
They had tried this before with another architect, and couldn't get any other design on the lot. So I told them just to give me the problem and I'll see what I can do with it. And so it's an interesting problem just for getting that many rooms, let alone making them desirable.
John Lautner, SCI-Arc, 1978 (Part 2, 03:16)Thirteen years later he gave the same count: "It has five bedrooms, a swimming pool, and a painting studio." And he told the rest more bluntly: "I said, 'Don't tell me about that, just tell me what you want to do.' And I got it for them." (SCI-Arc lecture, January 23, 1991, 01:05:45.)
The shells, the curves, the Shulman photographs are what people remember. But the measure Lautner applied to himself was whether he fit the whole program on the lot and made every room worth being in.
The Idea
Breaking the Box in Section
The plan of the Stevens House is close to the rectangle the lot allows. The invention is in the section.
Lautner built two half-catenary concrete shells and set them facing opposite directions, offset from each other along the length of the lot. One curve rises toward the ocean, the other toward the mountains. Where they pass each other, the middle of the house opens up. Rooms deep in the plan get light and a view, which a flat roof on this lot could never give them.
It's a long, narrow lot, it's just a 37-foot lot, and by reversing these forms, that opened the whole thing in the middle so that you get views both ways to the ocean and the mountains. And every room is a desirable room, even though it's just a long, tight, narrow lot.
John Lautner, SCI-Arc, 1978 (Part 2, 02:16)
Cross section. The two shells face opposite ways. The pool sits under one, the studio below. Drawing from John Lautner, Architect (1994), by John Lautner, edited by Frank Escher, p. 167. © The John Lautner Foundation.
Read the cross section as a slice taken across the lot. Each shell is half of a catenary, not a full arch. It rises from one side of the house and curves over toward the other, so one side of the room is tall and the other is low. The floors are fitted in under the curve at different heights: the rooms stack up on the tall side, and the low side opens into a single tall space. The second shell does the same thing facing the other way. In the longitudinal section, where the two pass each other, the high side of one meets the low side of the other, and that crossing is where the middle of the house gets its light.
Each shell rests on a vertical concrete wall. On a lot this narrow the side walls have to be mostly solid for privacy anyway. Lautner made those same walls carry the roof. The wall that blocks the neighbor is the wall that holds up the house.
The program fits by going vertical. The house is two stories plus a basement, arranged on five levels. The lower level, partly below the main floor, held the maid's room, the playroom, the studio, and the bottom of the pool. Above are the living room, dining room, kitchen, and bedrooms. The house has about 3,366 square feet, but stepping the floors under a tall curved ceiling makes it read larger than the numbers. The full set of plans is below.
The upper gallery along the shell, with the ocean at the far end. Wood fins run the length of the gallery between the walkway and the drop. Photo by Julius Shulman. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10). Job 4584.
Arrival
Arriving Through a Garden
The street side faces north, toward the mountains. A paved driveway the width of the lot sits between the house and the road, and a wooden fence and gate separate the driveway from the garden.
The western half of the north façade is set back. That leaves room for a front garden that sits under the curve of the concrete roof, with rectangular openings cut in the shell to let light down into it. The garden is covered and open to the sky at the same time.
From the garden, a concrete and metal stair climbs to the front door. A bedroom and bath above form a wood overhang over the stair. The door opens straight into the dining room, under the arched board-formed concrete ceiling. A path continues under the stair and down to the lower level. (National Register nomination, Section 7.) Inside, a second stair, wood and open to the room, climbs along the shell to the bedroom level, so the curve of the roof is beside you the whole way up.
On a 37½-foot lot there was no room for a forecourt. Lautner put the garden under the house's own roof instead.
 The street side and covered front garden. Photo from the 2017 sale listing. |  The interior stair climbing under the shell to the upper level. Photo by Julius Shulman. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10). Job 4584. |
Structure
The Curve Is the Waterproofing
A catenary is the curve a chain takes when it hangs from two points. Turned upside down and built in concrete, it carries its load in compression. Concrete is strong in compression and weak in tension, and tension is what cracks it.
The catenary puts the concrete in compression all the time, so there's no roof that... it doesn't leak, believe it or not, because it's always in compression.
John Lautner, SCI-Arc, 1978 (Part 2, 04:04)The shell does not do this work alone. The longitudinal section, cut along the length of the house, shows a row of concrete beams at a regular spacing that follow the curve and carry the shell. Inside, you never read them. From the dining room and the gallery the ceiling is one smooth, continuous board-formed surface. The structure is hidden in the experience of the house but plain in the drawing.
On a beach house that matters. Lautner pointed out that most Colony houses were wood and their owners were "painting all the time" against the salt air. "I don't believe in painting anything, really," he said, "and so I used concrete so it would be permanent." The materials are board-formed concrete, trowel-finished gunite, wood, glass, and matte-glazed Japanese ceramic tile.
You can read how the shells were built on their underside. The boards of the formwork left their grain and joints in the concrete, so the ceiling carries a record of how it was poured. Underfoot, the floors in the dining room and along the pool are laid in a herringbone pattern. Wood paneling, wood ceilings, and built-in cabinets and bookcases fill in between the concrete, so the hard shell and the warm rooms read as two different systems.
The structural engineer was Kamal Amin, who worked with Frank Lloyd Wright and at Taliesin from 1951 to 1959. Paul Speer, a builder who worked with Lautner on several projects, built it. By Lautner's account, he had studied the catenary before on an unbuilt precast concrete house. The Stevens House is where he got to build it.
The living room and its white teardrop fireplace, with the fan-shaped ocean glazing behind. Photo by Julius Shulman. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10). Job 4584.
Details
The Things You Don't See
Lautner told the SCI-Arc students that "just at a glance, you wouldn't think all those things were in" the house. His example was the dining room (SCI-Arc interview, 1978, Part 2, 05:01).
The dining room is the tallest room in the house. It sits under the full height of the shell, open through two floors, and it is the first room you enter from the front door.
About 25 feet above the dining table is a light fixture with adjustable shutters, aimed to light only the table. To adjust the shutters or change the lamp, someone has to put a stepladder on the table. So Lautner had the stainless steel table engineered to carry a 200-pound man standing at its edge. Then he climbed up and adjusted the shutters himself. "So I tested it."
The pool is inside the house. It runs along the living room under the shell, so the living room has water along one side and the ocean at its end. At the ocean ends, where a flat house would have a plain window wall, the glass follows the curve of the roof and is divided by mullions that fan out from a point, in the living room and again in the master bedroom upstairs.
Lautner kept working on the house after it was finished. He designed the wood bulkhead and terraced deck on the beach side, and in 1981 he designed the conversion of the basement into an exercise room and sauna.
The double-height dining room and wine wall, seen from the level above. Photo by Julius Shulman. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10). Job 4584.
Legacy
Why It Holds Up
Julius Shulman photographed the house, and it appeared in Architectural Record Houses of 1971. According to its National Register nomination, it was the first house Lautner designed in Malibu. It is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The house is often described as a wave, and Lautner himself said it "goes with the waves." But the waves came second. When he described the house to students, he started with five bedrooms, a pool, a studio, and a 37-foot lot. The catenary was what solved that problem, and it also happened to suit the beach.
That is the lesson of the Stevens House. The constraint was not something to work around. The narrowness is what pushed Lautner toward this idea.
Film producer Michael LaFetra bought the house in 2007 and restored it, reversing some changes made by earlier owners. He sold it in 2017. It has been privately owned since, and its current condition isn't public.
The living room looking south to the ocean, with the pool at left. Photo by Julius Shulman. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10). Job 4584.
The Drawings
Plans and Section
The three plans are stacked as the house is, top floor first, with the street at the left and the ocean at the right. The longitudinal section below them shows how the levels step through the length of the lot.
Upper level. Bedrooms along the balcony, master bedroom at the ocean end. Drawing from John Lautner, Architect (1994), by John Lautner, edited by Frank Escher, p. 167. © The John Lautner Foundation.
Main level. Kitchen and carport at the street end, living room and pool at the ocean end. Drawing from John Lautner, Architect (1994), by John Lautner, edited by Frank Escher, p. 167. © The John Lautner Foundation.
Lower level. Parking, maid's room, playroom, studio, and the pool basin. Drawing from John Lautner, Architect (1994), by John Lautner, edited by Frank Escher, p. 167. © The John Lautner Foundation.
Longitudinal section. The levels step from the lower studio up to the bedrooms. Along the top, the evenly spaced verticals are the curved beams that carry the shell, cut through along the length of the house. Drawing from John Lautner, Architect (1994), by John Lautner, edited by Frank Escher, p. 167. © The John Lautner Foundation.
Gallery
The House in 2017
These photos were taken for the 2017 sale, almost fifty years after Shulman's. They follow the route through the house, from the street to the beach. Two of them repeat Shulman's views, so you can compare then and now: the living room from the pool (Shulman's version is in the Legacy section) and the beach side at dusk (Shulman's is at the top of this post). Click any photo to see it full size.
 Interior stair and bookshelves along the shell |  Double-height dining room under the shell, herringbone floor |
 Kitchen |  Living room, teardrop fireplace and ocean |
 Living room from the pool at dusk. Then and now: compare Shulman's view above. |  The indoor pool under the shell |
 Upper gallery and wood fins along the shell |  Master bedroom and its fan window to the ocean |
 Lower-level media room, once the studio and playroom, with built-in bookcases |  Beach side at dusk. Then and now: compare Shulman's view at the top. |
Photos from the 2017 sale listing.
Sources
- John Lautner, John Lautner, Architect, edited by Frank Escher (Artemis, 1994), p. 167. Drawings © The John Lautner Foundation.
- National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Stevens House, 23524 Malibu Colony Road, Malibu (Ref. 09000802). National Park Service.
- John Lautner, SCI-Arc interview and slide talk, 1978, Part 2 (02:16 to 05:43); SCI-Arc lecture, January 23, 1991 (01:05:45). SCI-Arc Media Archive.
- Julius Shulman, Jürgen Nogai, and Richard Olsen, Malibu: A Century of Living by the Sea (Abrams, 2005).
- Architectural Record Houses of 1971. Photographs by Julius Shulman, © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10).
- John Lautner Papers, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2007.M.13).
- The Real Deal, "Edward Norton drops $11.8M on John Lautner-designed Malibu Colony house," August 1, 2017.
Every room is a desirable room, even though it's just a long, tight, narrow lot.
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