John Lautner's Silvertop

SIlvertop shortly after construction
© John Lautner Foundation, wwwjohnlautner.org

“Silvertop” was a large, high-budget, high quality, innovative dream-opportunity that arrived unexpectedly. The client, a successful local industrialist and visionary, was seeking the “just right” architect for his family’s dream home. Having conducted extensive interviews with the “best” of the prominent “midcentury modern” stylists in the area, John—whose work was actually far afield from their trendy fare—was chosen primarily due to his broader, grounded perspective and clearly superior architectural enlightenment. 

Along with the client—as is often the case—came the project’s site, something that he had been developing for some time, slowly purchasing lot after adjoining lot and eventually amassing six normal-sized residential parcels into a single, enlarged one that would accommodate his ambitious objectives. It thus became a hilltop in a quiet neighborhood in   Hollywood. Its gentle, downward eastern slope enjoyed a close-at-hand full-on view of Silverlake—a picturesque municipal reservoir—alongside a more distant one of downtown LA and the Pacific Ocean beyond.

Its opposing western slope, while less spectacular, still enjoyed meaningful viewing advantages: the Griffith Park Observatory, the “Hollywood(land)” sign, and the general ambience of typical Hollywood hills residential neighborhoods. In between these two slopes existed, of course, the site’s hilltop—its most spectacular place and its 360degree panorama.

The client approached the project without a traditional bias or esthetic preconception. He wanted a residence that was a functionally innovative assemblage of experimental features that would bring added, customized, often overlooked yet beneficial polish to the ordinary, under-inspired list of conventional residential criteria. John would participate in this search and translate all of it into an ordered, rich, and delightful form/space experience.

John’s very first, overall design concept quickly emerged as the building’s user-purpose of highest priority, the critical place where family and friends would assemble, greet, mingle, and relax in all the ways of pleasurable social interaction since time began: the living room experience.

He placed it, appropriately, at the very top of the hill, giving not only emphatic advantage to its many viewing opportunities, but also to its highest symbolic priority of the forms that would make up the building’s total mass. He began by envisioning a pair of curving 6’ tall brick walls some 80’ apart—with a shorter one to the south and a much longer one to the north—and with each flaring outward in both directions in an attempt to “scoop up” the distant views and funnel them into the narrowed living experience.

Enclosing this area, giving it a spatial identity as primary shelter became his next two-part challenge. He first created a massive prestressed-concrete arch-vault that boldly reached over the living room and beyond, into the adjacent areas, as it established an ambience of stability and security, in perfect coordination with the curving brick walls. 

Second, fenestration of its sidewalls was all that was needed to provide full enclosure. The east wall, with its prominent lake view and inherent connection to the community beyond, warranted full-on glazing from floor to the underside of the high, overhead vaulted ceiling; in-between the patio-access doors at either end while similarly curved to further echo the configuration of the brick walls and the arch-vault above, it became a dramatic construct of 4’ wide suspended vertical faceted glass panels, without mullions of any kind, and resulting in a spectacular effect to match that of its view beyond.

The living room’s west wall, while bringing its own similarly significant viewing amenities, saw, however, a subtle yet more profound alternative interpretation. Instead of providing even more distant viewing to the west (which would have perhaps introduced a competition between the two and compromise the quality of each) John wisely chose a more meaningful contrast, one that brought acknowledgement to the opportunities from the living room’s immediate, close-at-hand environment. Here, he placed a cozy fireplace, while directly outdoors, a nature-based, carefully landscaped garden and atrium, and an intimate dining area. Now the living area could boast the richest, broadest range of humane experience.

John then defined all the building’s remaining facilities as emphatically secondary in their hierarchy of priority. They were to be essentially concealed behind one or the other of the curved brick walls, making an important distinction between the “public” usage of the living room experience and the relatively “private” usage of the others. To the south, subtly tucked behind the shorter brick wall and with its “just right” degree of separation from the living area purposes, he located the complex of swimming facilities. The pool, labeled “infinity” because its east, viewing edge was cleverly treated in a way that featured the surface of the water going right to the very edge, without any visible gutter, etc. and seeming to spill over into “oblivion.”

Other related facilities (dressing, filter, pumphouse, toil., etc.) were provided to render this area a specialized, delightful adjunct to the living experience.

To the north, behind the longer brick wall, John arranged the entire building’s remaining usages, and with all of them being defined in varying degrees of “private.” The main building entrance, continuing a progressive transition from outdoor vehicular and/or pedestrian arrival gave introduction to the building interior with a nature-based atrium, a coat closet, a toilet room … as it progressively moved forward, giving glimpses (to the left) of the kitchen/nook area, and (to the right) the passageway leading to the sleeping area, and (straight ahead) to the enthralling living space beyond. Once there, a new set of options emerged: a glass doorway to the garden area to the west, a formal dining area to the east, and a glass doorway leading to the east, the viewing patio, beyond.

The kitchen area, east of the entrance process, began with a cozy breakfast nook (adjacent to the entry atrium) a lengthy food processing countertop beyond and directly behind the brick wall opposite the formal dining in the living area. Between the two, incorporation of a 4’x12’ section of the brick wall that, with a push of a button, rose from the countertop to not only facilitate food service, but to spectacularly transform social interaction as well.

Farther east saw the incorporation of perhaps the most private usage of the entire facility, one that warranted its own separate sub-form within the overall Building complex: the cylindrical guest/studio facility. It featured its own parking, east viewing, and a uniquely comfortable, “home away from home.”

Returning to the main entrance process, and now turning to the right (west), and down the secluded corridor reveals the ultra-private realm of the sleeping, bathing, and dressing area. Two secondary bedrooms—with their separate dressing and shared bath—are accessed along the left wall, while beyond becomes the access to the master suite. Its elegant, generous, and carefully appointed sleeping, bathing, and dressing accommodations, with an oversize skylight (and shuttered daylight control), another atrium, views into the west garden, and warm cypress paneling graciously finalize the end of each day.

Vehicular access—the very beginning of the entrance experience, and the means by which all interested parties arrive to, and depart from, the premises—was handled with the same degree of attention as elsewhere in the building’s overall design. Beginning at the west edge of the property (the “front”) at Micheltorena St., vehicles and pedestrians alike enter the drive/walkway and gently rise to the hilltop where generous parking is provided, immediately adjacent to the building’s main entrance. Here, a warm and welcoming low-ceilinged, landscaped and richly paneled introduction to the building’s interior realm is offered.

The entrance process does no tend here; in fact, it continues east as it now exits the premises, gently downhill, looping around the cylindrical guest/studio on its cantilevered, prestressed (4” thick) concrete rampway, beside its cantilevered, prestressed concrete tennis court, and under its ivied “tunnel” to exit onto Redcliff St.at the property’s east, “rear” edge.

John’s “design process”—the methodology by which he proceeded from a project’s very inception to its final resolution—was all his own. Drawing upon his nature-based background, his many years in association with the “organic” architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, and his inherent focus as a relaxed, right-brain “kind of guy,” it was almost guaranteed to achieve the unique quality that became his signature “style.” It brought to his clients a welcome relief from the confused, mundane, artificial, and under-inspired architectural mediocrity that generally prevailed in his day (as it does today) and explained his ever-expanding popularity up to his final days.

John’s design skills offered buildings that were honest, rich in character, incorporated a more fully facilitated user process criteria, with a direct connectedness to nature, and a tangible, comprehensible integrity. His work resonated with the user’s humane nature, creating experiences that reached deeply into their soul, with a lasting heritage of unique value. He remained where he began, in Hollywood, for the ensuing thirty-plus years to his final day.

I worked for John between 1957 and 1960 with an assigned, primary focus on his Silvertop project (with a few brief departures toward his noted “Chemosphere” project). I left to pursue my own fledgling dreams, with varying success. He and I remained friends until his passing in 1994, and his influence beats within me to this day. I will never forget him.