Business
& Labor
Koenig’s Case Study House No. 21 To Be Sold at Auction
(archrecord.construction.com - 11/09/2006)
By Jeremy
Lehrer
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click image to view larger
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| Image © Julius
Shulman for Wright Auctions |
Another one goes on the block. Case
Study House No. 21, Pierre Koenig’s landmark of SoCal
Modernist architecture, will be sold by the auction house
Wright in December.
Koenig’s No. 21, also known as
the Bailey House, is a minimalist classic consisting of a
sublime, open-plan steel-and-glass structure that Koenig built
in the late ’50s for $20,000. Surrounded by five reflecting
pools that cast a continuously dappling light into the interior,
the residence has two bedrooms, a central court, a carport,
and a water-cooled roof. Koenig himself oversaw a complete
renovation of the house in 1998, after which it was sold for
$1.5 million. The architect observed in a 2003 interview,
“All the aspects of the building are so integrated that
you can’t take one thing out without destroying the whole.”
With the opening bid set at $2.5 million, the house will be
sold as part of Wright’s “Important 20th Century
Design” event.
Other Modernist architectural gems that
have been auctioned in past years include Mies van der Rohe’s
Farnsworth House, sold by Sotheby’s in 2003 for $7.5
million, and Philip Johnson’s Rockefeller Guest House,
which garnered $11.1 million at Christie’s in 2000. Among
the reasons owners choose to auction these landmarks, is that
an auction lends more rarefied cachet to what is already a
precious commodity, and the bidding wars inspired by the auction
setting inevitably lead to higher prices.
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“This is not just a piece of architecture
that you can determine the value for based on the local market,”
explains Wright owner Richard Wright. “There is a space
between art and architecture where this home and other significant
properties lie.” Current owner Mark Haddawy seems to
have intended nothing less for his residence, having stocked
the house with Modernist art and design heirlooms; in what
might be described as a very expensive rummage sale, these
items will also be auctioned on the same day as the house.
The Case Study Houses were commissioned
by Arts & Architecture editor John Entenza to promote
new building materials, aesthetics, and technologies, and
to showcase well-designed housing that era’s middle class.
Other Case Study houses were designed by Charles and Ray Eames,
Richard Neutra, and Craig Ellwood.
Wright has enlisted the nonagenarian
photographer Julius Shulman, closely associated with his ’60s-era
documentation of the Case Study project, to create a new photographic
homage to the residence. Those images, along with an essay
by historian James Steele and photographic interpretations
created by art-world high-flyers such as Catherine Opie and
Grant Mudford, will be available in a limited-edition catalog.
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