The only reason I know about Brad Pitt’s first design project, connecting two back houses on his property in Los Feliz, is because I’m an eBay lurker. For magazines mostly. This year I’ve zoned in on 90s/2000s issues of W Magazine.
I hadn’t seen these photos anywhere online, so I took to my dented Canon printer/scanner to try my luck at digitizing them...I think I did alright? You can judge for yourself:
After a TikTok on my initial findings, a commenter introduced me to a book Pitt contributed to on the Greene and Greene Blacker House. From there, and some Google ramblings, I was the lone bidder on a “lot” of old Flaunt magazine issues. My sights were set on one in particular, a Brad Pitt 2002 cover that sometimes goes for $200??
I just posted another TikTok, diving a bit deeper into his love and dedication to the Arts and Crafts style. Namely that gargantuan stone house (Greene and Greene) he bought a few years back in the Carmel Highlands for $40 million. I mean I would if I could!
These are my notes from those two interviews. I love when people get rich and obsess over design principles, whether it’s actually an evolved and thorough taste or its plain old ugly. Both sides are interesting to me. But I do love when people get it right.
Around the time of the W Mag and Flaunt issues, Brad was 37/38. He’s got a 25 year old sensibility but in man years that seems to track. I like his enthusiasm for chairs. Its fun and approachable. We should all be lunatics over good design. You’ll see what I mean. Here are all of my notes/thoughts/and some quotes that seem too good to be true…
Written by: James Reginato
Photos: Martyn Thompson
You can read the interview here
Frank Gehry
-Visit to Frank Gehry’s left him “salivating”...
-“...perks for me aren’t good tables or concert seats, for me it’s getting to meet Gehry.”
-Not too crazy of a hook up, they got connected through a mutual acquaintance at Gold’s Gym, where the architect works out (must be OG Venice one).
His views on architecture, and sneak disses
-Pitt has been really taken with architecture and how it mirrors, and speaks for, society. He started with the Arts and Crafts style and progressed to more contemporary.
-Besides Gehry, he loves Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas.
-Says his design work is “more creatively fulfilling” than acting.
-He’s ready to retire from acting “any time soon”. Upcoming releases include: Spy Game and Ocean’s Eleven.
-Aniston (they were recently married) gave him a surprise weekend stay at a private Greene and Greene designed house for his birthday.
-On Aniston’s design style, “She has an, uh, more matronly take on it.”
Combining the back houses
-Pitt’s Hollywood Hills (it is actually Los Feliz) house is made up of three buildings, two of which he connected: a modest 1910 era-stone house and a 1950s studio structure. Both were originally outbuildings to a rambling craftsman-style main house on the estate. He bought the house from Elvira, after a recommendation from Nicolas Cage. Apparently the place is pretty haunted.
-Started “re-assembling” the whole property in the mid 90s.
-Took a yearlong hiatus after Fight Club to work on the house in early 1999.
-Said his crew of designers, landscape architects and a “colorful” Irishman contractor (Mike Cross) whom Pitt describes as the best contractor in the world, operated like Bauhaus, trading ideas, etc.
-A german design firm, Graft, created what they call a swiss army knife of a wall, from which a light box and rare 1934 Zig Zag chair by Rietveld slide out.
-The space will also serve as the couple’s art studio, they work with clay, draw and carve pumpkins here.
-He does not want to ever sell it (sold it in 2023 for $33 million to a Getty heiress).
His stone obsession
-“There is a soul to stone” Pitt said (I do agree).
-Pitt wanted to use the stone Howlite throughout the whole house, after discovering the living room walls were lined with it. The mine from which it was extracted had been closed for years. But, being Brad Pitt, he was able to negotiate its reopening for an autograph to the owner’s daughter.
-He imported “untold” quantities of Travertine from a mine outside of Rome.
-Bathtub is hand carved by artist Jackie del Fonso from a 13-ton slab. The thing weighs about 6 tons.
-To bring the tub in, a crew literally followed procedures used to build the pyramids (10 dudes brought it in using a system of rolling pipes).
-Whole bathroom, which is all Travertine, serves as a shower basin.
-The tub overflows onto the floor.
-“I feel like there is music in this place…” Pitt says.
The exhibitionist bathroom
-“The bathroom was the first thing in the house I worked on at the time when Jenn and I were really hooking up strong. Things come out of those times in your life, things are on your mind..and I guess I had a dirty mind at the time.”
Garage/club
-His stark white plaster walled garage also functions as a party room. It’s souped up with multi hued fiber optic lights, which Pitt says feels/looks like some wild nuclear energy source (this actually feels very functional and a cool choice of his to do, versatility-wise).
-Mica panels glow tomato red at night, which Pitt was “jonesing on” at time of construction (he says “jonesing” in both interviews).
Written By: Jim Turner
Photos: Tony Duran
You can read the interview here
On restoring his houses
-He was just finishing a movie when he was moving into one of them (Fight Club).
-”I could inject my own vernacular in this one (referring to 50s studio), whereas the other house (stone house) had a set vernacular, so I wasn’t as excited about restoring it.”
-For 50s studio he used stainless steel, colored mica, colored plaster, stone and wood.
-On his chair and desk being built into the wall, “That was a collaboration with some German guys who are friends of mine, who have studied all over the world (they are Sci-Arc grads). We have great think tanks.”
-Refers to it as a “toolbox wall”, “everything collapses open, folds open with purpose.”
When asked about “McMansions”
-”The biggest example of that is the huge tourist debacle they are building to house the Oscars on Hollywood Boulevard and Highland. It looks like a theme ride. It pisses me off. With all the extraordinary voices in architecture right now, and all the money they put into that thing-why wouldn’t they pair the two up? It looks like a theme ride at a cheesy theme park. But there are some good buildings going on right now in Los Angeles.”
Gehry again
-At the time he was working on the Disney Hall downtown.
-When asked about Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao, “I saw a picture of it when it was just finished, and I lost my shit.”
-”What a voice! He’s something special.”
-”People said that his buildings were too sculptural, didn’t make sense, and they didn’t function well. I just say, ‘shut up.’”
On Landscape Designer Jay Griffith
-”He’s a laugh. We fight all the time. He’ll say, ‘No, no, I can’t do that. It can’t be done.’ And I’ll say, ‘All artists must suffer for greatness.’”
-He (Brad) has “big problems” with small specimens of plants because he wants instant gratification.
Favorite architects
-Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, MVRDV (Dutch architects Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries).
-Loves what MVRDV is doing in Rotterdam, how they are “completely redesigning how the masses are moving”.
-Also mentions Stephen Holl (New York) and has been “jonesing” about Daniel Liveskind (Berlin).
-”The first building that got me going was Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house.”
Furniture
-Loves the “stuff” coming out of Italy at the moment.
-”Infusing quality with new expressions”.
-Loves chairs.
-Wants to do a chair museum.
Shared design ideas with Jenn
-”We’ve made a point now, where we’re living, that we have an art room.”
-On the art room in their Beverly Hills house, “When the day’s work is done, and it’s night, you can sit in front of a movie on television and have dinner. And you can waste a lot of time-and it’s not really wasted time. I’m a big believer in checking out for a bit. But I get so much more out of life if I use my time to just make something. I just want to make things. My credo has been simplified to ‘just make things.’ ”
P.S. I know he is a scumbag, we’re just talking architecture and design here.
Below are 10 estate sales I’ve found, the vibes this weekend are…erratic. I’m highlighting my favorite pieces at each one, which have really cool/strange/haunted houses, and background info on some very specific design choices.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.