 Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss architecture firm that brought us the Beijing Olympics' Bird's Nest, has designed a residential highrise for New York developer Alexico Group, reported the International Herald Tribune's Raising the Roof blog. Condos in the Tribeca complex, slated to open in 2010, will range in size from 1,430 to 6,380 square feet and in price from $3.5 million to $33 million.
Does anyone else think the towering struction bears some resemblance to a game of Jenga?
Not the kind of structure that would likely inspire condfidence here in earthquake country, but Hollywood should take a look-see. What a great location for a remake of "Vertigo."
 --Lauren Beale
Thoughts? Comments?
Illustration: Copyright Herzog & de Meuron.
 For more insight into Nicolas Cage's Bel-Air home, just relisted for $29,999,000 and featured in this week's Hot Property, turn to the pages of the Bret Parsons' just-published book "Colcord Home" (Angel City Press).
The landmark was designed by famed architect Gerard R. Colcord, who is credited with hundreds of Southern California estates in a variety of styles.
The 1940 Harris House was commissioned by Mrs. John  Wesley Harris, the widow of a wealthy land developer. It was the biggest and most detailed home Colcord ever built.
The English Tudor, imposing today, was "somewhat out of step with the architectural taste of the time," according to Parsons. Quite grand, it does bring to mind a college or institution of higher learning.
-- Lauren Beale
Your thoughts? Comments?
Photos: Maynard L. Parker
Finding a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home for sale in Southern California is unusual, but a number of the architect's houses are available across the nation.
 Last Sunday's Home of the Week featured the Millard House, a.k.a. La Miniatura, in Pasadena, which is on the market for $7,733,000. The textile-block creation has four bedrooms and four bathrooms.
Now the Wright-designed Fawcett Residence in Los Banos, in the middle of California, is being marketed for $2.7 million. There are five bedrooms, a Japanese garden and 80 acres that support produce should the rural life appeal.
Both homes and more than a dozen other properties for sale that were designed by the architect are listed at the website of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.
The bulk of the listings are in Illinois, with Minnesota and Michigan also having respectable showings. The next priciest after the 1923 Pasadena gem is the 1909 Alpine Meadows Ranch, which includes 255 acres for the money, set in Darby, Mont. The least expensive on the site is the 1957 Carl E. Schultz House in St. Joseph, Mich., for $655,000. It has Wright's hand-signed tile at the front door, 3,850 square feet of living space and 170 feet of frontage on the St. Joseph River. That's a lot of bang for the buck.
-- Lauren Beale
Your thoughts? Comments?
Photo: The Wright-designed home and acreage in Los Banos, Calif., includes a pool, workshop, tractor bay and a Walnut orchard. Credit: Scott Mayoral
 Now for something completely different: The L.A.Times' first video home tour is now up and live at latimes.com.
The home in question, pictured at left, is the newspaper's Home of the Week, a 3,300-square foot, three-story, live-work artist's loft on Abbot Kinney in Venice.
I know, I know, it's expensive.
But you're missing the point, which is that latimes.com's real estate coverage has finally entered the video era. This is an exciting first for the website and showcases excellent work by video journalist Katy Newton. Look for more video home tours and video stories about the struggling real estate market, the foreclosure crisis and other news from the real estate beat.
Photo credit: Latimes.com
 A number of you have opined today that this blog has turned into a gloom-and-doom fest, a big fat bummer. Well, it so happens that today, just for you, I've been working on an item that carries the headline "a ray of hope."
The story, which you can find here, is about a new low-income apartment complex in Santa Monica that won a major architectural award this week. The architect is Kanner Architects, a firm known for colorful modernist designs all over town, including the In-N-Out Burger in Westwood, a personal favorite of mine.
The AIA jury that honored the building called it "a ray of hope ... a succinct example of affordable housing done right."
So there you have it, your Keep Hope Alive, Audacity of Hope, Obama moment. Enjoy it, because in about an hour I'm posting on KB Home's huge quarterly loss. The CEO was not hopeful.
Your thoughts? Comments? Any other architectural stories you'd like to see? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com.
Photo credit: John Linden
 Here's a new regional low price for a Cliff May ranch house: $329,000 and change for this brown-lawn special in Pomona.
From Curbed LA: "What was once a proud Cliff May
on a street full of Cliff May's in Pomona has been trashed by its
previous owner, who has succumbed to foreclosure. Gack! That lawn! A
reader emails, desperate for some good soul to buy the home: '...this 1955 Cliff May Modern Ranch House in Pomona really REALLY
needs to find a sympathetic buyer or it might get 'remuddled'.'"
It's a 3-bedroom, 2-bath, 1,340 square feet. Cliff May? A builder known as the "Father of the California Ranch Home," he built thousands of houses.
Your thoughts? Insights? Email story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com
Photo Credit: Realtor.com.
 Blogger's note: As pointed out by commenter Ken McKenna, the original item as published was incorrect. Eli Attia was not the architect of the Crystal Cathedral; he was chief of design at the architectural firm Johnson/Burgee Architects (Philip Johnson's firm), which designed the cathedral. The corrected item follows, with the original language crossed out -- to avoid the appearance that the mistake is being hidden.
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Frivolous, yes, but it's Friday: Architect Eli Attia, who designed the Crystal Cathedral in Orange County, who worked with legendary architect Philip Johnson on the design of the Crystal Cathedral in Orange County, is building this "Roundhouse" in Beverly Hills, a prototype for an energy-efficient, glass-and-steel, flat-roofed home.
This is one of the more expensive spec houses you will find: The 15,000-square-foot home, not yet built, is on the market for $16 million. Publicity materials describe the house as "a three-story home with balconies to the south to take advantage of the long, panoramic sunrise-to-sunset view...."
More: The design "represents fundamental advances in homebuilding in the critical areas of environmental impact, construction efficiency, user experience and replicability."
Attia maintains that the average wood-framed American home requires clear-cutting an acre of woodland, and that building construction produces 25% of America's solid waste. He also argues that the first freestanding structures built by man more than 20,000 years ago ... (wait for it...) incorporated round floor plans.
Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com.
Photo Credit: Roundhouse Development
Hello, L.A. Landers. While our blogger Peter is away for some much-deserved R&R, I will humbly attempt to fill his awesome shoes. Regular readers of The Times may know me as a real estate and business reporter. But I'm also a lifelong Southern Californian and a homeowner. (And now, a fair subject for ridicule for posting my own photo!)
As my first order of business, I want to call your attention to a terrific article by our friend Peter that appears this month on Portfolio.com. Who knew that architecturally significant homes are often sold at bargain -- by California standards -- prices? Check it out.
Questions? Comments? Makeover tips? Please e-mail me at annette.haddad@latimes.com
It's trendy to criticize the quality of new home construction (I know, I do it all the time myself). But is it accurate?
No, says architect Arrol Gellner, in this worthwhile defense of new home construction. He says new homes are "far better built than they were just 30 years ago, let alone 60 or 100 years."
Why: better fire safety, reinforced foundations, more energy efficient, more durable, made from stronger lumber. Basically, he writes, "technically superior."
So why do we romanticize old houses? Because, he writes, they have the one thing you can't build new: "the inimitable dignity of a genuine past."
Photo Credit: DeasyPenner.com
Picture Shows: LATimes "Home of the Week," a 3,083 square foot "treehouse" remodel in Mar Vista. $2.08 million.
 Yes, it is a house made of cargo containers. It's in Redondo Beach. And, no, we don't know why someone decided that would be a neat thing to do. We found it on Curbed LA, which reports "It's the first two-story residential cargo container-based structure approved under Uniform Building Code standards." Which means all those other homes made of cargo containers sprouting up on the Westside are not built to code. (That last part was a joke). The Times wrote about this home last summer, calling it "eye-catching in its oddity."
Eames chairs, Dwell magazine, bumper stickers for British soccer teams, razor wire, a hint of David Beckham -- it's all there in Christopher Hawthorne's must-read today about loft living in downtown LA.
He focuses on Industrial Street and three Linear City projects: the Toy Factory Lofts, the Biscuit Company Lofts, and the Mill Street Lofts (no website yet). So what's it like down there? "Vaguely gost-town-like." (Maybe you have seen the exestential play, "Waiting For Ralph's.")
That's not entirely fair. Hawthorne's nuanced look describes downtown as "a micro-neighborhood whose personality feels vital, organic and entirely artificial at the same time." Plot-spoiler: He also thinks the whole thing will work: "I'm guessing it will prove to be hugely popular," he concludes.
Your thoughts? Will it all work? Comments always welcome, as are emails to: lalandblog@yahoo.com
LALand loves great architecture, but so often architecturally significant means prohibitively expensive, and this is not Architectural Digest. That said, we really like the modern, ranch-style designs of Cliff May, and they sometimes sell in the $700,000-$800,000 range. Want to know more? Check out www.ranchostyle.com, Douglas Kramer's tribute to Cliff May houses, and to May himself, the Father of the California Ranch Home.
While you are there Kramer might try to sell you a Cliff May house in Long Beach -- this 3-bedroom, 2-bath in Long Beach (sorry, it's not the same house that's pictured) is listed at $695,900.
See a Listing You Like? Send it to LALandblog@yahoo.com. Important: Tell me why you like it.
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Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss architecture firm that brought us the Beijing Olympics' Bird's Nest, has designed a residential highrise for New York developer Alexico Group, reported the International Herald Tribune's Raising the Roof blog. Condos in the Tribeca complex, slated to open in 2010, will range in size from 1,430 to 6,380 square feet and in price from $3.5 million to $33 million.
--Lauren Beale
