John Lautner’s Sherman Oaks house is on the market

The curvilinear design of Louise Foster House is considered one of John Lautner’s earlier solo residential commissions. Located about a kilometer east of the 405 in Sherman Oaks, neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, the unconventional residence with views of the San Fernando Valley, was built for Foster, a schoolteacher, in 1950.

John Lautner was one of Frank Lloyd Wright's most notable disciples. The house show spaces and material echoes of organic architectural and resembles the David and Gladys Wright House, an elevated, circular home Wright completed for his son in 1952.

John Lautner’s Sherman Oaks house. Image courtesy of realtor

The residence, sits on a 516-square-meter lot, and with redwood-clad exterior, has modest in size. The two levels contains two bedrooms and two bathrooms within its approximately 110-square-meter.

The home has gone through some renovations over the years. According to usmodernist.org, Lautner decided to transform a portion of the home's carport into a sitting room in 1964, and in 2012 Architect Helena Arahuete turned the converted sitting room into a second bedroom.

Over time, the home has aged into another historic residential icon and with an asking price of €1.43M, it's hard to imagine the home staying on the market for too long.

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JOHN EDWARD LAUTNER

John Edward Lautner (1911 – 1994) was one of the most significant architects to have worked in Los Angeles. A disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, he designed from the inside out, often blurring the lines between indoor and outdoor with his use of materials and emphasis on Page 3 transparency. The James Goldstein House enjoys spectacular views over the Los Angeles basin, encompassing the Pacific shoreline and stretching to the hills and mountains.

John Lautner designed over 200 architectural projects during his career, but many designs for larger buildings were never realised. In the architectural press his extant body of work has been dominated by his domestic commissions; although he designed numerous commercial buildings including Googie's, Coffee Dan's and Henry's restaurants, the Beachwood Market, Desert Hot Springs Motel, and the Lincoln Mercury Showroom in Glendale, sadly, several of these buildings have since been demolished. With a handful of exceptions (e.g. the Arango Residence in Acapulco, the Turner House in Aspen, Colorado, the Harpel House #2 in Anchorage, Alaska, the Ernest Lautner house in Pensacola, Florida) nearly all of Lautner's extant buildings are in California, mostly in and around Los Angeles.

The Sheats Goldstein Residence is a house designed and built between 1961 and 1963 a short distance from the Beverly Hills border. The home was originally built for Helen and Paul Sheats and their three children. Helen, an artist, and Paul, a university professor, had previously commissioned Lautner for the 1948-1949 Sheats Apartments project located in Westwood adjacent to UCLA.