Vidal's $19.5M Mulholland Drive place in Bel-Air

"Ooh-la-la, Sassoon" never belonged to Vidal Sassoon - it was used by an unrelated "Sassoon Jean" company as an advertising slogan until Vidal sued the pants off them and made them change their name to "Sasson." That's fitting and ironic because Vidal Sassoon is now party to foisting the pseudo-Neutra he's helped to create on the real estate market! The space has been utterly butchered, including converting 3 bedrooms into a kitchen, the old kitchen into "living space," and the old carport into bedrooms - all this while retaining what's worst about the house (it's always felt cramped inside, and still does). Except for the old living room and one original bathroom (nostalgically retaining the original Formica and in-wall spinning toothbrush holder), there's virtually nothing left of the house Neutra designed! In short, the "new" house is a mixture of features and finishes Neutra always rejected and those he would have rejected if only he'd known about them. It's just NOT Neutra. It's certainly as fraudulent to call this house a "Neutra" as it was to suggest that Sasson Jeans had something to do with Vidal Sassoon!

The architectural profession is generally in frenzy against what has been done to this house. A magazine has published a kind of expose on the disaster. Neutra's family may be organizing some kind of protest over what has been done to this property. One could go on and on!

The home was previously described in Architecture for Sale as having 2,490 square feet. [http://www.architectureforsale.com/address_notable.php?property_ID=9] But the Wall Street Journal [http://www.realestatejournal.com/columnists/private/20070723-private.html?mod=RSS_Real_Estate_Journal&rejrss=frontpage] says that the re-do "expanded the 1959 home to 5,500 square feet from 3,400, says listing agent Barry Sloane." The size of the addition is therefore being grossly understated in the marketing, has more than doubled the area of the house, and is so prosaic that the new marketing materials don't give the redesigner's name (all the better to inflate the pseudo-Neutra factor!).

Sassoon is likely not more than a minority partner here. According to the Wall Street Journal, he never lived there, but did "throw a few parties there." It's likely that some developer and the broker (Barry Sloane) are running the show, with Sassoon throwing in a few dollars and his name, and the developer/designer/broker providing the great bulk of the money and work.

Barry Sloane now often works on expensive redesigns as a defacto partner with developers who do not obtain required permits. A $2.7 Million sale in Los Feliz failed on just this point. In that case, the city had issued a citation against the property in 2005 as an "abandoned property open to the public." It's all gussied up now, but since 2005 only three permits were issued: a gas valve, some window and door work, and for bathroom fixtures in the guest house. From "abandoned property" to "show house" with no permits! My, that must have been some home inspector's report. Another recent larger Sloane sale required a "give back" of more than $1 Million to compensate for all the major unpermitted work (repairs are still ongoing and visible from the street). Then there was a third project where Sloane's partner tried without a single permit to enclose thousands of additional square feet, rebuild much of the foundation, and reframe and replace the roof - intending to sell the house for $7 Million. Not surprisingly (don't they know about satellite pictures?), they got caught. LA B&S forced them to obtain permits - with all of the resulting additional expanse. People who have heard Sloane talk about the mess have feared that he might have a stroke! Odd, that, since the actual price of about $6 Million should make anyone happy.

In any event, under the building code, an addition this big requires that the original house be brought completely up to current code - a hugely expensive undertaking since foundations and sheer walls have to be rebuild. In 1959 neither Mr. Neutra nor anyone else knew much about building for an earthquake. Given Mr. Sloane's history, one could reasonably ask if the project obtained all of the required permits and did all that expensive retrofit work.

But even if permits were obtained and the work done, a beautiful house has died. The architect placed in this house a piece of his own soul - an architectural "Horcrux" in Harry Potterese. By committing this archicide, Sassoon, Sloane and the rest of these thugs have killed one remaining part of Richard Neutra. And for what? They'll be lucky if the sale price of this house equals the cost of the land less what it takes to demolish the bloated pseudo-Neutra they've created on it.