Esoteric Survey

  The Bailey House by Kendrick Bangs Kellogg made it to the Architectural Digest Unique Spaces video series. And our boy Dave was part of it. Hopefully he won't get too mad that I posted a picture of him. He did a great job talking about Kellogg, like no one else can. Watch it here.  Check out a recent post I did on the house  here . More about the house and short-term rentals and photo shoots can be found on their website:  https://www.baileykelloggresidence.com/about

Completed in 2022, Roy McMakin designed Punta Paloma to serve as his home and studio in the Banker's Hill neighborhood of San Diego. He calls it his Postmodern love letter to California. And yes, that face is on purpose.    Although not a native San Diegan, Roy received his B.A. and M.F.A. from UCSD. Also, I learned from Roy that most of his Domestic Furniture was made in San Diego. An ode to Irving Gill. The massing hints to 1950s apartment buildings. The diamond window pane is a reference to 1940s California cottages.  Early Bauer Pottery A cabinet and Heath vase, both designed by Roy. I love this detail. Going along with the California focus, there's a John McLaughlin print. You might recall, his Slatback chairs were used in the galleries at  John McLaughlin (1898-1976) Paintings: Total Abstraction at LACMA in 2016. More about that, here .  A number of years before that, in 2011, Quint Gallery in San Diego mounted an exhibition they called  Roy McMakin ...

  The Bailey Residence by Kendrick Bangs Kellogg (1983-1989)  Dave Hampton took Dung Ngo and I on a Kellogg outing this week. The first stop was in the northern tip of San Diego County to visit a project on a 40 acre avocado ranch in Valley Center, CA After seeing Kellogg speak at a lecture in Balboa Park, Joe and Barbara Bailey asked him to design a "simple house" for their hilltop property. Kellogg responded with the design we see today.  The Baileys managed and took part in much of the construction. This labor of love started in 1984 and took 6 years to build. It is still owned by the Bailey family. John Vugrin did the door. The kitchen skylight One of the downstairs bedrooms. Ranch workers used rocks from the site to do all of the masonry work. More about the house and short-term rentals and photo shoots can be found on their website:  https://www.baileykelloggresidence.com/about

Sam Bell Beach House & Tramway (1955-65) by Dale Naegle It's also known as the La Jolla Mushroom House. I've done a few posts on the house over the years. In fact, this photo was taken a decade ago. It was built on Blacks Beach in La Jolla, California, as the guest house of the Samuel L. Bell summer residence. Sam Bell was of Bell's Potato Chips and heir to General Mills. He was also related to Henry Ford. Apparently Sam Bell also had Eero Saarinen design a house for him. Here is the model of the unbuilt Saarinen house in New Hope, Penn. (1941) Source: Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research A perfect circle 30 feet in diameter, its roof and walls are poured concrete and concrete block.  It features a private funicular connecting the “satellite” into the main house on the cliff. The construction cost in 1965 was $100,000. The original 1950s main house at the top of the cliff was demolished in 1990 and was not designed by Naegle. Nei...