Iconic Los Angeles home designer Harry Gesner has passed away at the age of 97 | News

Los Angeles’ architectural community is mourning the death of a legendary determine in its storied historical past of household structure right after reports that Wave Property architect Harry Gesner passed absent Friday, June 10 at his Malibu residence next a battle with most cancers.

Greatest-regarded as the designer of quite a few essential household commissions these types of as the Cole Home, the Hollywood Boathouses, and Eagle’s Enjoy which assisted develop a extra nuanced visible lifestyle for Southern California. 

Gesner was a headstrong modernist who broke with particular midcentury conventions in pursuit of his individual eyesight of landscape-derived naturalistic “nests” that were intentionally more responsive to both of those environmental elements and the community character.

An avid surfer and gregarious typical in Hollywood circles, Gesner rubbed elbows with celebs like Errol Flynn and is explained to have figured out to fly planes by the time of his graduation from Santa Monica Superior School in the early 1940s. 

Gesner credited his time and experience serving in main battles in Europe for the duration of Earth War II as the reason why he grew to become an architect. Following the war, he inevitably eschewed formal education and learning and licensure altogether soon after briefly pursuing archaeology in Ecuador and then transferring to New York so that he could show up at some of Frank Lloyd Wright’s late lectures at Yale University of Architecture. Genser then returned household to Los Angeles to select up carpentry and other constructing trades, reportedly refusing the Wright’s provide to continue his research at Taliesin (now acknowledged as The College of Architecture TSOA) on the ground’s that he “did not want to be a Wright follower.”

“I assume that we have a excellent duty as architects to take into consideration primarily the setting, and I just can’t assume of a property that I have done that hasn’t been in complete compatibility with the setting,” he stated of his strategy to making. This philosophy was most likely very best embodied in his 1970s design and style for his private home known as “the Sandcastle.” Gesner drew inspiration from a surfboard as a marriage assure to his late spouse, actress Nan Martin. In an obituary released by LA Times’ Carolina A. Miranda, Gesner’s son Zen described increasing up in the household as “the stuff of fairy tale publications.”

Below is a small film by Eric Ming Swenson showcasing Gesner’s get the job done and design and style ideologies. 

Movie by Eric Minh Swenson, Tunes by Casey Martin Dolan

Gesner is survived by his daughter Tara, sons Jason and Zen, and stepson Casey Dolan from a previous marriage. Harry Gesner was 97-many years-previous.