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THE VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE, 131 South Rodeo Drive , Suite 250, Beverly Hills, CA (2026)

05/18/2026

Neutra’s Jardinette Apartments | A Rare Look Inside a Living Landmark

LA Forum Tour
Saturday, May 30
12–2 PM

BUY TICKETS: www.laforum.org/events

Richard Neutra, Architect
Jardinette Apartments, 1928

National Register of Historic Places
California Register of Historical Resources
Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument

The LA Forum is offering rare access to this landmark at a singular moment: an extensive renovation is underway, and the building will be seen while work is still in progress.

Hidden in plain sight near Melrose & Western, this 43-unit apartment building is Neutra’s first US project, widely considered one of the first Modernist buildings in America and an early example of the International Style in this country.

Designed under the Architectural Group of Industry and Commerce—Neutra’s sometime partnership with Rudolph Schindler—the building introduced European Modernist principles to Los Angeles while earning international recognition. It impressed Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius during his 1928 visit to LA and was later selected for MoMA’s seminal 1932 exhibition, Modern Architecture.

Here, Neutra began developing ideas that would shape much of his later work: clean lines, flat roofs, minimal ornament, industrial materials, ribbon windows, and a strong relationship to landscape. Organized around a verdant courtyard, the apartments open to cantilevered balconies, blurring the boundary between indoors and out.

After decades of benign neglect, the property has been acquired by local steward Cameron Hassid of Apollo Capital, who has led an extensive renovation with the city’s Office of Historic Resources, architectural historian Barbara Lamprecht, and June Street Architects.

Because work is still underway, the tour offers something unusual: the building mid-transformation, its structure exposed, its history legible in ways a finished restoration can sometimes obscure. A rare opportunity to see not just what Neutra built, but how it was built.

Presented by

TICKETS: www.laforum.org/events

Photos:
Julius Shulman Archive, Getty Research Institute
The Neema Group, Marcus & Millichap
Mott Studios, California State Library

05/17/2026

Lehrer Architects
Michael Lehrer, FAIA, Architect
Sunnyside Apartments

A new building by Holos Communities

Thank you , , and for a thoughtful tour of Sunnyside Apartments today.

What does it mean to design a home for someone who has not had one recently?

This 27-unit supportive housing project by Lehrer Architects offers one answer: that dignified, community-centered design is not an amenity. It is foundational.
Conceived as a fully affordable multi-family residence for chronically homeless individuals, Sunnyside makes a quiet but powerful case for architecture as a framework for stability, health, and belonging. The unit mix — 23 units for low-income residents, three for moderate-income households, and one manager’s unit — reflects a deliberate commitment to integration within a single building.

As a publicly funded project, every design decision carries a heightened level of responsibility. Here, that accountability appears to have produced not compromise, but clarity: a building that is navigable, welcoming, and deeply attentive to the daily lives of its residents.

The ground-floor gathering room anchors the social life of the building. It recognizes something too often overlooked in supportive housing: people need somewhere to be together, not just somewhere to sleep.

And in a city where access to green space remains unevenly distributed, placing a garden at the top of a supportive housing building becomes more than a design move. It is a statement that wellness, beauty, and community belong here too.

Grateful to , , Michael Lehrer, and for opening up the conversation around how housing can do more than provide shelter — it can help rebuild a sense of home.

What can architecture do when housing is understood not only as shelter, but as a foundation for stability, health, and belonging?

SupportiveHousing AffordableHousing LosAngelesArchitecture ArchitectureForHousing HousingDesign DesignForDignity CommunityCenteredDesign UrbanDesign SocialHousing ArchitectureMatters

05/08/2026

A special thank you to the MAK Center for making this home available to experience in person during their 2024 tour. For everyone else, this is your last chance to sign up for their next tour, tomorrow, 5/9/2026. Visit makcenter.org and their Instagram

R.M. Schindler, Presburger House, 1945

Set within the quiet fabric of Los Angeles, the Presburger House reflects Schindler’s fully realized philosophy of space as the primary architectural medium. Here, walls do not define rooms so much as suggest them, allowing space to unfold through shifts in light, proportion, and movement.

Rather than relying on spectacle, Schindler creates an experience that is intimate and deeply human. Compression gives way to release, interior dissolves into exterior, and the home reveals itself gradually as one moves through it.

This is not architecture as object, but as atmosphere, a quiet yet profound reminder that the true power of design lies not in what is built, but in how it is experienced.

Video collaboration with�Brian Linder, AIA�Mark H. Mendez�Architecture Brokers�THE VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE

05/06/2026

John Lautner | Mauer House, 1947

Mount Washington
Los Angeles, California

Perched into the hillside above Los Angeles, the Mauer House is one of John Lautner’s earliest explorations of space as architecture’s primary force.

Conceived less as a conventional home and more as a “warehouse of space,” the design prioritizes volume, openness, light, and structure over traditional domestic form.

Today, the house sits in a state of visible neglect. Years of deferred maintenance have obscured, but not erased, Lautner’s original intent. Beneath the layers, the spatial clarity remains.

There is something uniquely powerful about encountering architecture in this condition. Stripped of polish and perfection, the core ideas become legible again. Structure, proportion, and light reassert themselves as the primary language.

With early efforts now underway to restore the home, the Mauer House stands at a critical moment, caught between deterioration and renewal.

It raises an important question for our time: how do we steward architecture that was never meant to be ordinary?

Video Collaboration
Brian Linder, AIA
Mark H. Mendez

Architecture Brokers
THE VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE

COMPASS

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04/28/2026

FREE ARCHITECTURE TOURS THIS WEEK!

• OPEN TUESDAY (Today) 11 AM – 2 PM

• OPEN SUNDAY 2 – 5 PM

Set within Crestwood Hills, the Gelb House reads as a disciplined response to postwar housing—architecture reduced to its necessary elements and tuned for daily life.

Completed in 1950, the composition is exacting. A post-and-beam framework establishes order and legibility, allowing light, structure, and material to operate without distraction. Proportion governs everything.

The sequence is carefully controlled—an understated entry gives way to an open living volume, where interior space extends outward and remains in constant dialogue with the site. Ridge skylights introduce an even, calibrated light, setting a steady rhythm across the day.

What distinguishes the house is not just its clarity, but its continuity. Held by a single family for decades, the original intent remains intact. The recent work by Bruce Norelius Studio is measured and precise—an act of stewardship rather than revision.

In a landscape where mid-century is often reduced to image, the Gelb House holds to first principles—clear, restrained, and exact.

A. Quincy Jones & Whitney R. Smith, Architects
The Morris & Lydia Gelb House, 1950
Rehabilitation by Bruce Norelius, 2014
LA Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1332

12450 Rochedale Lane
Los Angeles
3 BD | 2 BA
1,197 SF | 14,068 SF Lot
$1,995,000

Represented by
Brian Linder, AIA
THE VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE

Photography: ©Tim Street-Porter

Restoration:

04/19/2026

Private Architecture Preview — Sunday, 2–5 PM

A. Quincy Jones & Whitney R. Smith, Architects
The Morris & Lydia Gelb House, 1950

Join us for a private preview of a rare, highly intact Crestwood Hills residence—where postwar housing is distilled to its essentials.

Measured, restrained, and quietly rigorous, the house remains a clear expression of the original idea—preserved over decades and carefully maintained by Bruce Norelius Studio.

DM for details.

Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1332
12450 Rochedale Lane

Los Angeles
3 BD | 2 BA
1,197 SF | 14,068 SF Lot
$2,700,000

Represented by
Brian Linder, AIA
THE VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE
Properties With Design Integrity

In collaboration with
Photography: ©Tim Street-Porter

Restoration:

04/17/2026

Commissioned in 1983 and completed in 1988, the Sirmai-Peterson House represents a pivotal moment in the residential work of Frank Gehry—where the language of fragmentation, autonomy, and composition is explored at the scale of a domestic landscape.

Set on a secluded, oak-studded hillside in Thousand Oaks, the house is not conceived as a singular object, but as an aggregation of discrete volumes. Each room operates as its own building—an independent form with its own geometry, material expression, and relationship to light. These elements are then carefully arranged across the site, forming a loose, village-like composition organized around a central courtyard.

The result is both spatially complex and intuitively legible. Circulation moves between volumes rather than through them, reinforcing a constant awareness of exterior space, topography, and sky. The courtyard functions as the project’s anchor—an interior landscape that mediates between the individual forms while opening outward to a constructed water feature beyond.
Materially, the house is restrained but precise: smooth stucco, galvanized metal, and concrete block define the exterior, while inside, exposed wood structure, drywall planes, and moments of unfinished plywood maintain a directness consistent with Gehry’s approach during this period. Structure is not concealed—it is part of the architectural language.

What distinguishes the Sirmai-Peterson House is not just its formal invention, but its clarity of intent. The fragmentation is not arbitrary; it is a disciplined exploration of how a house can be broken apart and reassembled—how living can be distributed across space rather than contained within a single envelope.

The guest house by Brian Murphy extends this thinking. Conceived as a secondary structure within the larger composition, it operates with a similar independence—both formally and programmatically—while maintaining a respectful dialogue with Gehry’s original work.

This is architecture as composition rather than enclosure. A house experienced as a sequence of relationships—between forms, between rooms, and between building and landscape.

📷 Cameron Carothers

04/16/2026

PRIVATE ARCHITECTURE TOUR
Saturday, April 18, 2026
2–5 PM

Frank O. Gehry, Architect
The Sirmai-Peterson House, 1988

Guest House by Brian Murphy (BAM)

970 Calle Arroyo
Thousand Oaks

—

Set into a steep, oak-covered hillside, Gehry’s Sirmai-Peterson House reads as a loose aggregation of volumes—a “village” rather than a single object.

Each space is treated as its own form: living, dining, sleeping—pulled apart and reassembled along the contours of the site. Galvanized steel, glass, and light move differently across each piece, shifting throughout the day.

It’s not a composition in the conventional sense. It’s a series of decisions, held together.

The guest house by Brian Murphy (BAM) operates differently—quieter, more resolved, but in direct dialogue with the main house. Less gesture, more calibration.

—

Not open to the public.
DM for access.

04/16/2026

R. M. Schindler, Architect | Van Dekker House, 1940

19950 Collier Street
Woodland Hills, CA 91364

Designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 974, the Van Dekker House stands as one of Rudolph M. Schindler’s largest and most ambitious residential works. Commissioned for actor Albert Van Dekker, the residence reflects Schindler’s ongoing pursuit of spatial fluidity, where structure, light, and material dissolve the conventions of domestic architecture in Southern California.

Angled wood-beamed ceilings, clerestory glazing, and layered volumes create a dynamic interplay of light and shadow, while Schindler’s signature built-ins and natural material palette reinforce a cohesive architectural language. The asymmetrical copper-paneled roof and carefully orchestrated indoor-outdoor transitions further position the home within the lineage of early California modernism.

Set on a 20,393 square foot site, the property reads as a private compound, balancing architectural rigor with livability, and offering a rare opportunity to experience one of Schindler’s most expansive residential compositions.

3 BED
2 BATH
1,800 SF
20,393 SF lot

Offered at $4,500,000

Listed by
Benjamin Khale | Compass
Desiree Suckerman | Rodeo Realty

If you’re considering this property, Mark Mendez and I would be happy to help represent you in the purchase.

12/31/2025

!! SOLD !!
“The Long Lost Lautner”, according to The New York Times

John Lautner, FAIA, Architect
Jules Salkin Residence, 1948
Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1111

We are thrilled to announce that we closed escrow today, and ownership of this wonderful home has transferred to the next steward, a creative designer in his own right, someone who understands the value of good design and historic preservation. This property and transaction are remarkable for so many reasons, not least of which is the fact that the seller recorded an LA Conservancy “conservation easement” on the property, to preserve its integrity in perpetuity – a true gift to the City – and the buyer was not only OK with it, but welcomed this demonstrative preservation gesture. A match made in heaven!

On more than a third of an acre in the Echo Park hills, with panoramic views to the ocean, this early mid-century modern work by the architect incorporates elements learned during his apprenticeship with Frank Lloyd Wright, in addition to the bold experimentation that would come to define his personal oeuvre.

Commissioned by polymath Jules Salkin, one of the four studio musicians that founded the Crestwood Hills architectural community in Brentwood, the home was lost to history through decades of ownership by the original family. Fortunately, in 2014 the home was rediscovered by the seller, who painstakingly researched the property’s pedigree, removing incompatible additions and reducing square footage, to restore the property to its original condition. The result is a successful marriage of old and new, with original details preserved, and new finishes introduced compatibly.

1430 Avon Terrace
Los Angeles 90026

3 Bedrooms, 1 Bathroom
1,361 SF
15,633 SF Lot

$2,590,000

Restoration by Trina Turk and Jonathan Skow, in collaboration with Barbara Bestor, FAIA, Architect

conservancy

Represented by:
Brian Linder, AIA and Mark H. Mendez
The Value Of Architecture
Compass

Sterling Reed Photographyus

THE VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE

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