Venice Concrete Contemporary Made Famous on Showtime’s ‘Californication’ Fetches $14.6M

Published: April 26, 2017 | By: American Luxury Staff

A Venice residence featured prominently in the hit Showtime series Californication has sold. The home designed and owned by architect David Hertz fetched $14.6 million.

Hertz designed the home himself; the construction dates to 1995. The design style is contemporary, but the house was at the vanguard of eco-conscious architectural sensibility twenty years ago and, as an early green design, is as relevant today as it was then.

The home—known as the McKinley Residence—measures about 5,000 square feet, and contains seven bedrooms. The design’s Eastern influence breaks the living spaces into four discrete structures, each connected to the others via three bridges. In the context of the design, the central courtyard and pool acts as both a source of recreation and communality, and is a tip of the hat to residential architecture of the Japanese Pacific, incorporating water and garden with sectional interior living spaces.

The home combines a great deal of cement with whitewash and wood. It’s a strikingly beautiful result, very warm, with industrial design elements rendered intimate, and a great deal of glass lending an acute sense of continuation. Doors, cabinetry, staircase, all show their age, but the interior architecture is so well executed, and the style so cohesive, that it’s hard to imagine a new owner wanting to significantly alter the feel of the space.

Hertz used a composite material of his own design—Syndecrete—for kitchen and bath sinks and countertops, and tiles; the material is a concoction of recycled glass, plastic, metal and wood in a concrete base. It’s stronger than concrete, but weighs half as much. Hertz’s other green contributions to the home’s design include recycled and sustainable wood, ecologically safe paint, non-chlorine pool, and passive and active solar energy collection, and passive airflow.

The McKinley Residence was also used as a location for the film ‘Adaptation’; it is considered a Venice landmark.

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