By Mimi Zeiger
Photography by Kenneth Johansson

James Goldstein is an old-school playboy. He revels in the world of supermodels, fashion shoots and floor seats at Laker basketball games. James Turrell is a conceptual artist. His medium is light. His magnum opus, Roden Crater, is an extinct volcano in Arizona that for the past 30 years he has been carving into a precise celestial observatory. One sexy, one cerebral, it is hard to imagine what would bring these Jims together. The occasionally hazy and occasionally deep blue sky over the Los Angeles basin connects the two. Turrell's recent light installation is housed in a bunker-like construction perched on Goldstein's property, just up Benedict Canyon behind the Beverly Hills hotel.

The context is a steep hillside overlooking the entire city, just below one of the most famous residences in Los Angeles, the 1963 Sheats-Goldstein house by John Lautner. The reinforced concrete, stainless steel, glass and wood structure with views to die for is the archetype of mid-century expressionist modernism. Lautner, who came to L.A. in 1939 while working for Frank Lloyd Wright, blurred the boundary between inside and outside. He dubbed this connection "infinite space." Originally, an air curtain, not tempered glass, separated the living room from the pool deck, but the interweaving interior-exterior experience remains intact.

Such gadgets as the television, which rises out of a stainless steel and concrete table, the glass sink on a glass wall in the master bedroom, or the reinforced concrete roof with triangular coffering punctured with cocktail glasses make the house endlessly photogenic. Appearing in such films as The Big Lebowski and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle as well as in Gucci fashion spreads, the architecture is as much a Hollywood celeb as the famous models posed with Goldstein in the many framed pictures in the house.

Although originally designed for a family, the place is the ultimate bachelor pad. Goldstein acquired the house in 1972 and has been continuously renovating it - first under the guidance of John Lautner and later with architect and Lautner disciple Duncan Nicholson. Turrell's "sky box" is the latest of these additions.

In the early '90s, ACE Gallery owner Doug Chrismas showed Goldstein, already a Turrell fan, several early models for a sky box. "Those models sparked the discussion that Turrell would make something for my hillside," explains Goldstein. "I thought his work was powerful -something that excited me, even after seeing variations in New York and Paris.
"My idea initially was to put John Lautner together with James Turrell - the meeting of two great people in their respective fields," Goldstein reflects. After Lautner died in 1994, Nicholson took over the project.

The small building was built exclusively for and is a part of Turrell's installation. After one descends the 200-plus steps from the main house, the sky box's roof forms a restful deck. Down a few more steps is the entry to the artwork. Inside the structure is a single room with two windows. The roof opening in the white-walled room is specifically placed to capture the sky above west Los Angeles. A small window in the corner is closer to the horizon.

Through the apertures in the mini-observatory the sky flattens into a personal, perceptual canvas, and a palette of artificial light is used to manipulate its shade. From a concealed computer, a program runs 500 incandescent and 4,500 red, green and blue LED lights, which combine to make all the colours of the spectrum. Colours slowly change and blend to complement or contrast with the deep blue sky. For example, the walls can become bathed in orange, pale green or vivid red. Each shade alters the colour perception of the piece of sky coming through the opening, turning it aquamarine, deep green or black. A connoisseur of shades of the firmament, Turrell responds warmly to the Los Angeles context. "Generally, I work right at the zenith, but this piece makes use of the hazy conditions." he explains. "In west L.A., you get late-night and early-morning low clouds and smog, which are beautifully atmospheric."

The seven programmed light cycles, one for each sunrise and sunset of the week, allow Turrell freedom to experiment with the sky canvas. "As the light is falling at sunset, there is only so much you can do in that space of time," says Turrell. "I start off with blue - right after sunset - and black is where it ends up. It is a visual koan that you make the colour of the sky change. Through the context of vision, we give the sky its colour."

After nearly ] 4 years of planning and construction, the sky box is a sophisticated but simple concept with a complicated execution. Like the Goldstein house, there isn't a single right angle. The floor plan is trapezoidal, the floor slopes upward, and the roof curves. Perfectly white plaster walls emerge from a relief in the floor, where the lights arc housed, to complete the elegant convergence.

The slope dictated a partly cantilevered reinforced concrete structure, and the opening in the roof required a special covering. Nicholson responded with technological gusto. Built at the Santa Monica airport, the retractable carbon-fibre roof is an elegant piece of machinery. Such details and the fine concrete craftsmanship pay sincere homage to Lautner's vision.

Where the architecture is restrained, the piece is sublime. But the randy touches nearly undermine the artwork. The wet bar outside the carbon-fibre and stainless steel entry door and the leather-upholstered bed sunken into the floor reduce the programmed light experience to mood lighting for cozy coupling. That said, Turrell is quick to point out that floor-level viewing allows the whole space to be coloured and not just the ceiling.
So perhaps the distance between the two men is much less than first perceived. "Artistically, he and I are on the same wavelength," remarks Goldstein of the artist. "He's a strange and terrific guy," says Turrell in appreciation of his patron. "He was very good at keeping this project going through all the difficulties: the length of the construction, the slide area restrictions, the permits and Lautner's death. He got it done in a way that honours the architect, the place and the light."