En la costa de Malibú, California, se ubica Sandcastle House. Esta fascinante casa fue diseñada por el arquitecto Harry Gesner, cuya forma es la de un castillo de arena. Una estructura única donde la historia que dio pie al inicio del proyecto y la serenidad que rodea al hogar, son los protagonistas.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 (gentle music)
00:02 Welcome, my name's Zen Gessner.
00:16 I'm the son of Harry Gessner,
00:17 who's the architect of the Sandcastle.
00:20 33604 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, California.
00:25 The Sandcastle is a one of a kind structure.
00:27 My father built it with reclaimed materials.
00:30 The property has six bedrooms.
00:32 There's three in the main Sandcastle
00:34 and three in three separate apartments
00:37 surrounding the property.
00:38 122 feet of beach frontage
00:41 on a very secluded North Malibu Cove.
00:44 It was the late '60s and my father proposed to my mother
00:48 right up there on the bluff
00:49 and pointed down to this empty lot and said,
00:52 "Nan, if you marry me,
00:54 I'll build you your dream house down there."
00:56 He wanted to build a house
00:57 that was the ultimate family beach house,
01:00 something that promoted creative thought.
01:03 He had a unique way of starting a project
01:06 and that was usually to go and camp out on the job site
01:10 before anything was ever built there
01:11 to assess how nature interacted with it.
01:15 I was about one and we were sitting out on the beach
01:19 and in my father's book,
01:20 he has a picture of us building a sandcastle
01:23 and on the back of that photograph,
01:24 he wrote, "Let's build a sandcastle for mommy."
01:27 [gentle music]
01:31 So now we're in the sandcastle.
01:36 I had told you before that my father built this house
01:39 from my mother.
01:40 She was a Broadway actress
01:42 and so he designed this fireplace like a Greek theater show.
01:47 The hearth is the stage
01:49 and the sunken living room is the theater house.
01:52 99% of this house is built from reclaimed materials.
01:56 My father believed that older materials
01:59 had a life to them, a soul.
02:02 So the floor is maple.
02:05 It's from a school that was burning down.
02:06 The fire chief called my father and said,
02:08 "Harry, you better come down here.
02:10 Maybe there's some good planks in there."
02:11 My father went down, shaved off a little bit of the char
02:14 and saw there was beautiful maple underneath.
02:17 So he grabbed as much of it as he could
02:19 and put it into the floor of the house.
02:21 The walls of this house, this is old growth redwood
02:25 from aqueduct pipe that was in Northern California.
02:28 The brick in the fireplace is from a building
02:31 that was being demolished downtown LA.
02:33 These support poles are old telephone poles
02:37 and they have a beautiful design pattern to them.
02:39 Those stained glass windows
02:41 that are over here in the greenhouse,
02:44 my father got a call from a fire chief, once again,
02:47 said, "Harry, they're tearing down this beautiful church
02:50 in Pasadena.
02:51 They're taking all of this beautiful stained glass away.
02:54 Do you want any?"
02:56 With a living room that's built like this,
02:58 you really appreciate so much of the exterior.
03:01 Having floor to ceiling windows
03:03 fringe the entire front end of this.
03:06 One very cool fact is that he built this fireplace
03:10 and then angled every single one of these windows
03:14 to reflect the firelight at night.
03:16 He wanted to build a house that communicated
03:18 and communed with nature.
03:20 And that's what you feel in this living room space.
03:23 This house has no foundations.
03:26 It was built on a dinner plate of concrete
03:29 that is on sand, which is non-compressible.
03:32 Whenever there's been an earthquake,
03:33 we hardly feel it at all.
03:35 It just rides it out like almost a boat on the ocean.
03:39 Even over 50 years, it hasn't tilted at all.
03:43 [upbeat music]
03:46 [upbeat music]
03:49 This is the dining area on the corner of the living room.
03:51 When I was younger,
03:52 this is how my father would call me in from surfing.
03:55 The meal would be cooked in the kitchen
03:57 and the table would be set here
03:59 and he'd go out right to this door.
04:04 He'd open it up.
04:05 [horn blowing]
04:10 And believe it or not,
04:13 you can hear that all the way out in the water.
04:16 This was also where we would have our Thanksgiving's,
04:20 our Christmas dinners, family get togethers.
04:23 It was always a lot of fun at night.
04:25 We'd have music and the fire going in the living room
04:27 and some amazing food, just great.
04:30 [upbeat music]
04:33 My father in the '60s, late '60s,
04:38 was commissioned to do an interior decorating design
04:41 of a kitchen in the Los Angeles Convention Center.
04:44 They were taking it apart and they said to my father,
04:48 "Well, we're just gonna be throwing this stuff away.
04:50 "Do you want it?"
04:51 And my dad said, "Absolutely."
04:52 So this round chopping block, the countertops,
04:55 the round bar, this whole design that you see here
04:59 came from an installation
05:01 that was at the LA Convention Center
05:02 and my father just made it work seamlessly in this house.
05:06 I love these little touches, the hot plates,
05:09 beautiful old tile that are scattered
05:11 around the center table here.
05:13 And you have all your cooking knives
05:16 are all right here at hand.
05:18 We also have a beautiful fireplace over here
05:20 that was always lit at night.
05:22 And this is really where the community came and hung out.
05:25 For a while, we had Rod Stewart next door
05:27 who would come over here and suddenly the door would open
05:30 and, "Hey, here comes Rod."
05:31 It was just the community center.
05:33 Everybody felt comfortable coming and hanging out here.
05:36 [upbeat music]
05:40 This is my first bedroom, a lower floor of the sand castle.
05:45 This was the original room I kind of grew up in
05:48 until the age of seven.
05:49 And you can see a little indication of it over there
05:52 by the door.
05:53 My father converted this into an office for his later years.
05:58 So this could be an office.
06:00 It could be converted back to a bedroom.
06:02 But I think a really special point of this
06:04 is the greenhouse.
06:07 You really feel a connection to nature
06:09 and having this kind of indoor, outdoor feeling.
06:12 It's very peaceful, especially in the afternoon
06:15 when the afternoon sun hits those stained glass windows
06:18 and just projects all the light and color into the room.
06:21 It's just gorgeous.
06:22 [upbeat music]
06:25 Tons of circles.
06:29 There's circles everywhere.
06:30 The whole room, the sunken area over here
06:33 with the primary bed right there.
06:35 You look up and you have these vaulted ceilings
06:38 with this beautiful, beautiful circle design.
06:41 At the top of the staircase,
06:42 you have this yellow stained glass window
06:45 that is almost like you're looking through a magical lens.
06:49 In the primary, you have this great little fireplace,
06:52 but on the other side of it,
06:53 you have a day bed that looks out over the entire ocean.
06:56 It's where my mother used to read her scripts.
06:58 It's where I'd used to just hang out
07:00 and read books or draw.
07:03 There's a story about this,
07:05 which leads up to my father's design studio.
07:08 My father used to get up there, up a ladder
07:12 and scurry up the ladder through a small hole at the top.
07:15 One day he was up there designing
07:16 and he looked out at the ocean
07:18 and he saw a tree floating by.
07:20 So he jumped on the ladder, came down,
07:22 grabbed a surfboard, paddled out,
07:24 and dragged it in to shore.
07:26 Got me and a bunch of my surf buddies
07:28 to help him drag it up,
07:30 tie it to a Monterey pine that's just outside.
07:33 And we started sourcing out individual pieces of driftwood
07:37 to make the steps.
07:38 We put this whole thing together out there,
07:40 including laminating this handrail all around the tree.
07:44 And then we took it all apart
07:46 and brought the whole thing in
07:47 through this two foot window down here
07:50 and rebuilt the whole thing inside.
07:53 And this is now the way up to the design studio.
07:56 The design studio above is a magical space.
08:00 I think it would make an amazing painting studio.
08:02 It's like all of the energy of the house
08:05 is all centered around this tower.
08:08 And like a lighthouse, that's where the light comes from.
08:11 (upbeat music)
08:14 This was one of the places that I spent most of my youth.
08:19 This backyard patio area
08:21 with all this reclaimed brick on the ground.
08:24 We would have amazing parties here.
08:26 This whole space would just be alive
08:28 with people and seafood that we had caught
08:31 out in the kelp bed.
08:33 This outdoor area here,
08:34 it really kind of lended itself
08:37 to being a community center.
08:39 The shape of the house was very welcoming to people.
08:42 I think the fact that it was round, unconventional,
08:45 so creative, it was exciting for people to visit.
08:48 The kelp forests that are just off the beach
08:51 are some of the most beautiful in the state of California,
08:54 full of life.
08:55 Growing up surfing out here was always an adventure.
08:59 Sometimes you want to step inside
09:01 and take a break from the sun.
09:03 We've got a cabana over here.
09:05 It started out as a garage for our cars,
09:09 then turned into a games room,
09:11 then into my father's archives.
09:13 And now it is a very comfortable cabana.
09:15 So you surf, you come in for lunch,
09:18 you have a seat, read a book,
09:19 and go back out and surf again.
09:21 It's a good lifestyle.
09:23 And now I'm gonna take you up above the cabana to the nest.
09:26 (upbeat music)
09:31 Welcome to the nest.
09:32 We have a little kitchenette over on this side.
09:35 This is set up as a recording studio right now,
09:37 because one of my sons is a musician
09:39 and he's doing a lot of creative work out here.
09:42 But this is where I spent my youth and my teens.
09:45 It echoes the same round structure as the main sandcastle.
09:49 Growing up out here was a bit like Swiss Family Robinson.
09:52 The fact that my father really built this with his hands
09:56 and the property evolved every year.
09:59 There was always something new, something exciting.
10:02 The stained glass window here,
10:04 the panels on this door over here,
10:06 they came from another house that was being demolished.
10:09 And of course you have this amazing view.
10:11 When I woke up in the morning as a kid,
10:13 I had that in front of me and there's the entire ocean.
10:17 (upbeat music)
10:19 So we're standing in the tree house apartment,
10:24 which is on the front end of a three car garage.
10:28 You have one bedroom here, you have a bathroom, shower.
10:32 It has a great kitchen area, a great dining area
10:35 with these floor to ceiling windows
10:37 that look out over the sandcastle and out to the ocean.
10:41 And one of the most amazing views of the whole property.
10:45 It's really special up here.
10:48 When we built the tree house,
10:52 we put wooden bowls on this tree and the birds loved it.
10:56 So this really did become a tree house, birds included.
11:00 (upbeat music)
11:03 We are in the boathouse.
11:07 This is a separate apartment
11:09 and we are currently standing in the living room area.
11:13 This is a great, great guest apartment.
11:16 There's plenty of room for a family to stay here.
11:18 You have a very comfortable sitting area.
11:21 You've got a kitchen, you've got a bedroom
11:24 and a bathroom with a shower.
11:26 All filled with beautiful little touches.
11:29 There was a battleship that was decommissioned
11:33 and they were tearing it apart
11:34 and taking all the steel and everything
11:36 and repurposing that into other boats and ships
11:40 except for the portholes
11:41 that they were just gonna throw away.
11:43 And my father thought that was ridiculous.
11:46 So he found a way to incorporate it.
11:50 This mural that's behind it, a family member of ours,
11:54 she stayed out here for about two weeks.
11:56 We had no idea what she was doing
11:58 and basically she left
12:00 and when we came up to see the place, it was all painted.
12:04 And she did this beautiful undersea mural.
12:07 (soft music)
12:11 (soft music)
12:13 My father felt that to live in a structure
12:29 that challenged your mind, nothing would ever get boring.
12:33 There'd always be something new to see,
12:35 somewhere new to sit.
12:36 He believed in marrying a design to the environment.
12:40 Being on the beach, a sandcastle,
12:43 being pretty much the root of the inspiration
12:46 for the design, he felt this would fit and it does.
12:50 People walk down the driveway, walk into this house
12:53 and it takes about 15 minutes and they're changed.
12:57 And it has to do with the magic that this house creates.
13:01 It's like you're stepping into another world.
13:05 (soft music)
13:07 (soft music)
13:10 Sandcastle is a bit of everything.
13:20 It really is a perfect example of who my father was.
13:23 To some people, it looks medieval, like a castle.
13:26 To some people, it looks like a Dutch windmill.
13:30 To some people, a Spanish lighthouse.
13:32 I think that whoever lives here
13:35 can't help but evolve with it.
13:38 This is a very specific place
13:41 with a magical quality about it.
13:43 There's nothing ordinary, nothing boring.
13:46 For the first time on the market, from my family to yours.
13:51 (soft music)
13:53 (wind whooshing)