New particulars about how rapper Ye, previously often known as Kanye West, stripped away elements of a luxe Tadao Ando–designed dwelling emerged in a narrative by Ian Parker revealed this week by the New Yorker.
Ye, who has just lately made antisemitic statements and praised Hitler, purchased the 4,000-square-foot dwelling in Malibu, one of many only a few in the US designed by Ando, for $57.3 million in an off-market deal. It had beforehand belonged to the Wall Road financier Richard Sachs.
The house is taken into account architecturally vital, provided that Ando is broadly identified for designing elegant homes. Throughout the artwork world, the Pritzker Prize–profitable architect is particularly identified for designing museums, together with the Chichu Artwork Museum in Naoshima, Japan, and the Trendy Artwork Museum Fort Value in Texas.
Demolition work on Ye’s Malibu home reportedly started with eliminating the graceful, gray, poured concrete minimalist constructing. That demolition was carried out by a day laborer, handyman, and contractor named Tony Saxon.
Saxon, who ultimately enlisted the assistance of a small crew, was additionally requested to strip the home of recent conveniences that almost all would think about important: kitchens, bogs, and built-in storage. In line with Parker, Ye even requested that the floor-to-ceiling home windows be eliminated solely on one aspect of the home that faces the Pacific Ocean and that home be disconnected from the grid utterly, which meant eliminating the electrical energy.
Within the New Yorker story, Saxon described residing in the home whereas endeavor the challenge, sleeping on a mattress in what was as soon as the kitchen and eating house. In that very same room, Sachs had reportedly as soon as hung a portray by George Apartment.
One of many recurring characters in Parker’s story is James Turrell, an artist with whom Ye has collaborated. “All of us will reside in Turrell areas,” Ye as soon as tweeted, someway lacking the purpose that there are solely 80 or so of the artist’s “Skyspace” installations on the planet. The Parker article included one beforehand unreported anecdote wherein Ye tried, and failed, to assemble a “large sphere” recalling one other Turrell work for a live performance on brief discover.
After Ye’s antisemitic feedback in 2022, Ye misplaced his sneaker take care of Adidas, his trend take care of the Hole, and his standing as a billionaire. That 12 months, the home, now gutted, was put again in the marketplace. In line with the story, the itemizing, dealt with by the real-estate brokerage the Oppenheim Group, utilizing the identical pictures Sachs used to promote the place to Ye. The itemizing pegged the home’s worth at $53 million, only a hair lower than Ye purchased it for. Earlier this 12 months, Parker writes, the value of the home was lowered to a really cheap $39 million.
Following Ye’s seek for radical minimalism, the home is now primarily a three-story concrete field with oceanfront views. The house, having been uncovered to the weather, is now scarred and pockmarked, its as soon as easy gray concrete “chewed up” and “pitted” by rain and salt, per Parker. Now and again, the concrete ground is stained by the rusted stays of long-ago put in security obstacles that changed ground to ceiling home windows and glass balustrades.