Collection by Mabel Unyang Wan
Rooms
One of Owen’s many hobbies is watercolor painting; the black and white painting seen here is one of his own. It sits just below a pair of decorative wall-hung particle boards. The credenza is a 1950s Renzo Rutili design for Johnson Furniture; the hanging lamp is by George Nelson. The dining room table and chairs are Danish-made midcentury teak models.
“As you can see, I’ve never been a minimalist,” says Nunnerley. She compares designing to being a jazz musician, working with the basics and then improvising. “We talk about riffs in jazz, and how those riffs appear in design, how you go up and down the scale, and make interesting juxtapositions.”
Pieces that might appear miscellaneous elsewhere create harmony here. The area around the fireplace includes a huge Senufo guardian bird sculpture from the Ivory Coast, a pair of 1930s Italian Osvaldo Borsani armchairs, and a curved, low table in eggshell-and-lacquer from the 1970s.
This was my room, Unit 2. It's the only one with the bed pushed up against the window, set on a unique cantilevered bed frame created by Trowbridge, a furniture designer. It took a little while to get used to the lack of curtains; the designers opted to keep the glazed walls open, to maximize guests' experience of Lautner's legendary approach to daylight. The surrounding walls offer plenty of privacy from prying eyes, though, and a provided sleep mask blocks out morning rays.