The Doumani Beach House

While researching the architect David Ming-Li Lowe a few months ago, I came across Real Estate As Art: New Architecture in Venice, California, a wonderfully weird book by Joseph Giovannini from 1984.

It’s a a slice-of-life depiction of architecture and architects working in and around Venice in the late 70s and early 80s — Gehry, Morphosis, Frederick Fisher, etc. — and comes with a map of all the houses mentioned. So of course I recently went to Venice to photograph all the buildings I could find, which was a blast.

I’ll be posting each house I visited as a separate entry here, but my first stop (as I worked my way northward along the shore) was this house: the Doumani Beach House, designed by the Mexican-American sculptor (and non-architect) Robert Graham.

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Graham was a long-time Venice resident, and his own house — shared with his wife Anjelica Huston — will appear here later. But here first is one of his few house designs, for the art-collecting couple of Roy and Carol Doumani.

I quite liked this house’s exterior; it reminded, in its extreme smoothness, of 1920s Corbusier houses, though the high-mounted windows reminded me of a late 70s office park I had just seen in Torrance. Reminiscent, too, of some of Peter Eisenman’s experiments: a cube cut from a cube, etc.

Apparently the large window on the ocean-facing elevation (above) opens completely to let in the sea breeze. Real Estate as Art features a photo of the Doumanis lounging there in the late afternoon sun.