List price: $7,500,000
Address: 2138 Micheltorena St, Silver Lake
4721 Square feet - 3 bedrooms, 4 baths
For the first time in 40 years, John Lautner, F.A.I.A.: The Reiner-Burchiill Residence, 1957-1976. Silvertop is up for sale, aptly described as the real-life experiments in the Tomorrowland promised by Walt Disney. At Silvertop today, the bright Tomorrowland of yesteryear still resonates, incorporating "interlocking half-circles," and loads of windows to showcase the incredible views from the home's hillside perch on 1.26 acres, out of view and best seen from East Silver Lake Boulevard, across the reservoir.
Silvertop was commissioned by industrialist and engineer Kenneth Reiner. John Lautner is legendary for inventive, boundary-pushing designs, and Silvertop was Lautner’s first major use of monolithic concrete as a sculptural as well as architectural component. It was completed in 1963, after nearly seven years of construction.
The house features a huge, arching concrete roof over a wall of glass opening the interior to the views all around, enhanced by a cantilevered swimming pool that seems to flow directly into Silver Lake Reservoir far below, and that wraps around a circular guesthouse, known as Round House, which contains one bed, one bath, kitchen and a photographer's darkroom.
It has been the setting for music videos, TV commercials and scenes from the '80s movie "Less Than Zero."
The house was one of the first large residential projects by Mr. Lautner, who died in 1994. Started in 1956, the home showcased Mr. Lautner's use of concrete as an architectural material, which would become one of his signatures, said architect Frank Escher, who serves on the Board of Directors of the John Lautner Foundation. The home's infinity-edge swimming pool was one of the first of its kind.
