An iconic California beach house thought to have inspired Jørn Utzon’s design for the Sydney Opera House has sold for US$20m less than its original asking price.
Malibu’s Wave House, designed by the American architect Harry Gesner in the late 1950s, was bought by the former Victoria’s Secret model Karlie Kloss and her venture capitalist husband, Joshua Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital, for US$29.5m last week.
The six-bedroom, 6,200-sq ft residence – with its central crested roof resembling a wave approaching the beach when viewed from the water – took more than a year to sell. It was listed with an asking price of $49.5m in June 2023.
The home’s most recent owner was Warner Bros record executive Mo Ostin, who fostered the careers of Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Fleetwood Mac and Madonna among others. Ostin died aged 95 in 2022.
The Wave House was famously occupied by Rod Stewart throughout the 1970s, with the British pop star installing railings around the house’s expansive decks to allow him and his guests to use it as an outdoor dancefloor.
The popular hypothesis that Utzon was inspired by Gesner’s design to create the Sydney Opera House has never been proved beyond doubt. The two were designing their respective career-defining buildings at around the same time.
Gesner’s son, Zen Gesner, told the Guardian last year when the house went on the market his father and the celebrated Danish architect were certainly in contact during the late 1950s.
He recalled his father talking about a phone call he received from Utzon “out of the blue” one day.
“He complimented my father on his design of the wave house, he’d seen photos of it,” Gesner said.
“He mentioned to my father that he was working on a very unconventional design for the Sydney Opera House, and that, in a lot of ways, my father’s wave house design inspired him.
“My father was blown away by this because all architects are pretty much egomaniacs, they very rarely ever tip their hats to other people for inspiration. And this really shocked my dad, he was so humbled by this call.”
But in Gesner senior’s 2012 book, Houses of the Sundown Sea, the architect played down the link between the two building’s designs.
“I wish people would not insist that something looks like something else, but they do.” he wrote.
“It’s human nature and a bore. An inspirational concept comes from a collection of parts and pieces … and that wonderful sauce, ‘imagination’.”
Utzon won the design competition for the Sydney Opera House in 1957. Gesner’s Wave House was completed in 1963, a decade before the official opening of the Opera House in 1973.
