#uscmaymester

Within a few minutes of starting the tour, our guide told us, “Leonore Annenberg’s favorite colors were pink, yellow, and celadon--and you’ll see that throughout the house.” 

No kidding. The Annenbergs’ bedroom was entirely yellow, from carpet to bedding to curtains. Rodin’s Eve stands circled by celadon-painted steel beams, their holes plugged up by decorative celadon buttons. The entire Mayan-inspired roof is pink; you can spot it a mile away.

Pink, yellow, and celadon are traditionally considered feminine colors. Ultra-feminine, in fact. They’re the colors I expect to see infant girls dressed in. I can’t imagine that Leonore Annenberg’s taste in colors matched that of Walter Annenberg’s or A. Quincy Jones’s. But, clearly, she got her way.

Diplomacy, on the other hand, is a boys’ club. Most world leaders and ambassadors today are men, and that was certainly the case in 1966 when Sunnylands was completed. The thought of Ronald Reagan sitting on cutesy needlepoint pillows in the Yellow Suite or Xi Jinping standing under a pink-washed Chinese pavilion while golfing with Barack Obama is shocking--and a little funny. 

Although the Annenbergs built Sunnylands as a winter retreat, they knew from the get-go that they would be entertaining important politicians. (Eight U.S. Presidents have been hosted at Sunnylands to date.) I feel like the Annenbergs must have been conscious at some point in their initial decision-making, or at least in the last decade of their lives as they were building the framework for Sunnylands to become public, that they were setting the stage for important, sometimes-tense talks to be held against pastel Easter egg colors. Did the Annenbergs hope to subversively inject some femininity into the male-dominated room? Did they hope the soft colors in the background would remind politicians to be gentler with their actions? Or was it honestly just a strong-willed woman who wielded enough power in the design process that her minority opinion won out?

Whatever the answer is, I like the color scheme and the amount of say Leonore had in the house. I appreciate the startling presence of pink, yellow, and celadon among high-powered men in the “Camp David of the West.” Although all of the architects we have studied in this course were men, we’ve also seen women, sometimes in the foreground and sometimes in the background, putting their stamp on the final result of some of Los Angeles’s most revered buildings. From Mary Gamble and her “unusually involved for a woman” communication with the Greene brothers to Aline Barnsdall’s vision of an artistic utopia, it is important to recognize the contributions of women to modern architecture, written out as they often are from history books.

6/11/15

The Annenbergs’ Sunnylands Estate in Rancho Mirage, designed by A. Quincy Jones. We were lucky enough to catch a tour before they close for the summer!

6/10/15

Last stop of the day! Pierre Koenig’s Stahl House, from day to dusk.

6/10/15

Visit to Pierre Koenig’s Bailey House, or Case Study House #21, which now houses the gallery Seomi International.