The Elrod House epitomizes John Lautner’s go-for-broke philosophy By Allison Engel
All Elrod house photography courtesy Kilroy Southridge Properties Photography by Leland Y. Lee
An apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright early in his career, John Lautner eschewed the cool, severe geometry of his midcentury minimalist peers. Instead, he spent a lifetime as an iconoclast, alternately overlooked or miscast by critics. Several of his best-known projects — including the iconic Googie coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard — have been wrongly celebrated as Atomic Age or Hollywood kitsch. "Lautner’s fascination with new shapes and structures had nothing to do with Space Age…











