The Schnabel House—completed in 1989, it's one of Frank Gehry's most recent residential commissions—has sold for $9.5M. This particular bit of starchitecture was designed and built for then-ambassador to Finland Rockwell Schnabel and his wife, Marna, all while the couple were stationed in Helsinki. Marna, a USC-trained architect, relayed her desires to Gehry via fax machine, but that sort of micromanaging pales in comparison to its most recent renovation, masterminded by Tony Award-winning Broadway producer Jon Platt. Platt reconfigured the wading pool three times before approving, replaced aging wiring with state-of-the-art home control systems managed by eight iPads, added a convoluted mechanized skylight system to cool the interior spaces with minimal energy consumption, and installed the same Cisco Systems WiFi used at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.—all with regular input from Gehry. At one point, Platt declared he'd "put too much of himself into the project to sell," but something changed his mind, because the man behind Angels in America, Wicked, and The Book of Mormon has finally let the boxy, deconstructivist—and wacky—beaut go. Arranged as "a village that looks inward," according to the LA Times, the 5,700-square-foot Schnabel House has five bedrooms and five bathrooms; it originally hit the market for $13M in spring 2011 and was PriceChopped that July.
· Frank Gehry-designed Schnabel House in Brentwood sells for $9.5 million [LA Times]
· Frank Gehry's Schnabel House For Sale to Fund More Musicals [Curbed National]
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