text by Lisa Germany with accompanying photos by Juergen Nogai
Gesner himself at his 1957 designed Wave House in Malibu
Wave House
Raven’s Eye in Malibu
For more than 60 years, passersby have strained to catch a glimpse of maverick architect Harry Gesner’s houses in Southern California. This is the first book to examine Gesner’s architecture, tracing his career from 1945 to the present and opening the doors to 15 of Gesner’s intriguing homes, all located in or near Los Angeles and built in the 1950s and 1960s. An insightful and revealing text accompanies new photography by Juergen Nogai along with historical photographs and Gesner’s own drawings, floor plans, and blueprints drawn from his remarkably rich archive. Gesner’s utterly unique, often eccentric and unorthodox designs are outside the canons of doctrinaire modernism, yet he is undoubtedly a Modernist, and one whose romantic, quixotic nature has caused his truly extraordinary body of work to be overlooked by many—until now. ~via Amazon
Harry Gesner draws inspiration from nature and the energy of having lived by the ocean in Malibu all his life. Gesner, an avid surfer, whose Malibu Wave House has given inspiration to such architectural icons as the Sydney Opera House, describes his experience in 1956, sketching the ideas right onto his balsa-board with a grease pencil, sitting out in the ocean facing the beach where he camped for a few nights to get to know the elements. ~Eric Minh Swenson
