Page 72 - Architectural Digest - USA (March 2020)
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hen Kanye and Kim discovered Kim and Kanye as wonderful human beings.
Kardashian West first We have common values in life, important human values,
encountered the house like a respect for the beauty and spirituality of art,” the
that would become designer says. “You can call it religion, but this is perhaps
their wildly idiosyncratic beyond religion, a search for cosmic values of peace and
family refuge in subur- positive energy. We had very profound conversations about
ban Los Angeles, the two the space of the mind and the importance of silence.”
had decidedly different Those conversations naturally informed their plans to
reactions. “We passed by reimagine the house, a process Vervoordt describes in terms
this incredibly extrava- of distillation. “Kanye and Kim wanted something totally
gant house while strolling through the neighborhood. I’d just new. We didn’t talk about decoration but a kind of philosophy
had North, and we were doing a lot of walking so I could work about how we live now and how we will live in the future.
off some of the baby fat,” Kim recalls of their first sighting in We changed the house by purifying it, and we kept pushing
the summer of 2013. “I didn’t really know Kanye’s style at that to make it purer and purer,” the designer explains.
point, but I thought the house was perfection. Kanye was less In practical terms, those lofty ambitions translated into
enthusiastic. He said, ‘It’s workable.’ ” a wholesale transformation of the proportions of the house’s
Almost seven years—and three more children—later, the many rooms, all of which are sheathed in a luminous, off-
Wests have transformed that real estate into one of the most white plaster and accented with other pale natural materials.
fascinating, otherworldly, and, yes, strange pieces of domestic “The proportions are the decoration,” Kanye says of the
architecture on the planet. The metamorphosis of the house rarefied architecture. The furnishings, kept to a bare minimum,
from suburban McMansion to futuristic Belgian monastery, consist mainly of Vervoordt’s characteristically subtle designs
as Kanye himself blithely describes it, is a story of probing and accompanied by sympathetic creations by the likes of Royère
passion—a testament to the iconoclastic mind of the boundary- and Pierre Jeanneret.
defying musician and the fearlessness of the zeitgeist-defining “The one thing Kanye and I had in common was our
reality star and entrepreneur. preference for a neutral palette. I love the simplicity of the
Although architecture and interior design have only design. Everything in the outside world is so chaotic. I like to
recently come to the fore as areas of interest for Kanye, he has come into a place and immediately feel the calmness,” Kim
maintained an abiding interest in the built environment for says. As for the uncompromising minimalism of the scheme,
years. “When I was growing up in Chicago, before the internet, she offers a different perspective: “Kanye would come up
I’d go to my local Barnes & Noble to check out Architectural with the most far-out ideas, and I’d say, ‘This is not normal.
Digest and other design magazines, along with the fashion and We need drawers!’ I was the voice of functionality.”
rap titles,” Kanye says. “My father encouraged me. He always
had graph paper around for me to scribble on.” ONE MIGHT WONDER about the challenges of raising four
As his career took off, and as his fortunes grew, Kanye was small children in such a pristine, cream-colored environment,
able to indulge his design jones in a serious way, becoming a but Kim and Kanye are quick to point out that the house is
habitué of the Paris flea markets and international design fairs, eminently kid-friendly—and not just in the more traditionally
and diving into the deep end of the pool with major acquisitions cluttered play spaces and children’s bedrooms tucked away
like an original Jean Royère Polar Bear sofa. “I sold my Maybach beyond the primary social zones. “The kids ride their scooters
to get the Royère. People told me I was crazy for what I paid for down the hallways and jump around on top of the low Axel
it, but I had to have it,” Kanye says of the design trophy. One of tables, which they use as a kind of stage. This house may be a
those people was his wife. “I really didn’t know anything about case study, but our vision for it was built around our family,”
furniture before I met Kanye,” Kim admits, “but being with him Kanye insists. Kim seconds the notion: “In the end, we don’t
has been an extraordinary education. I take real pride now in take it too seriously. We’re not going to be fanatics,” she says.
knowing what we have and why it’s important.” Although Kanye describes the house as “90 percent Axel,”
several other prominent designers lent their talents to the
THE COUPLE’S PEREGRINATIONS through the international proceedings. Minimalist architect Claudio Silvestrin—who
design world eventually put them in the path of the illustrious worked on Kanye’s pre-Kim Manhattan loft and continues to
Belgian designer and tastemaker Axel Vervoordt, whom Kanye collaborate with him on ambitious building projects still under
met at antiques fairs and exhibitions in Maastricht and Venice. wraps—designed the voluminous master bath. Vincent Van
The initial attraction for the musician centered on a signature Duysen helped furnish the living room as well as the children’s
Vervoordt design—a Floating Stone table with rounded edges bedrooms. And Wirtz International Landscape Architects,
that seemed to encapsulate the seductive simplicity and wabi- under the direction of Peter Wirtz, oversaw the design of the
sabi aesthetics that pervade the designer’s oeuvre. “When I burgeoning, purposely all-green gardens.
saw the kind of work he was doing, I thought, This man could One of the more curious rooms in Kim and Kanye’s
design Batman’s house. I had to work with him,” Kanye says, hideaway is devoted exclusively to a gargantuan, creature-like
adding, “It was a coup to get Axel to come to Calabasas to redo soft sculpture fashioned by artist Isabel Rower. Asked whether
a McMansion, which is essentially what the house was.” the space is a playroom or an art installation, the indefatigably
Vervoordt confesses that it was an unlikely meeting of the provocative musician demurs: “Everything we do is an art
minds. “I’m not from the pop world, the rapper’s world. But I installation and a playroom.”
★ EXCLUSIVE VIDEO KIM AND KANYE AT HOME, ARCHDIGEST.COM.
70 ARCHDIGEST.COM
