Despite the eye-rolling hauteur of the word Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art, it is the mot juste to describe what Pardo has wrought: a dizzying, kaleidoscopic fantasy interior in which the floors, walls, ceilings, and furnishings filigree into a single orgasmic organism, brought to life through the artist’s signature experiments with form, pattern, and color. There’s a primary bedroom suite at one end of the structure, two guest rooms at the other, a kitchen/dining zone, and a sunken living room, the latter two mediated by a floor-to-ceiling storage volume clad in quotidian prefab wood shingles that strike a dramatic contrast note amid all the calligraphic finery. “It’s really a simple building, but when you step inside it’s optically extreme,” Pardo says, describing the symphony of engraved, punctured, and otherwise manipulated walls, windows, doors, and furnishings, all fabricated using CNC computer-driven machining processes.
Pardo deployed a variety of pattern languages on the ceramic tile floors and bath walls, the CNC-engraved plywood shutters with glass inserts, the vaguely Western-inflected wall and ceiling panels, and the clustered pendant lights of laser-cut wood, plastic, and aluminum. “There’s a bit of midcentury California and a bit of Old West in the colors and patterns,” the artist notes. “Some of the ornamentation on the furniture refers to the stitching on cowboy boots or the native flowers. The iconography is subtle but present.” Natural light is a critical component of Pardo’s alchemy, animating the interior and amplifying the overall pattern play with a dappled light show that is particularly dramatic as the late afternoons kindle into night.
“It’s hard to compare this place with any other,” says Taschen, who counts John Lautner’s Chemosphere House among his portfolio of architecturally significant private residences. “What Jorge has conceived is nothing short of magical.”
This article appears in AD’s November issue. Never miss a story when you subscribe to AD.
