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New details about how rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, stripped away parts of a Tadao Ando–designed home emerged in a story by Ian Parker published this week in the New Yorker.
Ye, who has recently made anti-Semitic statements and praised Hitler, bought the 4,000-square-foot home in Malibu, one of the very few in the United States designed by Ando, for $57.3 million in an off-market deal. Considered architecturally significant, the home had previously belonged to the Wall Street financier Richard Sachs.
Within the art world, the Pritzker Prize–winning architect is specifically known for designing museums, including the Chichu Art Museum in Naoshima, Japan, and the Modern Art Museum Fort Worth in Texas.
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Demolition work on the smooth, gray, poured concrete minimalist building was carried out by a day laborer, handyman, and contractor named Tony Saxon.
Saxon eventually enlisted the help of a small crew when he was asked to strip the house of modern conveniences that most would consider essential: kitchens, bathrooms, and built-in storage. According to Parker, Ye even requested that the floor-to-ceiling windows be removed entirely on the side of the house that faces the Pacific Ocean, and that the house be disconnected from the grid, eliminating access to electricity.
In the New Yorker story, Saxon described living in the house while working on the project, sleeping on a mattress in what was once the kitchen and dining space. In that same room, Sachs had reportedly once hung a painting by George Condo.
One of the recurring characters in Parker’s story is James Turrell, an artist with whom Ye has collaborated. “We all will live in Turrell spaces,” Ye once tweeted, somehow missing the point that there are only 80 or so of the artist’s “Skyspace” installations in the world. The Parker article included one previously unreported anecdote in which Ye attempted, and failed, to construct a “giant sphere” recalling another Turrell work for a concert on short notice.
Following Ye’s anti-Semitic comments in 2022, he lost his sneaker deal with Adidas, his fashion deal with the Gap, and his status as a billionaire. That year, the house, now gutted, was put back on the market. According to the story, the real estate brokerage the Oppenheim Group handled the listing, using the same images Sachs used to sell the place to Ye. The listing pegged the house’s value at $53 million, just a hair less than Ye paid for it. Earlier this year, Parker writes, the price of the house was lowered to a more realistic $39 million.
Following Ye’s search for radical minimalism, the house is now essentially a three-story concrete shell with oceanfront views. Having been exposed to the elements, the building is now scarred and pockmarked, its once smooth gray concrete “chewed up” and “pitted” by rain and salt, per Parker. The concrete floors are stained where metal railings rusted after exposure to salt air, wind, and water. The ocean-facing side of the house stands completely open after the removal of floor-to-ceiling windows and glass balustrades.
