KEN KELLOG YEN HOUSE

Richard Meier – a KUSH favorite – once told Horacio Raul Silva, the features and online director at T: The New York Times Style Magazine, that “the jury’s still out” on why so many women find architects sexy.  “I’ll take a guess,” he said, “and say it’s probably because they don’t know anything about architects!”  One architect, however, may have a clue or two.  Ken Kellog was raised in Mission Beach, San Diego, and is famous for his organic architecture – “curvilinear” structures inspired by natural form without the aid of computers to guide him.  Often questioned about his “love of the curve,” Kellogg speculated to Kevin Greenberg at Pin-Up magazine that it might have to do “with the female body.”

The Yen House is one of his masterpieces; perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific coast, the house has a virtually empty center, underneath a mass of wooden roof panels.  The open space affords its inhabitants an unobstructed view of the nature in which the house exists.  For KUSH readers, two things add to its beauty; it sits on an exclusive property and has a too-close-to-be-true proximity to Windansea Beach (let’s hope you’ve got your surf history down pat…).

Ken got his big break – and his introduction to organic materials – through a chance introduction to Buzzy Bent, who famously started the Chart House restaurant chain; Ken designed their Santa Barbara location in the 60’s.  His distinctly American influence can’t be missed; Frank Lloyd Wright inspired Kellogg with a talk he gave to architecture students while Kellogg himself was in college at University of Colorado, Boulder.

Kellogg is interested in the “green” movement, but is an aesthete above all else.  As he’s said before, “If it’s not beautiful, why sustain it?”  The Yen House is sculptural seduction.

http://www.kendrickbangskellogg.com/

Photo Citation: Pin-Up Magazine