Ellen's Design Challenge
This was reported in the Ellen in the News Forum but since it is a new TV show which we might want to comment on when it starts in 2015, I thought it might be useful to have a separate thread for it.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/liv...etition-698061
This is an interesting article and interview with Ellen which appeared in New York Times to announce the new show.
The New York Times – April 23, 2014
The Unsettling Thing About Ellen – by Steven Kurutz
Oh, to be Ellen DeGeneres’s decorator. Or her architect. Or her real estate agent. Or even her movers.
When the economy is still sputtering and the housing market hasn’t fully recovered, these are boom jobs.
In the last few years, the comedian and talk show host has been in home-renovation overdrive, buying and redoing more than half a dozen homes in Southern California. Built by renowned architects and filled with fine art and vintage Danish and French décor, many of the houses reveal a design sensibility that is more Architectural Digest than HGTV. Although Ms. DeGeneres can do low as well as high: This week she announced “Ellen’s Design Challenge,” a six-episode design show to air next year on that network in which contestants will compete to build furniture.
Her name appears so frequently on real estate blogs that one of them, Curbed LA, called her a “property hound” and wrote of a recent transaction that she was “at it again.” One imagines a bat phone in Ms. DeGeneres’s living room — a direct line for Los Angeles’s top brokers to call with exciting new pocket listings. Ms. DeGeneres practically confirmed as much, speaking by phone recently from her office at Warner Brothers.
“I somehow manage to find out what’s on the market everywhere,” she said. “People come to me. I like looking whether I’m buying or not. I love real estate.”
Waving away the notion that she is a calculating house flipper, Ms. DeGeneres added: “I’ve never bought to sell. I always say: ‘This is it. I’m never moving.’ People laugh at me now.”
Hollywood is a town filled with boldface architecture buffs. Diane Keaton has bought and sold several historic properties, including a home designed by Wallace Neff and two built by Lloyd Wright. The actress Kelly Lynch is a well-known aficionado of midcentury design and owns homes by John Lautner and Richard Neutra. And Brad Pitt is so enamored of the craft he teamed up with Frank Gehry to build affordable housing in New Orleans and tried his hand at making furniture.
But Ms. DeGeneres, 56, has taken her passion for architecture and design to another level. The homes she has purchased and renovated with her wife, the actress Portia de Rossi, 41, are wildly diverse in style, period and setting, and with each project her tastes have become more sophisticated, her ambitions grander.
It was in 2007 that her real estate activity seemed to really kick into high gear. There was the house in Beverly Hills, built in 1963 by the celebrated firm Buff & Hensman for the actor Laurence Harvey. Ms. DeGeneres and Ms. de Rossi renovated the main structure and bought two adjoining properties, creating a three-acre compound with two guesthouses, an underground parking garage, a pool, a fitness center and a garden with a koi pond.
That project was followed two years later by a 26-acre ranch in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Built in the 1920s for the actor William Powell, the estate had become a shabby equestrian facility; under Ms. DeGeneres’s enthusiastic direction, the main house was redone, a yoga pavilion and tennis court were added, and the property’s eight cabins were decorated in various styles, brimming with rare French fixtures or vintage Danish furniture.
Then, in quick succession, she bought a pied-à-terre in Beverly Hills; a home in the ultrachic Trousdale Estates neighborhood that was designed by Hal Levitt and had been photographed by Steven Meisel for a Versace campaign; and a 1960s Malibu beach house owned by Mr. Pitt.
Ms. DeGeneres no longer owns any of those homes. In some cases, she sold them soon after renovations were completed and a spread ran in Architectural Digest or another shelter magazine — the celebrity renovator’s equivalent of a trophy pelt. In the case of the Malibu beach house, the scent of new carpet hadn’t disappeared before Ms. DeGeneres relisted and sold the place, seven months after she bought it.
Tommy Clements, a partner in Clements Design, a Los Angeles firm that has worked on several projects for Ms. DeGeneres, including the Hal Levitt house, said her serial house-jumping suggests not a restless spirit but a creative one. “She’s constantly looking to be challenged,” Mr. Clements said. “She’s constantly looking for that creative process because it’s something she enjoys doing.”
Jane Hallworth, another Los Angeles designer and gallery owner who has worked for the comedian, said Ms. DeGeneres enjoys getting creative people to work together. “She brings us in and has these different collaborations,” Ms. Hallworth said. “In the end, each house gets better and better.”
Ms. DeGeneres’s latest home may be her crowning jewel. In January, she paid $40 million for the Brody House, built in 1949 for Sidney and Frances Brody, wealthy art collectors who commissioned a huge Matisse ceramic for the enclosed courtyard.
Situated on two and a half acres in the lush Los Angeles neighborhood Holmby Hills, the house represents the coming together of a trifecta of legendary design talent: A. Quincy Jones, a noted midcentury architect whose reputation has soared in recent years; the celebrity interior designer William Haines; and the landscape architect Garrett Eckbo, who designed the grounds, with an expansive lawn and elegant coral trees that resemble massive bonsai plants.
In the view of Linda Dishman, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy, the Brody House is one of the top five homes in the city. “It’s an amazing house,” said Ms. Dishman, who toured its glass-walled bedrooms and living spaces before Ms. DeGeneres bought it.
“What makes it so amazing is the architecture — it’s about volume and space — and the way it’s sited on the lot,” she said. “You see hills. You see the San Gabriel Mountains. You feel like you’re in a very special place in Los Angeles.”
The home’s new owner couldn’t agree more. “The light quality is incredible,” Ms. DeGeneres said. “Even in the hallways. Jones put in skylights so there are no dark rooms.”
She added, “We feel like custodians to an important piece of architecture.”
Those who have worked with her on previous homes describe Ms. DeGeneres as someone who is curious and decisive, and always on the lookout for good design. Early on, she began collecting Latin American and African tribal art. More recently, she has acquired pieces by 20th-century French designers like Charlotte Perriand and Serge Mouille.
Ray Azoulay, the owner of Obsolete, one of the many furniture and art galleries in Los Angeles where Ms. DeGeneres has shopped, said she often calls or comes in herself. “It’s not like you’re getting a team of assistants,” Mr. Azoulay said. “After a while I thought: Aren’t you busy? Don’t you have shows you’re doing?”
But unlike many celebrities, Ms. DeGeneres doesn’t hire star decorators. She works with longtime associates and friends, or people those trusted advisers recommend. One of her frequent collaborators is Cliff Fong, a former fashion designer who runs the Los Angeles design studio Matt Blacke. “I’ve done about 15 homes for her,” Mr. Fong said.
Their partnership dates back to when Ms. DeGeneres was a stand-up comedian on tour and asked him to catsit: “She said, ‘And while you’re there, can you fix up the house?’ I bought her a Hans Wegner chair, a Jean Prouvé chair.”
Mr. Fong remembered the way Ms. DeGeneres decorated one early home, a California bungalow off Mulholland Drive. “The décor was a mixture of earthy American antiques,” Mr. Fong said. “But nothing mumsy or Colonial. More simple, beautiful, primitive forms.”
Early on, Mr. Fong said, there was “a little more reliance on my take on something.” But after so many high-end renovations, Ms. DeGeneres now appears confident in her own tastes and abilities, he said: “I don’t remember the last time I took charge on a project.”
Ms. DeGeneres described her real-estate-and-renovating adventures over the last 25 years as “an education.” Her interest in design started long before her show-business career. “I think I wanted to be an interior designer when I was 13,” she said. “I remember one specific moment in this one house. Setting up my bedroom, wanting to do it in a certain way.”
Her family was lower middle class and moved often, always renting, though her parents would drive around her native Louisiana looking at homes. “It was a lot of Spanish homes, too,” Ms. DeGeneres recalled. “As a kid you don’t know finances. Later, I realized we could never have afforded them. And we were never going to own them.”
She bought her first place — a Spanish-style home in West Hollywood, near the Fred Segal store — for $300,000 around 1986, adding a deck and French windows, and making other small improvements. “It was on such an amateur level,” she said. “But I saw that something could be made better.”
Next, she moved to a home in Laurel Canyon, where she redid the landscaping, sold it for a profit two years later and, again, as she put it, “scaled up.” Eventually, she said: “I learned that furniture is art; that if you spend money on a couch, it can look pretty, but it can also be made by an important designer. I started shopping in a different way, and redoing homes and recognizing what a great home was.”
Now her homes have museum-quality décor: a rare Jean Prouvé lamp from one of the designer’s African commissions; a Jean Royère polar bear sofa; a Mies van der Rohe daybed. On the walls is art by Cy Twombly, Ed Ruscha and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
As several people noted, Ms. DeGeneres views her things with the critical eye of a seasoned decorator. “I don’t think she necessarily has a sentimental attachment to a piece of furniture,” Mr. Fong said. “It’s more if it suits the house.”
The same could be said of her houses. What looks from the outside like impulsive address jumping is sometimes simply a practical response to what suits Ms. DeGeneres’s lifestyle. The Buff & Hensman compound was ideal because Ms. de Rossi’s family lived for a while in one of the guesthouses, Ms. DeGeneres said. But after a few years, the couple realized “we didn’t need all those houses. It works for Ryan because he has a studio, meetings.” (Ryan Seacrest bought the place two years ago for $37.5 million.)
As for the Malibu beach house, the couple also owned the horse ranch at the same time — and “I only ever have a weekend; that’s all the free time I have,” Ms. DeGeneres said.
She also realized that while they might own a house perched on a cliff above the ocean, she and Ms. de Rossi couldn’t walk along the beach without being hounded by paparazzi. “I would just stare at it” from the window, Ms. DeGeneres said, a metaphor for modern celebrity if there ever was one.
They sold the beach house to a friend, and now visit instead.
These days, Ms. DeGeneres’s real estate portfolio (and her nesting energy) is concentrated on two main properties: a stone Italian farmhouse in Montecito, Calif., and the Brody House.
The farmhouse, known as Saladino Villa after its previous owner, the interior designer John Saladino, is actually a 10,500-square-foot estate built in 1929 on 13 acres planted with eucalyptus, cypress and olive trees. Ms. DeGeneres and Ms. de Rossi bought the property last year for $26 million.
Mr. Clements, the interior designer, said his firm is working with Ms. DeGeneres and the architect Howard Backen to build a guesthouse there — something “more contemporary in style, maybe incorporating steel-and-glass windows, mixed with corrugated metal.”
Before Saladino Villa hit the market, Ms. DeGeneres said, she had visited and “knew I wanted to live in it.” She had a different first impression of the Brody House, in 2010, when it was available for the first time in 60 years after Ms. Brody’s death. Ms. DeGeneres was “blown away,” but wary of the considerable work required.
“As much as I love architecture,” she said, “I don’t appreciate redoing the guts of a home. People ask why I don’t build a home from scratch. I can’t imagine anything more stressful.”
When the Brody House was available again last year, after extensive renovations, Ms. DeGeneres was ready to move, she said. But “Portia wasn’t sure it was right for us. Then she quickly changed her mind.” The couple scooped up the property before it officially hit the market. The $40 million they paid may turn out to be a bargain, given the home’s reputation and the soaring real estate values in the city’s rarefied neighborhoods.
If ever there was a house that could keep Ms. DeGeneres and Ms. de Rossi from moving again, this may be it. Ms. Hallworth, the designer and gallerist who was brought in to advise on the renovation, said she doesn’t see how the couple could possibly scale up from here.
“It seems like all of those other houses were steppingstones to the Brody House,” she said. “In each one they acquired a few beautiful pieces, and now the Brody House has an unparalleled collection of furniture and art.”
Asked if she had finally arrived at a permanent home, Ms. DeGeneres responded affirmatively — as she has in the past.
“My answer is yes,” she said. “I think there’s nowhere to go from here. It’s the best house I’ve ever lived in.”
She added, perhaps rhetorically, “Where would I go?”
Aah
Aah.. I see that the NY Times article has already been posted here. I just posted it on the "Ellen in the News" thread. Apologies for the duplication!
First look at Ellen's new show on HGTV which starts in January 2015.
http://www.ellentube.com/media/Ellen...TV!/0_xq6dkln3
Ellen DeGeneres is in the house
Article in USA Today interviewing Ellen about her new show which starts tomorrow night. Contains a video clip. Ellen will be tweeting during the show.
Second Season will start in Jan 2016
We now have the dates for the 2nd Season.
There will be a one hour special on Jan. 1, 2016 and then the 1st episode will air on Jan. 18 at 9 pm on HGTV.
Ten designers to make debut on Ellen?s Design Challenge | Furniture Today
Ten Designers will make their debut on Ellen's Design Challenge.
Reply With Quote
