The canary yellow L.A. home where “Fahrenheit 451” author Ray Bradbury resided for more than 50 years was demolished last week, according to the Los Angeles Times. The culprit: none other than Thom Mayne.
The Pritzker winner has never been known to be nostalgic; in the wake of MoMA’s decision to raze the Tod Williams Billie Tsien’s American Folk Art Museum, he had noted simply that, “All of our work is somewhat ephemeral.” So it comes as little surprise that shortly after he and wife Blythe Alison-Mayne purchased Bradbury’s former property for $1.76 million, the Times reports, the walls started coming down.
Before.
After. Images by Byron Espinoza via L.A. Times
Mayne was disappointed by the house’s “ordinariness,” he told Melville House in a brief interview, and plans to replace the four-bedroom that formerly occupied the 9,500-square-foot lot with a garden/home hybrid “prototype that is landscape-neutral and water friendly.” As homage to Bradbury, he also plans to erect a wall inscribed with the titles of his books.
As many Bradbury fans decry the act as the destruction of a literary landmark, director of Indiana University’s Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, Jonathan Eller, feels less of a sense of loss. When the Times asked for comment, he suggested that Bradbury, a man as fascinated with the future’s possibilities as Mayne, would not have minded. The two, “really share that same mandate, to move ahead and be original,” he said.