Pentagram Papers 38: The Russian Garbo

In the early 1930s Samuel Goldwyn brought the Russian silent film actress Anna Sten to Hollywood. Hoping he had found his Garbo equivalent, Goldwyn failed to recognize that as the silent movie era was quickly fading, Sten was unable to speak English. Before this realization, and upon her arrival, Sten and her husband commissioned Richard Neutra to build them a house in the Hollywood Hills. Virtually unknown, this modernist masterpiece had had only two owners before Pentagram Architects’ James Biber and Neutra house specialists Marmol Radzinger began a restoration. Aimed at balancing Neutra’s original vision, Sten’s demands and the current clients’ desires, the ensuing process was “a live experiment in mediating between the past and the future,” says Biber.

Pentagram Paper 38: The Russian Garbo is a documentary of the Sten-Frenke House that tells the stories of its evolution, architect and owners through reproductions of Neutra’s original documentation and the post-renovation photography of Julius Shulman. The prodigious 95-year-old photographer had never shot the house before, adding yet another story to the history of the residence. “The process of restoring the Sten-Frenke House involved research of the most intimate kind,” recalls Biber. “The extensive documents tell one story, and quite a personal one, the house tells another and the photographs by Julius Shulman tell yet another.” Together they form a portrait of the creation and restoration of this remarkable house.

We have adapted the paper’s content online here:

Go to the Pentagram Paper 38: The Russian Garbo site