Kanye West recently purchased a $78.9 million beachfront Malibu mansion designed by award-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando. The minimalist concrete home, “part house, part sculpture” is one of the few Ando-designed homes in the United States. Existing photos of the home’s exterior certainly show the concrete monolith suits West’s favored minimalist design style. In fact, you’d be forgiven for mistaking the home for a military-grade bunker. 1,200 tons of concrete, 200 tons of steel, and 12 pylons drilled 60 feet below the ground were reportedly required to prevent the home’s sheer weight from buckling and sinking into the sand.
“Minimalist yet warm”
The home spans 3,365 square feet and three floors: the ground floor featuring three guest bedrooms, a middle floor for shared space (including, the living room, kitchen, and powder room), and a top floor featuring the primary bedroom suite. The property has no garden, although the second floor includes an outdoor area with seating and fire pit, while the rooftop terrace offers stunning ocean views. A second-floor staircase also offers direct beach access. Since West purchased the property in an off-market deal, no interior photos are currently available online, however, Marmol Radziner, the L.A.-based architecture firm that partnered with Ando to build the property, describes the decor as “minimalist yet warm”. The total lot area spans 5,700 square feet and stretches from the busy main road down to the beach.
Understated beauty
This recent purchase appears in keeping with West’s love of austere interior design. He famously called the Axel Vervoordt-designed LA home he previously shared with ex-wife Kim Kardashian a “futuristic Belgian monastery”. Inside this stunning property, the walls are painted a luminous off-white and the furnishings kept minimal and to neutral shades and natural materials only. Family pictures are also displayed in elegant gloss white frames throughout the property. These frames provide excellent light absorption around the photographs, making them suitable for use in areas of the home that get a lot of light. Otherwise, the unique mansion’s decor primarily consists of Vervoordt’s understated designs along with complimentary creations by modern designers such as Jean Royère and Pierre Jeanneret. “The proportions are the decoration,” West told Architectural Digest. And, ever since visiting Tadao Ando’s art island in Naoshima back in 2018, West has been obsessed with the featured James Turrell artwork he saw there. In fact, West described his visit to the island as “life-changing” and is undoubtedly the inspiration for now purchasing his new Ando-designed brutalist property.
This recent purchase is the latest addition to West’s large and impressive property portfolio. The rapper and designer already owns two minimalist condos in New York City, a huge ranch in rural Wyoming, and a condo in Calabasas. West has also purchased over 300 acres of empty land on the hillside in outer Calabasas where he once attempted to build a strange collection of dome-like, affordable homes.
