Just two weeks after the longtime Malibu residence of Harry Gesner floated onto the market with a $27.5 million price tag, in its wake comes the maverick architect’s most famous work, the Wave House, looking to net nearly twice as much.
Located next door to Gesner’s own property, the Wave House was commissioned by Gerry and Glenn Cooper, a couple that the architect had been friends with for decades. Just as water had played an integral role in Gesner’s relationship with the Coopers — he’d grown up surfing with Gerry and become friends with Glenn through his job as a waterski instructor in Lake Arrowhead — so it did with his design for their home.
As recounted in Lisa Germany’s 2012 monograph “Houses of the Sundown Sea: The Architectural Vision of Harry Gesner,” the architect spent two days bobbing in the surf in front of the building site drawing up his plans for the house on the back of his longboard with a grease pencil. Completed in 1963, the structure that emerged from this unconventional drafting session had a jagged, undulating roofline resembling a series of cresting waves from most angles, and also calls to mind the form of a sea turtle when viewed from above.
Shaggy-haired pop star Rod Stewart scooped up the Coopers’ distinctive home in the 1970s, selling it in 1987 to Mo Ostin, the legendary record executive who signed and/or worked closely with a staggering roster of talent, including Frank Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, The Who, Fleetwood Mac, and Prince. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer passed away last year at 95, and his estate is now being sold by a family trust.
Ostin made a few alterations to the home during his ownership, most notably replacing the pebbled roof with one made of hand-cut copper shingles evoking the scales of a fish, and covering up the Santa Barbara fieldstone around the house’s massive fireplace with a coat of stucco.
The approximately 6,400-square-foot residence is dividing into two…