When the news fluttered south that Sunset Magazine was going to lift its famous Idea House straight out of Menlo Park and deposit it in Los Angeles, aficionados of the venerable Western living publication felt as sunny as the pages of the sunshine-laden magazine itself.
Of course, Sunset didn't actually transport its HQ-close Idea House to LA -- that's an annual fixture, in the Bay Area, and choppering houses great distances isn't wise. But Southern California got its very own, in Manhattan Beach, and design and architecture fans have been wandering its stylish spaces since it debuted on Friday, Aug. 1.
But the magazine is looking beyond its first-ever LA Idea House, to LA-based houses full of ideas. With that in mind, the inaugural Sunset LA Beach Cities Home & Garden Tour will set out on Saturday, Aug. 16 to survey a quintet of Westside abodes, including, of course, the Idea House.
Where will the tour wander? Well, Green on Main, for one. It's the "only building in Southern California made entirely of shipping containers," 14 in all, and it is plunk in the middle of thrumming Venice Beach. It's a mixed-use property, and airy as all get-out, lest you're thinking container=closed.
In this case container=quirky, cool, and bright as a lightbulb.
Three more homes, one more in Venice, one in Los Angeles, and one in Manhattan Beach, are also on the visit-and-lust-after list. If you've ever desired to enter the pages of Sunset, and you wanted those pages to be lush with that Los Angeles coastal aesthetic, here's your doorway.
And, indeed, you'll walk through the doorway to the Idea House, as mentioned. There's a wine and cheese reception at the house, and representatives from DISC Interiors, the firm behind the house's contemporary details, will be ready for chatting all things design.
It's a rather big day packed with plans, concepts, quirky design touches, and broad family needs, plus a few cool stoves and windows and staircases along the way.
Does Sunset Magazine set you to daydreaming of domestic fancies? Here are those very domestic, daydream-worthy fancies, if, not in the flesh, then in the glass and metal and wood and stone.
