REAL ESTATE: LOS ANGELES!

In 20th-century Los Angeles, modern architecture and film-making had far more in common than just prime location. A stream of creative talent that never stopped flowing between Southern California and Europe fed both pursuits. In the movies, German expressionism, film noir, the French New Wave and the American new wave formed a transatlantic chain of influence. The same was true of ground-breaking architecture, as European immigrants, including Mr Rudolph Schindler and Mr Richard Neutra, separated themselves from the inspiring orbit of Mr Frank Lloyd Wright - the Wisconsin-born godfather of the modern architecture movement in the US - and anticipated the genius of Mr John Lautner, whose residential work remains a gift to location scouts in search of the spectacular 

Mr Wright's avant-garde concrete, Mr Neutra's stunning clean lines, and Mr Lautner's extraordinary connections to the natural environment - these signatures are as unmistakable on the physical landscape as they are in the celluloid avenues of our collective imagination. 

Los Angeles offered real estate like nowhere else in the world: an experimental architect's wonderland, in a climate that erased the boundary between indoor and outdoor. For Hollywood, that meant an endless real world, life-sized suburban backlot peppered with structures few set designers could dream of matching. As Mr Jeff Bridges' The Dude remarks to modern-homeowner Jackie Treehorn (Mr Ben Gazzara) in The Big Lebowski, as they stroll through Mr Lautner's Sheats-Goldstein Residence: "Quite a pad you got here, man." 

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