In 2021, the American rapper and record producer Kanye West purchased a beach villa in Malibu, California, for the equivalent of around 55 million euros. It was a highly sought-after villa of enormous artistic prestige: it was designed by Tadao Andō, a very famous Japanese architect known throughout the world for a style characterized by very rigorous and precise geometric shapes and for its references to brutalism, and built by the studio of architecture Marmol Radziner, one of the most important in Los Angeles.
It previously belonged to Richard Sachs, former partner of the actress Ashley Olson, high finance manager and art collector who, in turn, had purchased it in 2003 for a much lower sum (around one and a half million euros ). But since West became owner of the villa, he and his partner Bianca Censori have made substantial changes, demolishing several key elements of Andō’s work and completely distorting the original concept of the work.
This was recently reported by the journalist from New Yorker Ian Parker, who defined West and Censori’s changes as a “violent remix” that has “disfigured” the work of one of the most prestigious architects in the world. Usually, Parker explained, such villas are purchased by very wealthy people who deeply love the style of a particular architect, to the point of considering him untouchable. West and Censors, on the other hand, did everything they could to turn the house upside down.
Parker interviewed Tony Saxon, the man to whom Censors and West entrusted the renovation work on the villa. Saxon said that, in 2021, he was hired for the job by Censors, who at the time was working as a designer for Yeezy, West’s fashion brand. Saxon worked inside the mansion for six weeks.
Although he disagreed with their directions, Saxon initially performed the tasks requested of him. Without knowing it, Saxon contributed to distorting all the distinctive elements of Andō’s work, such as the predilection for exposed concrete. Censors – who is trained as an architect – did not appreciate this aesthetic feature, and asked Saxon to cancel it by having him paint the walls, shelves, wardrobes and marble of the bathroom.
On another occasion, Saxon revealed to West a part of the house he had not yet seen: a basement where the water purifier, boiler and electrical panel were located. “This will be my bomb shelter, my Batcave,” West replied after seeing it.
As the days passed, the requests became more and more eccentric. For example, at one point West asked Saxon to demolish every aspect of the house that might suggest any kind of modernity, such as bathrooms, air conditioning, windows, light fixtures, heating, plumbing, and electricity. .
Again according to Saxon’s account, in West’s idea the demolitions were to serve to transform the villa into “his work”. In a few weeks everything became unusable: the kitchen and five bathrooms inside the house were demolished, and Saxon was forced to make do and relieve himself in a pot. He ended the partnership in November 2021, in his sixth week on the job, when he chose not to comply with West’s request to demolish all the windows and cut the electrical wires.
After the end of the collaboration, Saxon sued West, accusing him of having paid him only one week’s work and of having forced him to stay in the villa for 16 hours a day, without even providing him with a place to rest, making him sleep on the floor and using a jacket instead of blankets.
West has tried to put the mansion up for sale, but has struggled to find a buyer. In addition to having distorted its identity, with their modifications West and Censors have made it an inconvenient business for anyone, given that to rebuild all the demolished elements it would be necessary to invest millions of dollars.
