![]() ‘Like, when you go to sleep at night, it scampers about, then returns to its place in the morning.’ Animation informed her design for the ‘Pony’ chair. ‘Furniture should have some sense of movement to it,’ she says. She thinks about the inner life of inanimate objects. There’s a sly sense of humour running through Steinberg’s design philosophy. Her strength is in the vignette, in understanding the scale, details and atmosphere of a room,’ notes architect Annie Chu, whose firm, Chu Gooding Architects, collaborated with Steinberg on an unrealised cottage renovation in Dalkey, Ireland, for The Edge. ‘Lenny is acutely aware of the shape of the body relative to space and objects. Two of her three daughters are dancers: Morleigh was one of the members of Momix and performed in videos for U2 (she later married The Edge), while Roxanne founded an experimental company rooted in Japanese dance. This dynamism may come from an interest in modern dance. Her chairs and tables lean obliquely as if blown by Pacific winds. Made from wide, sun-bleached redwood boards, with simple, white canvas cushions, Steinberg’s design gives the classic Adirondack chair a contemporary interpretation by way of Enzo Mari. On the roof deck, a grouping of outdoor furniture from her Pyramids & Parallels period is nestled among ceramic pots of succulents. We head upstairs, past the main bedroom and a library packed with books on Bauhaus, Arata Isozaki, and former collaborators like Gehry and architect Frank Israel. Its sculptural form is also functional, masterly incorporating a bar, wine racks, and even a special butter drawer. ‘I called that series Pyramids & Parallels,’ says Steinberg, leading me into the kitchen where the island shares the same jutting angles. Fashioned from cork and plastic laminate, the house’s boxy chairs, tables and beds are stripped of ornament.Ī sense of movement comes from the geometry legs and backs slant backwards like a comic book drawing of a speeding car. To illustrate, she flips through a dog-eared 1979 issue of Residential Interiors and stops on a page featuring Gehry’s Cheviot Hills house, a 1977 remodel of a 1940s bungalow for which Steinberg and Binder designed much of the furniture and built-ins. While there are certain eccentricities, by and large her collection speaks to a consistent vision – what Steinberg calls ‘space, time and energy’. Thin, steel plates wrap around a lounge chair piled high with pillows. Her ‘Push-me Pull-U’ sofa, meanwhile, is a study in material contrasts. There’s clearly the vibe of the Venice scene and the artists who had their studios in what was then a shabby bunch of warehouses by the beach, such as Billy Al Bengston and Larry Bell, who are both old friends. The piece owes as much to art deco as it does to the minimalist Light and Space movement. A Vivid mirrored side table reflects the irregular pattern of the slate floor. Works from her broad oeuvre cluster together in her home. Founded by Tony Bill and Dudley Moore (and designed by architects Thom Mayne and Michael Rotondi), the eatery was something of a culinary celebrity hotspot. Her studio was located at 73 Market Street in Venice, opposite the restaurant 72 Market. She opened her own office, Lenny Steinberg Design, in 1997. By the late 1990s, Steinberg’s practice had evolved from designing furniture and interiors to full architectural projects. In 1968, they launched Links Design, expanding their material palette to experiment with cork and multicoloured plastic laminates like Formica. ![]() In the 1960s, Steinberg partnered with designer Sarah Binder and together they developed Vivid, producing a line of mirrored furniture out of a warehouse in Downtown LA. Those notes play staccato across her career. So, even in architecture, I ask myself, “What’s the new note?”.’ ‘I remember my music professors would say to me, “Play me a new note”. ![]() But unlike the designs of the French modernist architect, which were precisely orthogonal, Steinberg’s beam cuts through the room at an angle, setting the mezzanine off kilter. Light pours in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, inspired by Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre. ‘My background in music is in all my work,’ she says, pointing across her double-height living room, past the grand piano, to where she put in a cross beam in place of an exterior wall. ![]()
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