DGArch

ALTMAN RESIDENCE

Client ..................... Mr + Mrs Robert Altman
Total Size .............. 2000 sf
Construction Cost ... Withheld
Published ............... New York Magazine; Architectural Digest

Most of us go home to escape. Not so filmmaker Robert Altman ("M*A*S*H", "Nashville"), who surrounds himself with an imposing array of gritty portraits on glass. "One guest said, ‘How can you eat, looking at these awful people?’" Altman says with a laugh. "Isn’t that the point?"

Altman rescued the panels from Montreal’s Expo ’67 and had them installed in his production facility in Los Angeles. When he sold the studio, the only things he withheld from the deal were the images. Then, last year, when he and his wife, Kathryn, asked architect David Gura to design their new West Side duplex, their priority was to include the photographs, some as tall as fourteen feet.

"They wear well with me," Altman says. For most, however, they take getting used to: the transparent images bounce off one another; at times, one scarcely knows where to step. But the filmmaker is in his element. "I love illusion," he says.

- text from The Walls Have Eyes,
New York Magazine (below)

In the Manhattan living room of filmmaker Robert Altman (top right), photographic blowups cover every available surface: atomic bomb developer J. Robert Oppenheimer contemplates; a Third World child consumes a meal.

Architect David Gura decided the best way to display the largest glass panels was to use them as room dividers, capitalizing on their transparency (above left). The stair rail (above right, seen from overhead) is also stepped.

- photo captions from The Walls Have Eyes, New York Magazine (above)

ALTMAN RESIDENCE Client ..................... Mr + Mrs Robert Altman Total Size .............. 2000 sf Construction Cost ... Withheld Published ............... New York Magazine; Architectural Digest
	Most of us go home to escape. Not so filmmaker Robert Altman ("MASH", "Nashville"), who surrounds himself with an imposing array of gritty portraits on glass. "One guest said, ‘How can you eat, looking at these awful people?’" Altman says with a laugh. "Isn’t that the point?" Altman rescued the panels from Montreal’s Expo ’67 and had them installed in his production facility in Los Angeles. When he sold the studio, the only things he withheld from the deal were the images. Then, last year, when he and his wife, Kathryn, asked architect David Gura to design their new West Side duplex, their priority was to include the photographs, some as tall as fourteen feet. "They wear well with me," Altman says. For most, however, they take getting used to: the transparent images bounce off one another; at times, one scarcely knows where to step. But the filmmaker is in his element. "I love illusion," he says. - text from The Walls Have Eyes*, New York Magazine (below)

In the Manhattan living room of filmmaker Robert Altman (top right), photographic blowups cover every available surface: atomic bomb developer J. Robert Oppenheimer contemplates; a Third World child consumes a meal. Architect David Gura decided the best way to display the largest glass panels was to use them as room dividers, capitalizing on their transparency (above left). The stair rail (above right, seen from overhead) is also stepped. - photo captions from The Walls Have Eyes, New York Magazine (above)