MOTION DRIVE

Inside the Venice Beach home of designer Lenny Steinberg, who takes inspiration from movement and music

- mimi zeiger

Out of the windows of Lenny Steinberg’s Venice Beach living room, there are a few hundred metres of sand, a line of white surf, then the grey-blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean. It’s a remarkable, pinch-me view, the kind most folks only see from the nearby boardwalk at Muscle Beach, where tourists and roller skaters glide through a perfume of cannabis dispensaries and fish taco stands.

The LA-based designer’s home is just a few doors down from Frank Gehry’s Norton House, a mid-1980s landmark that mimics a lifeguard tower. She and her husband, Bob, a prominent lawyer, moved here in the 1990s, transforming a 1960s post-and-beam duplex into a minimalist roost that now houses an archive and showroom of five decades of her work, alongside her art and object collection. Each piece – from the Lucite high heels on a table by the front door to the Frank Stella print in the main bedroom – reflects, in short, the fruits of a highly creative life.

Seated in a navy blue club chair of her own design, Steinberg turns her attention to some light grey upholstered side chairs that have only just returned to the house after being part of a 2015 exhibition that was organised by LA’s Metabolic Studio and on view at The Barn, the former home and studio of midcentury architect A Quincy Jones. Produced as prototypes for a Manhattan apartment, the chairs have arms like the tail fins of a 1950s Ford Fairlane, complete with red lens reflectors. ‘Good furniture should have a little kick to it or something, a little surprise to make things not so serious,’ says Steinberg.