Our houses are reflections of ourselves, proper? So it is smart that James Goldstein’s home, hovering over a canyon atop Beverly Hills, Calif., is among the most unusual, fascinating and perplexing architectural initiatives on the earth.

Goldstein, 84, a controversial determine who made his fortune investing in mobile-home parks in California, could also be acquainted to you. He’s that leathery-skinned, frizzy-haired man at all times sitting courtside at N.B.A. video games — he attends greater than 100 a yr. He’s that man who reveals up in any respect the style reveals in Paris and Milan, with a couture-meets-cowboy look, usually punctuated with snakeskin hats, colourful leather-based jackets and a lady greater than half a century youthful than he’s. And he’s that man who owns the Sheats-Goldstein home — a shocking landmark by the architect John Lautner, fusing prehistory and futurism, solidity and weightlessness, inside and outdoors, that has been a set piece for movies (“The Large Lebowski,” “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle”); for the actual property actuality present “Promoting Sundown”; for numerous music movies; and for events thrown by the likes of Rihanna and the Kardashians.

“The phrase delicate doesn’t exist for me,” Goldstein mentioned, wearing all-black tennis gear and a palm tree-emblazoned black jacket. He’s sitting on the sprawling decrease terrace of his residence’s recently-completed (for now), three-level addition, which is a separate compound overlooking the towers of Century Metropolis and, past that, the glinting bend of the Pacific Coast.

He calls this enterprise the Goldstein Leisure Advanced, and it additionally consists of Goldstein’s workplace and a nightclub (sure, you learn that proper) known as Membership James, with an infinity-edged tennis court docket because the roof, made from post-tensioned concrete. Goldstein and his crew of architects, builders, engineers and panorama designers have been engaged on the Lautner home addition since 2003, and that’s simply the tip of the iceberg on the subject of Goldstein’s property, which he has been tinkering with for greater than 50 years.

Goldstein purchased the Sheats-Goldstein home (inbuilt 1963 for Helen and Paul Sheats, an artist and a physician, and their youngsters) for $182,000 in 1972. Aghast at its cramped really feel and banal plaster, stucco and Formica surfaces, he enlisted Lautner himself to assist make enhancements. Over about 20 years, they eliminated cluttered divisions and put in frameless glass home windows, concrete and wooden ceilings, built-in leather-covered furnishings and automatic skylights.

“The aim of all of this was to make the within really feel prefer it was exterior,” mentioned Goldstein, who describes a really collaborative working relationship with Lautner till the architect’s dying, at 83, in 1994. Goldstein would provide you with loopy concepts, and Lautner would provide you with lovely, courageous methods to tug them off. Why not construct a transparent glass sink for the grasp lavatory or a dry-cleaner-style conveyor belt for the closet? Why not set up transferring glass partitions and make the pool deck really feel like the sting of the world?

“What we had in frequent, apart from our love of structure, was our rebellious nature,” mentioned Goldstein, who moved to Los Angeles in 1958 to attend graduate faculty in enterprise and has embraced town’s insurgent vibe ever since. “Each of us had an issue with guidelines, with conforming. I believe like that on a regular basis. I’m not gonna try this if I believe it doesn’t make sense.”

After visits to locations like Hawaii and Thailand, Goldstein put in, with the assistance Eric Nagelmann, a panorama architect, tropical foliage, enveloping the location in thick palms, bamboo, winding paths and blade-like stairs. “It’s a wild, mad, tropical jungle,” mentioned Nagelmann, 67. Goldstein didn’t break step after Lautner’s dying, creating, with a crew led by Lautner’s affiliate Duncan Nicholson, a mesmerizing James Turrell Skyspace simply down the hill in 2004.

“Because the venture progressed I noticed I cherished the method,” Goldstein mentioned. “I might already see the impression of what was taking place, and earlier than it was even completed, I began excited about different issues to do.”

A Grand Imaginative and prescient, Simply Starting

These photos of the Sheats-Goldstein home have been shot by the photographer Julius Shulman in 1980, simply eight years after James Goldstein purchased the John Lautner-designed residence. Few of Goldstein’s and Lautner’s main modifications had been realized at this level, however there are some indicators of an evolution.

His leisure advanced, like a lot of the work right here, morphed from what he first envisioned. It began within the early ’90s when Goldstein purchased Lautner’s 1960 Concannon Home, simply west of the Sheats-Goldstein home, with plans to construct a tennis court docket and guesthouse on its lot. He paid $800,000 — and proceeded to demolish it.

Years of difficult design, iteration, permits and development later, Goldstein and Nicholson realized that below the court docket there can be area for extra — therefore the workplace and membership, accomplished in 2016 (clubbing is one other ardour of Goldstein’s, even now). Whereas strolling on the steep, brush-filled slope under the development website, Goldstein determined he wanted extra: “I simply sat on the hillside and regarded up and mentioned, ‘This may very well be an incredible terrace.’” That space now features a 90-foot infinity pool, spa, firepit, barbecue, kitchen, bar, lounge and formal eating space. The ultimate items of the puzzle would be the guesthouse and a theater that cascades down the hillside.

It’s a pharaonic effort, and Goldstein’s imaginative and prescient and a spotlight to element are unwavering. He pushes for issues no person in his proper thoughts would, and has the endurance, and cash, to hold them by means of. “I’d purchase no matter I wished, and he would by no means ask for a receipt,” Nagelmann mentioned. “No impediment will cease him. It’s all about ardour.”

Goldstein has, by most accounts, stable design instincts, honed partially by an early love of Frank Lloyd Wright’s structure in his hometown, Milwaukee. His father’s firm was primarily based in Racine, Wis., not removed from Wright’s famed Johnson Wax Headquarters. Goldstein credit publicity to his household’s clothes enterprise, Zahn’s Division Retailer, for his sense of favor.

He has caught virtually solely with the crew that created the unique home, or with those that skilled below them, remaining intimately concerned with each side. Nagelmann and the house’s builder, Harry Ernst, have been working with Goldstein for greater than 30 years.

And whereas the brand new advanced is flashier and barely much less suave than the unique masterpiece, Lautner’s hovering design spirit — his sharp angles, textured concrete, meticulous detailing and intimate connection to the plush outside — has carried over.

“It’s about freedom,” mentioned the architect Kristopher Conner. He and his companion James Perry have been main the design of the leisure advanced since Nicholson immediately died of most cancers in 2015 (Conner and Perry had each been associates in Nicholson’s agency). Goldstein, Conner mentioned, “isn’t afraid in any respect.”

That fearlessness is clear within the tennis court docket jutting off the facet of a cliff, within the cantilevered balconies, eaves and furnishings — and within the big, angled frameless glass home windows that appear to tug you into the Los Angeles basin under. Glass balconies tilt away at angles that dare you to lean over them. The ultimate step of the floating staircase that ascends to the membership has an extra-large hole at its apex, making it really feel thrillingly harmful.

“There’s this superb juxtaposition of complexity and minimalism, sharp edges and fluidity,” Delaram Pourabdi, the artistic director for the live performance promotion firm Goldenvoice, advised me throughout a throbbing Grammy get together that Snoop Dogg’s Loss of life Row Data just lately threw on the advanced. “It creates an unbelievable vitality, such as you’re on the sting.”

Maybe greater than an obsession, Goldstein’s ever-evolving house is his legacy. In 2016 he agreed to bequeath it to the Los Angeles County Museum of Artwork after his dying, together with a large fund for upkeep, hoping to encourage a future technology of architects.

“I would like it to be open to the general public as a lot as potential to allow them to be taught,” Goldstein mentioned. “Whether or not it’s architectural college students or individuals who know nothing about structure.” He opens the house for excursions and occasions commonly, a stark distinction to the proprietors of most of the metropolis’s best residences.

“We’re nonetheless curious to see how the transition might be applied, however realizing will probably be protected and realizing there may be an endowment for its maintenance, these are essential questions for any historic residence,” mentioned Adrian Scott High quality, the president and chief government of the Los Angeles Conservancy, a nonprofit devoted to preserving town’s architectural and cultural assets.

However, as with each side of Goldstein, it’s sophisticated. For each exceptional trait, it appears, there’s a remarkably difficult one. He has no dimmer swap.

He will be impulsive and harsh, in keeping with some who’ve labored for him.

“Jim has not been a simple consumer,” Conner admitted. He admires Goldstein’s imaginative and prescient, however chafes when he typically takes credit score for what Conner says are his agency’s designs — or when he modifies course deep into initiatives.

For instance, after Conner and Perry had finalized their development paperwork for the floating staircase, Goldstein observed it could block his view to town. He ordered the architects to trash their plans and begin over. “I do know what I would like, however I don’t suppose I’m over demanding,” Goldstein mentioned.

Nagelmann famous that the identical fearlessness that served Goldstein in a few of his daring initiatives minimize the opposite method. “He was a dream consumer, actually apart from the truth that he’s not a pleasant individual.” He added, “He doesn’t care. He does what he needs to do.”

Nagelmann continued, referring to yelling matches he considered whereas engaged on initiatives, “The poor architects and assistants.” The a long time of development, to not point out aggressive battles over views and noise — and the events — haven’t made Goldstein in style with neighbors, he additionally famous.

Then there’s the best way he’s paid for all of it: Goldstein’s is a well-documented path of shopping for rent-controlled cellular (often known as manufactured) housing parks all through Southern California. He then both tries to lift rents past proscribed quantities or tries to transform them to market-rate or different extra worthwhile growth fashions. Goldstein sues cities which have tried to cease him, mentioned Sunny Soltani, a companion on the California legislation agency Aleshire & Wynder and town legal professional for the Metropolis of Carson. Soltani has battled Goldstein in court docket for greater than a decade, each in Carson and in Palm Springs and Palm Desert.

“As soon as he information a lawsuit, he makes it so costly that native businesses simply settle with him,” Soltani mentioned.

Lula Davis-Holmes, the mayor of Carson, known as Goldstein “a terrorizer of a landlord,” referring to authorized disputes with him over Goldstein’s Colony Cove Cell Estates and Carson Harbor Village.

“I personal luxurious properties which might be below the constraint of hire management, with rents going at in all probability 50 p.c of hire ranges,” Goldstein countered, “and I’ve many residents who can afford to pay market stage which might be driving the crest of hire management.”

Soltani mentioned most residents in these developments have been fixed-income older adults or low- to- middle-income households. “To say that these persons are too well-off to qualify for hire management is such rubbish,” she added. “That is closing down one of many final assets of inexpensive housing in California.”

Tom King, the chair of the South Bay Mobilehome Resident’s Alliance, acknowledges that Goldstein takes excellent care of his properties, however stresses that hire management ordinances in these cities usually are not primarily based on tenants’ incomes.

Goldstein is conscious of his detractors. However he’s way more involved with constructing his home, and along with his mystique.

He mentioned he has spent tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} on his compound throughout 50 years of continuous development, and claimed that actual property specialists have advised him it could be value greater than $100 million. (Brian Linder, an actual property dealer at Compass, estimated the worth of the advanced at round $30 million, whereas James A. Ebert, of Ebert Appraisal Providers, mentioned it may very well be value “within the 40s.”)

Goldstein’s enterprise card sums up what he considers his legacy: “Trend. Structure. Basketball.”

The location of sultry mannequin shoots and common pool events, the home has develop into a kind of concrete wingman, with Goldstein in a Speedo. “I like tall, slender women who usually are fashions or appear like fashions and are a lot youthful than me,” mentioned Goldstein, who has by no means been married. “I’m totally different from what they normally encounter. I believe that they sense a kind of aura that I give off as being in management and having some energy.”

Goldstein mentioned he did hear feedback reproaching his partying, significantly on Instagram, the place he likes to indicate off with younger girls. David Spencer, a neighborhood sports activities and leisure marketer and longtime pal of Goldstein’s, mentioned, “He’s like that bachelor that individuals transfer to L.A. to develop into.” However he added: “He definitely marches to his personal beat. On this day when there are such a lot of conformists, the actual influencer is the one who’s going out and creating tradition.”

Whereas Goldstein continues to be in comparatively good condition, taking part in tennis virtually day by day and driving his 1961 Rolls-Royce convertible to each residence sport, his resonant, radio announcer voice has develop into a bit shaky with age.

Which leads again to the query of legacy. Poster-sized, framed photos of Goldstein adorn a lot of his residence’s rooms, together with smaller photos of him with the N.B.A. stars Dennis Rodman and Paul George, celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Jay-Z and Mick Jagger, and the fashions Cindy Crawford and Pamela Anderson.

In his bed room, hats, garments and reminiscences are laid out like artifacts in a museum. “Houses are inextricably linked to personalities,” mentioned High quality of the Los Angeles Conservancy. “He’s a larger-than-life particular person, and his presence may be very a lot felt while you expertise the home.”

However what if preserving a home for posterity means glorifying a legacy that is likely to be … sophisticated. Michael Govan, the director of LACMA, which is able to inherit the home, mentioned he “didn’t know a lot about James’s enterprise,” including, “We’re all navigating historical past, of all types, together with these of patrons.” However Goldstein, he mentioned, has “executed an incredible service to tradition and historical past, not solely by restoring the home however by taking Lautner the place he wished to go and pointing towards the long run.”

Govan identified that Goldstein, wanting forward, didn’t need the home to be static. “In our settlement I’m supposed to maintain having events and style shoots,” to maintain it alive for future generations. He needs tennis execs to be on the court docket.

“We at all times have to do that delicate dance,” High quality mentioned. “We’re advocates for the constructed atmosphere. It’s possible you’ll not at all times just like the individuals related to it.”