Elsa Hosk’s modernist house

A Californian architectural icon is hidden at the end of Hermosa St, in South Pasadena, and is none other than the recent property of Swedish model Elsa Hosk.

In 1949, Richard Neutra designed this modernist house as part of the Case Study Houses program initiated by Arts & Architecture magazine to create affordable and easily replicable housing models after World War II. It is said to be the only house, among the four plans proposed by the « architect of the Californian dream, » that was actually built. This house was captured just after its construction by the famous photographer Julius Shulman.

Tucked away at the end of a long private driveway, just a few minutes by car from Los Angeles, the Alpha House (also known as the Wilkins House) was completely restored and put back on the market in 2020 for the tidy sum of 5.9 million dollars. Without hesitation, Elsa Hosk immediately left her New York apartment to move in with her partner Tom Daly and their daughter Tuulikki.

Although the Swede completely redecorated the house to her taste, the Californian masterpiece has retained all of its mid-century features: large terrazzo-covered terraces, immense sliding glass doors that blur the line between indoors and outdoors, birch paneling, grooved and sequoia-paneled ceilings, aluminum casement windows, brick fireplace… The promise of « biorealistic architecture » as Neutra envisioned, harmoniously integrated into the Californian nature. A visit to Elsa Hosk’s family cocoon.