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‹‹ presentation to “those two magical unicorns”, Karl Fournier and
Olivier Marty of the Paris-based architecture firm Studio KO.
Apprising them of his former two decades of transience — “living in
every type of New York shoebox” — Christiansen briefed for alterations
and additions with a sense of permanence and radical pleasure. “Hot
baths, lots of wine, music and really good times,” he qualifies, adding
that a good read of the horizon line is a given for most Australians.
“I wanted to wake and be able to fling open a window, smell the
jasmine and hear the birds. I wanted colour, I wanted a heart-of-
the-house kitchen… I wanted it all to be super elegant, but full
of utility, and I really wanted a place to entertain people.”
Studio KO accordingly opened up the old architecture to the outer
garden and wider city spectacle while designing new outbuildings
in which the aestheticism of pleasure belied their purpose. The
laundry was made less task-oriented with a mural by British artist
Luke Edward Hall; the office pavilion was planned to course and
camouflage into the variegated greens of the garden courtesy of a
textured Moroccan tiled façade; and the bath-house was crafted into
a lofty “cathedral” of cleansing, replete with a fireplace and stained-
glass window saturated in the blues of a Mediterranean Sea.
The pair flowed their ad-hoc theatricality up a new 69-step floating
brick staircase (homage to the Italian rationalist masterpiece Villa
Malaparte in Capri) and intensified the pink of the Mission house
with a fresh render that prompted Christiansen to liken it to a proud
flamingo. Hence the property’s name, he says, in reference to the
flamboyant wading bird that stirs up the organic matter at its feet.
It makes a fertile metaphor for the garden’s regeneration by a
collective including French landscape architect Arnaud Casaus, LA
horticulturist Jeff Hutchinson and Aussie-born Californian nursery
owner Jo O’Connell, who supplied more than 600 native Australian
plants to lure the bees that make the honey Christiansen bottles.
It took four years of “pulling apart and piecing back together”,
says Christiansen, who interspersed the hard work with group travel
to Japan, India and Morocco, where luggage was loaded with cans
of the cobalt-blue paint that colours Jardin Majorelle. It was used to
revise Flamingo Estate’s one-time radio station into a TV salon that
now honours former owner John’s louche sartorial style in leopard-
print furniture and red floor. The room’s Warhol print of Jane Fonda
flags his want to live with high-chroma art as per the living room’s
folding screen Caribbean Tea Time (1985-’87) by David Hockney
who famously described LA as “the edge of the Western world”.
Hockney’s thematic preoccupation with place is matched by the
mark-making of Aussie artist Ken Done whose “out loud” colour
adds to a palpable Australian atmosphere. “The house is like a Ken
Done museum,” says Christiansen of the wall-hung optimism that
he and partner Aaron Harvey, creative director of digital storyteller
Brud, breathe in every day. “I remember as a kid seeing his house
in Vogue Living and thinking one day I’m going to have a pool with
two huge frangipani trees just like Ken Done.”
Believing that he has delivered on the promise to John to restore
the estate, Christiansen likens his last four years to the Nora Ephron
movie Julie & Julia, about a food lover finding her way back to
meaning through the making of Julia Child recipes. “In reality the
house restored me,” he says with earnest admission that after 20 years
of bullshitting people to buy the stuff they don’t need, he has repented
and rounded back to the Australian farm boy with red dirt under his
fingernails. There’s no place like home. flamingoestate.com

THIS PAGE, FROM TOP in the main bedroom, custom bed produced by Studio
KO; bed linen from India; series of 12 artworks from David Hockney during
his early period in Los Angeles. In the main bathroom, vanity carved from marble
in India; vintage Murano lamp from Venice. OPPOSITE PAGE the 69-step brick
staircase, leading from the main house to the goat shed and orchard.

100 vogueliving.com.au