After two years on the market, Calvin Klein’s Miami Beach retreat has finally changed owners. The property went under contract for $13.15 million. It was initially listed in 2015, with an asking price of $16 million. The price had been reduced only once—last November, after a brief hiatus from the market—to $15 million.
The house is designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, and was constructed in 1929. It measures 5,800 square feet, and contains five en-suite bedrooms. The aggressively traditional waterfront home is designed around a courtyard, and has retained, or been restored to, its historical relevance through Klein’s ownership.
Inside the home, whitewash and raw wood provide a lilting blend of the ethereal and substantial. The whitewashed staircase, illuminated by LED footlights, is particularly evocative of the design vision. Exposed beams have been stained white, to allow the raw texture to shine through; other ceilings are open-trussed, giving the home tropical identity. The interior is spare, with simple steel-framed windows and French doors, and extremely understated lighting fixtures. With such a lack of flourish, many interpretations are possible for the new owner, but the current design ethos is ideal for a creative soul determined to be unencumbered by the distractions of ornament.
The home’s exterior elements include a mix of stilted, semicircular and four-centered arches; the latter provide perhaps the only visual curiosity in the design overall. A reflecting pool, with bamboo-planted borders, provides a direct connection to the ocean in the near distance; the loggias provide considerable outdoor space, linking the exterior and interior of the home, and expand the living space to nearly 8,000 square feet.
Calvin Klein’s newest real-estate acquisition is, on first look, quite a departure from this property: a post-modern monster in the Hollywood Hills which the designer purchased in 2015 for $25 million. Yet, although wildly divergent in period design sensibilities, the two homes are—as vehicles of abstraction—remarkably similar.
