‘Friends’ star Matthew Perry is interested in unloading his midcentury modern in Los Angeles. The star—whose most recent appearance as an actor is as easygoing slob Oscar Madison in the third screen incarnation of Neil Simon’s ‘The Odd Couple’—is asking $13.5 million for the property, which he picked up in 2011 for $8.5 million.
With a façade that coolly blends white and blue artifice against verdant landscaping, the Bird Streets house is influenced by Case Study home design, and dates to 1962. The Case Study program highlighted preoccupations with easily available materials, functionality over ornamental flourishes, communal living over the compartmentalization of existence, and interior/exterior interplay influenced by Japanese architecture. Case Study homes were built in California during the second half of the twentieth century.
Measuring a little more than 10,600 square feet, and containing three bedrooms and five baths, Perry’s house emphasizes transparency, with glass doors that open to the property exterior, water features, and an interior garden space. The master bedroom opens onto the property very broadly, and features a private outdoor terrace with views that survey the city.
Notable features include the atmospheric LED lighting accents used to illuminate the outdoor staircase; a home cinema with tiered seating that uses LED lighting in the ceiling to emulate a starlit night sky, and features a wall of glass that allows an underwater view of the outdoor pool; and an open-concept common living area floored in mid-toned hardwood, with glass walls that offer an intoxicating sense of continuity with Los Angeles at large.
Perry’s play ‘The End of Longing—which he penned and stars in—is playing at the Lucille Lortel Theater in Manhattan through the end of this month. The play debuted in London last year.