Kenneth Lind drew it in 1951. Pierre Koenig reworked it in 1959, the same year he was building the Stahl House. The quietest pedigreed Modernist house in Brentwood is on the market again.
The Veneklasen House does not perform for the street. It sits up a private drive off Mandeville Canyon Road behind a gated courtyard, a V-shaped post-and-beam house that has spent 75 years being improved by people who understood exactly what they had. For Debbie Pisaro, an architectural real estate agent in Los Angeles who has spent 24 years tracking houses like this one, it is the rare offering where every chapter of the story checks out in the public record.
The Veneklasen House at 2179 Mandeville Canyon Road, Los Angeles, CA 90049 is a 1951 post-and-beam residence designed by architect Kenneth Lind and renovated in 1959 by Case Study architect Pierre Koenig. Restored and expanded by Chu-Gooding Architects from 2019 to 2021, it earned a 2022 AIA Los Angeles award for historic preservation and is currently listed at $8,995,000.
What is the Veneklasen House?
The Veneklasen House is a 1951 Modernist residence at 2179 Mandeville Canyon Road in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, designed by architect Kenneth Lind for acoustician Paul Veneklasen, renovated by Pierre Koenig in 1959, and restored and expanded by Chu-Gooding Architects between 2019 and 2021.
The plan is a V: two wings that separate the living spaces from the bedrooms, hinged at the kitchen, wrapped in glass, and aimed at a sculptural mature eucalyptus that organizes the entire garden. The house runs about 3,904 square feet on a 28,314 square foot lot, with three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a powder room. It is currently listed at $8,995,000, and Debbie Pisaro considers it one of the most complete architectural narratives on the Westside market right now. Readers who follow her seven iconic architectural homes of Los Angeles will recognize the type: a house whose value lives in its paper trail as much as its glass walls.
Who was Kenneth Lind?
Kenneth Nels Lind was a Los Angeles Modernist with a resume most architects would frame. Born in 1909 and trained at the University of Illinois, he partnered with Charles Luckman from 1939 to 1942, before Luckman went on to the firm behind the LAX Theme Building.
Lind then built a practice of his own that won Progressive Architecture national design awards in 1947 and 1948, served as an architecture critic at USC from 1950 to 1953, and produced a run of inventive prefabricated houses, a few of which survive, including one in the Franklin Hills that readers of Los Feliz architecture coverage may already know. The Los Angeles Conservancy keeps a biography page on him, which matters more than it sounds: it is the difference between an architect with a verifiable record and a name that exists only in listing copy. Debbie has built her practice on that distinction.
In 1951 Lind delivered the Mandeville Canyon commission: a low, glass-walled house shaped to its site, with the discipline of his USC circle and none of the theatrics. His timing put him at the center of the most productive decade Los Angeles Modernism ever had, alongside figures like Stephen Kanner's forebears in California Modernism.
Get Debbie's writing on the homes, the architects, and the neighborhoods.
Join the listor call (310) 362-6429Did Pierre Koenig work on the Veneklasen House?
Yes. Pierre Koenig renovated the Veneklasen House in 1959 for Paul and Louise Veneklasen, and the nonprofit archive USModernist documents the project in his catalog of works. Chu-Gooding Architects, who later restored the house, describe it as one of the early works of the Case Study architect.
Hold that date up to the light. In 1959 Koenig had just completed Case Study House #21 and was at work on Case Study House #22, the Stahl House, the most photographed house in Los Angeles. The Veneklasen renovation is not Koenig-adjacent. It is Koenig at the exact peak of the Case Study program, working in wood and brick instead of steel. His mark is most visible in the living room, where an accordion-fold glass wall and sculptural brickwork dissolve the line between the room and the garden. The USModernist archive notes a 1959 building permit it could not fully confirm, the kind of archival wrinkle that makes this house a favorite subject for people who read permits for fun. Debbie is one of them.
Later owners kept the bar high. Josef Van der Kar handled small additions, and landscape designer Koichi Kawana shaped the grounds, a chain of custody that echoes the layered histories behind the USC Case Study home in Studio City.
Who was Paul Veneklasen?
Paul S. Veneklasen was one of the most consequential acousticians of the twentieth century, and the client is the secret of this house. He began acoustics research at Harvard in 1938, worked on aircraft noise and hearing protection during World War II, and in 1947 founded the Western Electro-Acoustic Laboratory in Santa Monica.
In 1951, the same year Lind finished his house, Veneklasen launched the consulting practice that became Veneklasen Associates, the firm whose later projects include the acoustics of the Getty Center and the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX. So the man who engineered how Los Angeles sounds commissioned his own home from Lind, then brought in Koenig, mid-Case-Study, to reshape how it lived. Few provenance stories in this city run that deep, and Debbie Pisaro tells it to buyers as the cleanest example of why the client's name on a house can matter almost as much as the architect's.
Pedigreed houses often trade before they ever hit the MLS.
Ask about pocket listingsThe restoration that won an AIA award
Between 2019 and 2021, Chu-Gooding Architects carried out a full restoration and expansion, and in 2022 the firm received an AIA Los Angeles award for historic preservation for the work. The interiors were published in Architectural Digest in 2022.
The headline move was a second-level addition holding a new primary suite, positioned in the canopy so it reads as a private perch over the canyon rather than a bolt-on. The material palette runs dark walnut, stone, and a gray-green quartzite that repeats the colors of the garden, now designed by Mark Tessier. Nearly all the furnishings are vintage. It is the rare renovation that expanded a Modernist house and made preservationists happy at the same time, the same balance Debbie writes about in projects like the Schulman House in Brentwood.
What the price says to buyers
The Veneklasen House was listed at $10.5 million in early 2025 and now asks $8,995,000, roughly $2,304 per square foot, with the listing extended. That trajectory is information, not a flaw.
Architectural pedigree commands a premium per square foot, but it also narrows the buyer pool, so significant houses often season on the market longer than their conventional neighbors. In Los Angeles a typical list-to-close runs 70 to 95 days, and pedigreed properties regularly run past it while the right steward surfaces. Debbie walks buyers through exactly this math in her breakdown of how architectural homes are priced in Los Angeles, and the pattern holds from Silver Lake to the canyons. For comparison shopping in the same zip codes, Richard Neutra's Nesbitt House in Brentwood is the other benchmark for what documented provenance does to Westside value.
The Veneklasen House also carries the two things that hold value through any cycle: third-party recognition, in the form of the AIA Los Angeles preservation award, and an unbroken record of architect-led stewardship from Lind to Koenig to Van der Kar to Chu-Gooding. Houses with that spine do not need the market's permission to matter.
Want Debbie's candid read on the Veneklasen House or a house like it?
Email Debbie directlyBuying an architectural home in Mandeville Canyon
Mandeville Canyon is Brentwood's long, quiet corridor, a single road running deep into the Santa Monica Mountains, and its architectural stock trades on discretion. Representation matters more here, not less, because the houses that define the canyon rarely advertise what they are.
The Veneklasen House is on the market with its own listing brokerage, and any buyer's first step is a conversation with their own agent about what the provenance is worth to them. This is the work Debbie Pisaro does daily as the best Los Angeles historic and architectural real estate agent for clients who buy houses with archives attached: verifying attributions, reading the permit record, and pricing the difference between a story and a documented one. Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across Los Angeles and the surrounding neighborhoods. Her full catalog of profiles lives on the architectural homes hub, and the mapping habit extends across the network to the Los Feliz architectural map. If you are searching for an architectural real estate agent in Los Angeles who treats a 1959 permit like primary evidence, this house is a fair test of the approach.
Veneklasen House questions, answered
Architect Kenneth Lind designed the Veneklasen House in 1951 for acoustician Paul Veneklasen and his wife Louise. Pierre Koenig renovated it in 1959, Josef Van der Kar added to it later, and Chu-Gooding Architects restored and expanded it between 2019 and 2021.
The Veneklasen House sits at 2179 Mandeville Canyon Road, Los Angeles, CA 90049, in the Mandeville Canyon section of Brentwood. It occupies a 28,314 square foot lot up a private drive, behind a gated entry courtyard, surrounded by mature gardens.
The Veneklasen House is listed at $8,995,000 as of July 2026, roughly $2,304 per square foot. It was previously offered at $10.5 million in early 2025, and the current listing has been extended.
Essentially, yes. Koenig completed Case Study House #21 in 1958 and built Case Study House #22, the Stahl House, from 1959 to 1960. His 1959 Veneklasen renovation lands in the exact window of his most famous work, which is what makes it historically significant.
Paul S. Veneklasen was a pioneering acoustical physicist who researched at Harvard beginning in 1938 and founded the Western Electro-Acoustic Laboratory in Santa Monica in 1947. His firm, now Veneklasen Associates, later handled acoustics for the Getty Center and the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX.
It is a mid-century Modernist post-and-beam house with a V-shaped plan, expansive glass walls, and an accordion-fold glass wall in the living room attributed to Koenig's 1959 renovation. The material palette today runs dark walnut, stone, and gray-green quartzite.
Chu-Gooding Architects received a 2022 AIA Los Angeles award for historic preservation for their 2019 to 2021 restoration and expansion of the house. The interiors were also published in Architectural Digest in 2022, adding editorial recognition to the professional award.
Debbie Pisaro, founder of Coastline 840 and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader, is an architectural real estate agent in Los Angeles with 24 years of experience in architectural, historic, and design-forward homes, representing buyers and sellers across the city and statewide.
A typical Los Angeles sale runs 70 to 95 days from list to close. Architectural and pedigreed homes often take longer because the buyer pool is narrower, which is why pricing strategy and provenance documentation matter more on these properties than on conventional listings.
From Mandeville Canyon to Silver Lake, Debbie Pisaro represents buyers and sellers of architectural, historic, and design-forward homes across Los Angeles and California.
Reach DebbieDebbie Pisaro, DRE #01369110, is the founder of Coastline 840, an independent California brokerage, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader with 24 years of experience in architectural, historic, and design-forward homes. She writes about California real estate at debbiepisaro.com, losfelizliving.com, and coastline840.com. Published July 2026.
USModernist archive of Pierre Koenig's works; Chu-Gooding Architects project record for the Veneklasen House; Los Angeles Conservancy architect biography of Kenneth N. Lind; current MLS listing information as of July 2026.
debbiepisaro.com · coastline840.com · losfelizliving.com · juststudiocity.com · justojai.com · justwestadams.com