In the open living-, dining-room, den and office area, a bust of Filipo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of the Futurist movement, made by Thayaht (who also invented the jumpsuit), presides over conversations, reading, and work—a kind of modernist memento mori, as Owens describes it. “I’ve always been kind of fascinated by that whole movement,” he says, “because, at the beginning, the Italian Futurist movement was utopian. And, in any kind of any utopian movement, the intentions are always honorable at the beginning, and then they degenerate.” Another futurist bust, by Renato Bertelli, sits on the counter of the master bath. “It’s the story of life,” Owens says, “of aspiration, and failure and renewal. I think of [the busts] as skulls, memento mori, to remind you that all is vanity.”
I tease Owens that, while it is easy to mistake the all-mirror gym in the apartment as a kind of church of vanity, it is precisely the opposite. “You see every flaw,” he says, agreeing with a smile, as if he has any flaws to see. Working out here every day, Owens is in what he considers to be the best shape of his life—which is saying something. But if his dedication to the weights and his work regime seems severe, his intentions during his summers in this apartment are anything but. He comes here to play, to lie on the beach and bask in the balmy, placid sea, to read and dream and make plans—and, you know, play dress up in a silk chiffon cape, obviously.
So maybe this apartment, inspired in large part by Le Corbusier’s beach house Cabanon, is less fortress than it is a frame for Owens. Maybe the austere, all-marble-everything structure does help to keep out the noise and the distractions, but it also makes for a canvas on which to drape a beautifully lived life.
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