Mansions-revenge? Kim Kardashian, 'influencer' of architecture after her divorce with Kanye West

It happened in one of the episodes of the twelfth season of

The matriarch of the family began to talk to one of the daughters about her latest discovery: reading.

Kris Jenner: “You know I'm obsessed with books right now?

I am reading one about Le Courvoisier (sic), an architect.

It's so weird and boring, but I'm obsessed."

Khloe Kardashian: "Not true.

And you're not reading a book.

It's not a real book."

Kris Jenner: "Well, she has words, important words."

Khloe Kardashian: "Oh, like 'this building was built in I don't know how many century'?"

Jenner: "Yeah, it's called history."

Khloe: "It's a coffee table book!"

Seven years after this memorable scene it turns out that the last name Kardashian may end up appearing in some of those table books on architecture.

Tadao Ando, ​​winner of the Pritzker Prize for architecture in 1985 (and a great admirer of Le Corbusier) has designed a house in Palm Springs for Kim Kardashian, the most famous of these very famous sisters.

More information

They accuse Kim Kardashian of having an empty fridge and she responds with a "video tour" of all her fridges

In a recent Instagram post from the latter, the great Japanese architect appears photographed during a meeting with his client at his Osaka offices.

Another of the images shows a rendering of the future house of Kim Kardashian;

an imposing concrete building that, if Ando maintains that habit of architects calling the houses they design with the last names of their clients, we may see published as Villa Kardashian in one of his books about his buildings.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kim Kardashian (@kimkardashian)

“Meeting with the master Tadao Ando himself to talk about a project we have been working on for the last two years,” Kim Kardashian wrote on April 6.

“I have visited his office in Japan to finish the last details before we start building it.

It is a great honor for me to have the opportunity to work with him and see this very special project finally come to life.”

We know that the project is about a home because Kardashian told it last year when she first spoke about it.

In an interview with

in February 2022, Kardashian said that Tadao Ando was designing her a "concrete, gray tones and very zen" house.

Ando, ​​Kardashian added in a later

it had also been his reference to create his first beauty line: in the first image of the SKKN BY KIM campaign, the toner, the cleanser and the other products of the brand appeared between small concrete blocks, the most emblematic material of the Japanese.

I'm sure he didn't take it badly.

This self-taught architect who began to earn a living as a boxer is familiar with the world of fashion and is well liked by lovers of minimalism such as Giorgio Armani, for whom in 2001 he designed the Teatro de él/Armani.

Kanye West bought a house from Tadao Ando and left it in a state of semi-abandonment.

Now his ex-wife and the architect are new best friends. Instagram (@kimkardashian)

What we don't know is how Kanye West, aka

his ex-wife's project with Tadao Ando, ​​because it was he who discovered his work.

In 2018, Kim Kardashian accompanied her then-husband on a trip to the Japanese island of Naoshima, famous for the buildings that Ando began to build on it in the early 1990s.

For West, who had been fond of design and architecture since he was a child, the trip was quite a pilgrimage.

There he was not only able to visit Ando's concrete architectures but also the installations that American artist James Turrell, one of the rapper's favorites, created especially for the Chichu Art Museum (one of the architect's buildings on the island).

"We have to live in a Turrell," Kanye West later recounted in an interview that he told Kim Kardashian during that outing.

Three years later, the fluttering of butterflies in the rapper's stomach during his trip to Japan sent a tsunami through the California real estate market.

In September 2021, Kanye West shelled out nearly $58 million for the purchase of one of the few homes designed by Tadao Ando in the United States.

It is a 370 m² concrete house-sculpture located right on the Malibu beach and built in 2013 at the request of another great admirer of Ando, ​​the American financier and art collector Richard Sachs, known for having been the boyfriend of one of the Olsen twins, Ashley, former actress and now a successful designer on The Row.

“It is not just a house.

It's like a Picasso painting, very rare and important," Sachs said three years ago when putting it up for sale.

Image of the house project that Tadao Ando has designed for Kim Kardashian, shared by the 'socialite' on Instagram.Instagram (@kimkardashian)

Unfortunately, now it would be more accurate to compare the house to a Dorian Gray portrait of Kanye West, because it has become a reflection of the calamities with which the rapper has been spoiled in recent times.

It's not just that in December of last year someone hung a sign wishing him a Happy Hanukkah on the driveway after his anti-Semitic remarks, the last nail in the coffin lid with which he has entombed his successful career. .

In the photographs published in recent months by numerous media, Tadao Ando's building presents a pitiful appearance, stripped of its windows and abandoned to the waves, the wind and the seagulls of Malibu after the sine die interruption of the renovation

that its new owner started in 2021.

"Like the man who now calls himself Ye, the beach house designed by Tadao Ando was once pleasant, the epitome of artistic ingenuity," published the digital magazine Highsnobiety a few days ago

along with a series of images of the rapper's home.

“Now both Ye and his Malibu home are rotting from the inside out.”

The house was unfortunate enough to fall on Kanye West's side during the property deal the rapper and Kim Kardashian signed in their divorce last year.

Fortunately, another of the jewels of the ex-marriage's real estate kingdom fell on the sunny shore.

This is the family home in Calabasas (California), a mansion valued at 60 million dollars and acquired by Kardashian and West shortly after the birth in 2013 of their first daughter, North West.

“During a walk in the neighborhood we came across an incredibly extravagant house.

I had just given birth to North and was walking a lot to lose some of the pregnancy weight."

“I didn't really know Kanye's style yet but I thought the house was perfect.

Kanye was less enthusiastic.

He said: 'You can do something with it'.

The March 2020 cover of Architectural Digest, dedicated to the Calabasas home of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.Architectural Digest

To spruce up the

(as West disparagingly called it), the rapper hired the prestigious Belgian interior designer and art and antiques dealer Axel Vervoordt, famous for his wide stripped-down spaces.

As he recounted in that same

West had met him at antique fairs in Maastricht and Venice, where the rapper tracked down treasures like that Jean Royère sofa for which, when he began to succeed and get rich, he even sold one of his Maybach cars.

His crush on the Belgian's work arose when he saw one of the floating stone tables designed by Vervoordt, a piece of furniture now present in Kim Kardashian's immaculate living room.

“When I saw the type of work he did, I thought: this man could design Batman's house.

I have to work with him ”, said Kanye West in 2020.

The renovation undertaken by Axel Vervoordt transformed the ostentatious interior of the Calabasas mansion into a sophisticated succession of rooms painted in white, gray and beige.

It was also Vervoordt who had the idea of ​​converting an old samurai house (bought by him and transported from Japan) into the guest house of the ex-married couple.

Other design masters also collaborated in the design of the main mansion, such as the Italian Claudio Silvestrin, creator of the main bathroom, and the Belgian Vincent Van Duysen, who, in addition to helping to furnish the living room and the children's rooms, would later design a Kim Kardashian in that same area of ​​California.

Kim Kardashian, who has assured that it was during the renovation of this house that she became fond of design and architecture, was never the same again: both the girdles she designs for her Skims brand and the luxurious cars she drives have the tones typical of the interiors created by Axel Vervoordt.

“Before I met Kanye, I didn't know anything about design.

Being with him has been an extraordinary education," Kardashian said in the aforementioned

Now, thanks to this Kardashian capable of correctly pronouncing the name of Le Corbusier, the slight to the work of Tadao Ando committed by her ex-husband in Malibu will be compensated.

Ando's new building that the businesswoman is about to build in Palm Springs will not be his only contribution to the map of contemporary architecture, because last year he announced that another great Japanese architect was building another house for him.

Kengo Kuma, author of the National Stadium in Tokyo and future creator of a cultural and green space in the old tobacco factory in Seville, is designing "a house of glass and wood" in a secret place where Kim Kardashian travels every July 4th .

You can follow ICON on