New Waves on Rodeo

Designer Ettore Sottsass, a founder of the Milan-based Memphis Group, internationally acclaimed for its New Wave architecture and furniture designs, has completed his first project in California, a striking new art gallery on Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive.

The most distinctive feature of the Mayer-Schwarz gallery is its frontage. A facade of black Marquina marble is punctured by a dramatic doorway made up of irregular folds and jagged angles of multicolored terrazzo.

The doorway conveys a sense of mystery, as if giving entry to a hidden cave of art in the midst of Beverly Hill’s opulent Golden Triangle shopping district--a cave Sottsass decribes as “a metaphysical place.�