Loves nature.
Photo: Photo by Swan Gallet/WWD via Getty Images
Bianca Censori is not a “College Dropout.” In fact, she has a master’s degree in architecture, which she used to help destroy the work of one of the most important architects of the 20th century. The first extensive interview with Censori, the woman best known as Kanye West’s naked wife, was published today in Vanity Fair, and in it, she defends gutting an iconic Malibu home designed by Pritzker Prize–winner Tadao Ando. “[Architects] have this idea of, ‘Okay, once I have this home, and I’ve handed it off to the client, it has to remain the same way as when I passed it off,’ ” Censori said. “But that’s not how people use space. I think that the destruction of the home was beautiful to me, and I think symbolic also of that time.”
The home is known as the Richard Sachs Residence and was built in 2013. After Ye bought the house in 2021, he and his architecture team, including Censori, ripped out large parts of Ando’s design and got rid of the plumbing, windows, and doors. Then, once Ye was dropped by Adidas for antisemitic comments and could no longer afford the place, they left it open to the elements. A representative for Ando told The New Yorker that he “does not like to talk much about the house in Malibu.”
Censori, meanwhile, is fine with leaving the house at the mercy of the weather. “The thing about destruction is it gives life to something else,” Censori said. “So when I would enter that house that was quote, unquote destroyed, bats were living inside of it, and the sea salt had taken over the steel that was in the house and was rusting.” Expounding, she said that “a tree is the shape of a tree, because that’s what nature does or whatever.” Well, some people still like bonsai.
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