Art for the 1%: Cunningham’s $10.5M ‘Wing’ House flies

The spiraling dreamscape of Wallace E. Cunningham—an acolyte of the great Frank Lloyd Wright—stands not merely as a home, but as a monument to the unchecked decadence of capital’s aesthetic whims.

Perched precariously in the gilded hills of Rancho Santa Fe, this $10.5 million helix of steel, glass, and concrete screams both genius and excess, a Kandinsky nightmare born of privilege and artistic abandon.

They call it The Wing, a 5,800-square-foot temple to curvature and opulence, Cunningham’s first commission as a fledgling visionary. Before the ink was dry on his apprenticeship papers at Wright’s Taliesin West, the Midwest bourgeoisie tapped him to sculpt their California haven. This was the late ’70s—post-Vietnam disillusionment mingling with neoliberal fervor—and they demanded something bold, something that reflected their ascension.

Cunningham delivered an S-shaped wonder, a Möbius strip of wealth, its concentric wings caressing the earth like the talons of some cosmic bird. Nestled between the curves: an open-air courtyard anchored by a crescent-shaped infinity pool—a water feature that laughs in the face of drought-stricken proletarian California. The house boasts three bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms, each a sterile canvas for the lives of those who will never know struggle. Across the property, a secondary structure—no mere guest house, but a small estate in itself—mirrors the design, offering refuge for visiting sycophants or domestic labor cloaked in faux equality.

Originally sold in 1989 for a mere $1.285 million, The Wing now stands as a grotesque testament to speculative real estate and the fetishization of design. It remains untouched by time, preserved as a relic of Architectural Digest worship. From the hidden driveway to the sweeping steps leading to its minimalist interior, the home radiates exclusivity. The great room, crowned with a voyeuristic skylight, invites natural light to flood spaces that most will only see in glossy pages, never in reality. Sliding glass walls blur the lines between indoors and outdoors, a nod to Wright’s organic architecture—but stripped of its communal ethos, reduced to a backdrop for Silicon Valley tycoons or hedge fund moguls.

Meanwhile, America’s wealthiest zip codes stretch like a capitalist sprawl, with Rancho Santa Fe’s 92067 ranking ninth in a grotesque parade of gilded mediocrity. Atherton’s obscene $7.9 million median price still reigns supreme, but Rancho Santa Fe holds its own as a quieter monument to inequality—a village of fewer than 10,000 souls commanding a median price of $4.55 million in 2024. California dominates this hierarchy of decadence, the state’s 80 zip codes on PropertyShark’s list standing as a mockery of housing justice.

Here, Cunningham’s sinuous masterpiece stands as both a triumph of individual artistry and a damning indictment of the system that allows such visions to manifest only for the ultra-wealthy. It’s a siren call for avant-garde architecture lovers—those with an appreciation for curves, and pockets deep enough to sustain the illusion. But beneath the sweeping lines and minimalist facades lies the stark reality of class: beauty as a commodity, art as property, and the infinite absurdity of the American dream spiraling into its own decadent demise.