When viewed from Goldstein's paperwork-piled desk, the office seems to float serenely over the nearby Los Angeles Country Club's golf course and reach toward distant mountains.
Nicholson, of Santa Monica, has worked with Goldstein to update and expand the businessman's showplace Beverly Hills home, which is used frequently as a movie setting and often cited in architecture books.
He said Goldstein's high-rise work space at 10100 Santa Monica Blvd. is the only office ever designed by Lautner.
"John was all about space. This is no different," Nicholson said as he visited the office Wednesday for perhaps the last time. "When you walk in here, you're completely reoriented to the 'box' that defines most office space."
Goldstein is a real estate investor. But he is also known for wearing flamboyant western-style clothes and is regularly seen courtside at Laker and Clipper games and alongside runways at international fashion shows.
Reached at a fashion show in Milan, Italy, he expressed outrage at the fate of his office. "I've put so much into it, and enjoyed it so much. Of course, I have no legal right to stay," he said.
But before leaving, Goldstein lingered late one night last week to enjoy a final sunset reflecting off his golden copper wall, Nicholson said.
Shari Sivak, who has run Goldstein's office for more than six years, works at a massive slate-rock desk that Lautner designed to be cantilevered from a sloping wall.
She said the office has often been used for catalog photo shoots.
Lautner fans have wrangled visits to the high-rise for one last look at the work space, she said.
Christopher Carr, an architect and vice president of the John Lautner Foundation, said Goldstein sought for a year to renew his lease -- even offering to pay Loeb & Loeb an above-market rate to continue renting his office in their new space. He currently pays about $3,500 a month. (The manager of the building declined to comment.)
In the past the foundation has led tours of the Lautner office for modern-architecture devotees and would be willing to coordinate its preservation with Loeb & Loeb, Carr said.
"Unfortunately, the office can't be dismantled and moved somewhere else. It's site-specific -- it's integrated into the view. It can't be reoriented," he said. "But it can be incorporated into their new law office like a piece of art. That's really what it is: art."
