Steve Aoki didn’t set out looking for a massive house in the desert—but you might say that it found him. The electro house DJ and producer had been scouringLas Vegasfor the perfect home, when a friend in real estate alerted him to a 16,000-square-foot property about to go up on the auction block. The home, which had been constructed at the height of the financial crisis in 2008, languished on the market for years with no one able to stomach the $12 million price tag. By the time it hit the auction block in 2014, it was listed at under $3 million and required an all-cash deal. “I didn't really check under the hood. I just said, ‘I need to get this house,’” Aoki says. “And then I later checked under the hood and was like, ‘Holy s***. There's a lot of work that needs to be done!’"
Aoki spent years and, by his estimation, “millions upon millions” to convert the property to thetechnologically savvyand modernist space of his dreams. "I skinned it, gutted it, changed everything,” he says. “I took it to the bare shell of the walls and the floors. Well, not even the floors. I removed all the floors!” Once complete, the DJ christened the space "Aoki’s Playhouse"— and the reasons are obvious once you step inside.
While Aoki favors streamlined interiors and a palette of cool grays and white, there is quite a bit of whimsy introduced into the design through his carefully curated art collection. Most notable: an entire room devoted to 3-D pieces from Aoki's favorite artist, KAWS, and aBanksysculpture depicting Mickey Mouse being eaten by a snake from the artist’s acclaimed 2015 Dismaland exhibit. "My prized possession," he says.
But perhaps the room in the sprawling house that most proclaims "playhouse" is Aoki's gym, if one could call it that, which was formerly a racquetball court. “That’s not my sport,” he says, “So, I transformed it.” The now tricked-out space features a giant trampoline, a foam pit, and a rope swing. The finishing touch is a 20-foot mural, splashed across an entire wall, by celebrated Los Angelesstreet artistNeck Face. “He's not one to do pieces for many people, but I've known him for a long time,” Aoki says of the anonymous graffiti artist.