Redirected: L.A. Home

Affairs of Estate

By Ann Herold — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 15:46:00 GMT

Lafayette Square

The 19th-century idea of neighborhoods designed as worlds apart—the sky-piercing Victorians of Angelino Heights, the royalty-worthy castles of Chester Place—appealed to George Crenshaw, who used his banking fortune to build the sort of enclaves he would live in. None was more swank than Lafayette Square in Mid City. The grand mansions there lined streets as broad as a yacht’s wake and had monikers just as splendid: Buckingham, Victoria, Wellington. Look inside an estate

Trousdale Estates

When Paul Trousdale envisioned his place of privilege, it was the midcentury titans of industry he had in mind. Trousdale took over the trails once traversed by the Doheny family, and there on the ridges over Beverly Hills rose homes designed by the top architects of the postwar period—as modern as the people who acquired them. Look inside an estate

Colfax Meadows

The San Fernando Valley, newly water enriched, embarked on developing its own cachet in the 1920s. The homes were not as imposing— manageable Cliff May-style ranches and mini Tudor manses—but the aspirations were the same. Colfax Meadows and other neighborhoods lured builders with the promise of a life less common. Look inside an estate

Photographs by Dave Lauridsen

The Outdoor Room Grows Up

By Ann Herold — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 17:07:00 GMT

Landscape designers Scott Shrader and Jay Griffith were focusing on the attractions of the outdoor room long before it became a shelter magazine fixture and the subject of an HGTV show. Now a host of tech breakthroughs are making it possible for the space outside to be as grand, and as livable, as its counterparts indoors.

Malibu Matrix

As the weekend retreat for the owners of a prominent clothing company, this Point Dume property needed to be a soothing alternative to long hours spent inside an office
See the room

Palisades Pavilions

Everything about the open-air rooms that Jay Griffith erected in this Pacific Palisades garden are meant to evoke the mythological magic carpet rides of the Moors, among the first champions of outdoor spaces
See the rooms

Photographs by Noah Webb

Treasure Seekers

By Ann Herold — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 23:01:00 GMT

Good View Hunting

The city vista is what photographer Peter Vitale coveted most in Hayworth Tower, a 1931 art deco gem that he found while looking at hundreds of rentals in Los Angeles. He snagged the amazing lookout when the Hayworth’s top floor became available nearly two years ago and he was first to claim it. With the help of L.A. interior designer Tom Boland, Vitale mixed classical, baroque, and modern items that he’d amassed—some carefully collected, others pure impulse buys—to blend with the deco moldings and other period touches. Who says a must-have response to an antique carving or a museum-quality lamp—the one that put a huge dent in your credit card—won’t pay off over a lifetime?

Peek inside the home

A Person of Interests

The 1947 neocolonial by Paul Williams, the celebrated African American architect to the stars, beckoned to interior designer Tom Boland as he shopped for an apartment ten years ago. Luckily the owner of the building, a former dancer with Tito Puente, favored tenants in the arts. “She asked me if I knew who Paul Williams was,” Boland remembers. He did. Now Boland, who has made a practice of recombining a small trove of pieces wherever he’s lived, uses his keepsakes to give the space, where the trees have formed a thick canopy, an urban flair.

Peek inside the home

Casa Vidal

By Andrew Myers — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:34:00 GMT

An 18th century diptych by Italian painter Paolo de Matteis was so large that it was mounted on the ceiling
The chandelier, mirrors, console, table, and chairs also resided in Vidal's flat in Rome and villa in Ravello
The desk at which Vidal did most of his writing holds pride of place in the library
For the 17th-century painting of Edward VI pictured here, Zoltan Papp first removed a heavy coat of varnish that had trapped dirt on the surface. A solution was then applied to the back of the canvas to prevent further drying. Paint in danger of flaking was softened with a heated, forklike tool used in applying gold leaf. Peeling paint was replaced with pigments from a Dutch company whose paints are matched to those of the period.

Photographs by Noah Webb

The 1920s Spanish colonial revivalhigh in the Hollywood Hills has been owned by Gore Vidal—he of the erudite roar only slightly muted by age—for more than four decades. During most of those years Vidal and companion Howard Auster resided in Rome and at La Rondinaia, a cliff-hugging villa in Ravello, Italy, while the L.A. house was turned over to a series of renters. Some, like Nicolas Cage, who put solar panels on the roof, Vidal describes as "very good caretakers." Others, such as the "lady tenant" who damaged the house and left owing $40,000, garner other descriptors.

The couple moved back in 2003; Auster died later that year. A recent seven-month renovation, which focused on the first floor and back terrace, was completed in time for the writer's 86th birthday in early October. Now, when Vidal isn't in New York preparing for the Broadway revival this spring of his 1960 play, The Best Man, he savors the flea market finds, the auction house finery overlooked by eyes less curious, the presents from pals that fill the rooms. Among them is a herd of 17th-century drawings of warhorses that gallop and rear in the entryway, a gift from Count Edward von Bismarck—"Eddie, the grandest dandy," says Vidal.

Perhaps most precious are the family treasures. In the living room hangs a small piece of colored glass, a Swiss crest showing VIDALL with two ls, dated 1589, what Vidal calls the most valuable glass in the city. On the upstairs landing is a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence of actor William Linley, a relative who married the actress Sarah Siddons's daughter. Next to it is a rendering of a gentleman who, it's pointed out to Vidal, looks not unlike Abraham Lincoln, the subject of his acclaimed historical novel. "From a certain angle everyone does," he says. "Don't lose any sleep over it."

Peering across the living room's low sofas, marble tables, bronzed writing awards, and photos of friends (Joanne Woodward, Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins) is a young Prince of Wales, the future Edward VI, son of Henry VIII. The painting gleams from the ministrations of Zoltan Papp, who was also charged with restoring the legion of Italian 18th-century oils, estimated at $15 million and destined for the Huntington—none of which cost Vidal more than $200.

Vidal wheels his chair into the dining room, which, like much of the house, harbors a cool solitude; the thick stucco walls and sturdy windows block out the heat and noise. Several of his favorite pieces reside in this room, including two ornate mirrors hanging near the doorway that were owned by film director Luchino Visconti; one was pulverized during shipping and flawlessly repaired. He lingers briefly by the ram's-head chairs from the 1959 movie Ben-Hur—Vidal was one of the screenwriters—before declaring his affection for a floor-to-ceiling, elaborately carved 18th-century mirror that barely fits over an equally fantastical table. "It's a kind of medieval camp, totally Italian, 19th century," he says of the table. The mirror, on the other hand, once belonged to Mario Praz, "the greatest critic of Anglo-American literature."

Vidal insists he is not a collector. At the least, he's an accumulator, and to call his house and possessions a palimpsest, to borrow the title of his 1995 memoir, would be wrong. Rather they form a rich composite. Perhaps that's one of the reasons he has cottoned to the place, making clear that after the opening of his play he'll return not to L.A. but to the house. As for the city itself, about which Vidal has long been ambivalent? "Of all cities, the one where you can most think yourself into somewhere else is L.A. It's waiting to be invented. It's to be made up."

TAKE A SEAT
The copies of ancient Roman chairs (right) that had been crafted for the Ben-Hur set in the mid-1950s traveled with Vidal to his Italian homes, thus sparing them from renter abuse. But the brass strips—plated in silver and gold and mounted on the chairs as decorative elements—had loosened with age. Zoltan Papp of L.A.'s Artisan Restoration Centre reattached them and polished the surfaces by hand. Age had also crystallized the glue joining the legs to the seats; Papp removed the old glue from the affected joints, heated it, and then reapplied the revitalized solution. The seats' Italian-made fabric, Papp says, came through five decades without a rip or a stain.

MORE ON GORE
Practically from birth Vidal has put into words the American fascination with people in power

1925
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal is born in West Point, New York, where his father teaches aeronautics. He later shortens his name in honor of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Pryor Gore, a Democratic senator from Oklahoma.

1946
Vidal's first novel, Williwaw, written when he was 19, is published.

1948
The New York Times refuses to review Vidal's third book, The City and the Pillar, because of its depictions of homosexuality. Vidal turns to writing mystery novels to support himself, using the pseudonym Edgar Box.

1958
Under contract to MGM, Vidal helps rewrite Ben-Hur but is not given screen credit.

Vidal announces his candidacy for Congress to represent the 29th District in upstate New York, employing the campaign slogan "You'll get more with Gore." He loses the election but makes a strong showing among the largely GOP constituency.

1960
Julian, about 4th-century Rome, tops the Herald Tribune best-seller list, beating out Leon Uris's Armageddon.

1968
Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. engage in TV debates at the presidential conventions; during one broadcast, Buckley calls Vidal a "queer." The two trade barbs in Esquire, leading to Buckley's filing
a libel suit. Buckley settles for $115,000.

1982
Governor Jerry Brown and Vidal vie to be the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate.

1982
A collection of Vidal's writing, United States: Essays 1952-1992, wins the National Book Award. Among his other literary successes is Lincoln, which was released in 1984 in a remarkable 200,000-copy first printing.

1998
Vidal puts his L.A. house on the market for $2.1 million, but it fails to sell.

Sand and Stone II

By Sam Lubell — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Rimrock House

The Rimrock House, located off a dirt road in Pioneertown, is a low-lying corrugated-steel living space sheltered by a large pitched steel shed. The project, says San Diego architect Lloyd Russell, was inspired partly by a modernist home in Zurich by Le Corbusier, partly by industrial shed buildings, and partly by nearby agricultural shade structures. Rimrock’s owner, Jim Austin, an old surfing buddy of Russell’s and one of the founders of surfwear company Redsand, likes to describe his home as “Cowboy Modern.” He rents four adjacent cabins and one Airstream trailer on the site, which he calls Rimrock Ranch cabins. While the house can let in the desert through sliders, its giant exostructure protects Austin from the heat and creates unique outdoor rooms. Austin has turned on the air-conditioning only three times, he says, “because the shade structure does all the work.”

Boulder House

Although Benedict Canyon architect Garett Carlson’s Boulder House, just outside Joshua Tree, seems to emerge from a large granite outcropping, that’s merely a desert mirage. The boulders fronting the home’s entrance have been manufactured from steel mesh and hand-colored concrete. Desert plants sprout from 250,000 pounds of soil packed onto the roof, while the property is surrounded by more than 1,000 shrubs and 450 trees. The corrugated-tin exterior is treated with acid to give it a rusted look evocative of the soil. “I wanted it to feel like it was always there,” says Carlson, who was trained first as a landscape architect. A small watering hole attracts quail, rabbits, coyotes, and roadrunners and other birds. Carlson chalks up all this experimentation to the “interesting creative energy” of Joshua Tree. Doing something like this in Benedict Canyon, he says, would have been “a royal pain in the ass.”

Tim Palen Studio at Shadow Mountain

This house, located north of Joshua Tree, is composed of six repurposed cargo containers (purchased from the Port of Long Beach) that were shipped to the site and stacked in a matter of minutes. Other industrial-grade elements include a corrugated-metal shed, steel framing, and a perforated metal shade canopy. “Most prefab modular systems take one idea and mass-produce it ad nauseam,” says L.A. architect Walter Scott Perry, who designed the Studio. “We didn’t want to take one simplistic idea and ram it down everybody’s throat.” With shading, a misting system, a combination of evaporative cooling and traditional air-conditioning, and hundreds of pounds of insulated metal, the house doesn’t get too hot for its owner, an executive at Lionsgate films. The containers themselves, refitted with huge windows and skylights, are less claustrophobic than one might imagine. “When you maximize the spaces and put in a lot of daylight,” says Perry, “it’s amazing to discover how open these containers can be.”

ALSO: See more photos of these desert homes
Read Sand and Stone from the September issue

Photographs, from top to bottom: David Harrison, Andrew Breeze, Jack Parsons Photography

Sand and Stone

By Sam Lubell — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Pool Hardy: Desert house

VITALS

Completed: 2005
Location: Desert Hot Springs
Size: 2,100 square feet

Though assembled from ten factory-built steel modules, Marmol Radziner’s Desert House is no walled-off bunker. Located near Desert Hot Springs, the narrow L-shaped home features insulated floor-to-ceiling glass framing a hardscrabble landscape that gives way to the dramatic sweep of the mountains. “I find the colors and the light of the desert very powerful,” says co-owner Lee Marmol, coprincipal of the Santa Monica architecture firm. “There’s a certain peaceful serenity to the stillness of the desert.”

The home’s 2,100 square feet of interior space is matched by an equal amount of outdoor living area. There's also a courtyard with pool and fire pit. The house is reachable only by parking at the edge of the five-acre property and ascending a stone path to the hilltop site, which provides uninterrupted views of the often snowcapped San Jacintos.

While this was the first of many prefabricated homes designed by Marmol Radziner, local circumstances dictated its construction methods as much as pure intention did. Prefab made sense, says Marmol, because the sparsely populated area lacked the infrastructure and the workers for traditional home construction.

Looking onto the valley below, the site is often buffeted by high winds. “The wind is beautiful, but sometimes there’s a disconcerting character to it,” says Marmol, who can see the Coachella Valley’s hundreds of faraway wind turbines from the house. “It’s a kind of constant presence until it finally subsides.”

Desert Living
Wild boars, bobcats, rattlesnakes, and rabbits are just a few of the critters that may walk through your door. One homeowner reports he was watching a movie when a kangaroo rat came into the living room and started watching with him.

Above, from left to right: A fire pit is a focal point of the house’s courtyard; Pre-fabricated steel modules contain wide openings that frame the surroundings like a stage proscenium; The living room connects to one of many covered outdoor spaces via floor-to-ceiling sliders; the architects designed the teak outdoor furnishings.

Gold Standard: Acido Dorado

VITALS

Completed: 2010
Location: Joshua Tree
Size: 2,000 square feet

Last year, on a barren stretch of east Joshua Tree that pulls no punches, Echo Park architect Robert Stone built a residence that gives as good as it gets. His Acido Dorado—made of concrete blocks and wrought iron—welcomes the desert inside through large openings, gridlike screens, a mirrored ceiling, and expanses of gold-tinted glass. Some rooms are built into the ground.

Stone constructed Acido Dorado (translation: Golden Acid) and a nearby home called Rosa Muerta (Dead Rose) by himself. “I think it was some weird midlife-crisis urge,” he says. Acido Dorado’s golden sheen, he explains, suggests gaudiness and fraudulence as much as real luxury; hearts represent sincerity and love “if you drop your sense of cynicism,” and flowers, while a nod to architectural ornament, also invoke artificial flower memorials at the roadside. “I make things and stand back, and it takes me five years to figure out what it was,” he says.

Stone paid for Acido Dorado with credit cards “instead of waiting around for a rich client.” He rents out the home for about 50 weeks of the year to overnight guests and for fashion shoots. As for the evaporative cooler, he'd rather his guests not use it. “Why do we have to cater to people’s desires to have a box that is 68 degrees year-round?” he asks.

Desert Living
Guns are a way of life for many out here. Architect Lloyd Russell once found his workers setting up construction debris, cans, and bottles inside his unfinished house for target practice. “It’s hard to imagine shooting at your design,” says Russell, “but that was fun.”

Above, from left to right: The home’s owner and architect, Robert Stone, plays with his son beneath the mirrored ceiling in the front of the house, which is partly screened with concrete blocks and wrought iron; The home, whose roof slopes down over the bedrooms, nestles into the rocky landscape.

Grid Lock: The itHouse

VITALS

Completed: 2011
Location: Pioneertown
Size: 1,200 square feet

The itHouse is a short but very bumpy ride up from honky-tonk Pioneertown, above the Twentynine Palms Highway. Designed by the Hollywood firm Taalman Koch, the 1,200-square-foot, partly prefabricated structure is “an instrument for connecting us to the world instead of closing us off to the world,” says Alan Koch, who owns the remote house with Linda Taalman. (The couple collaborated on the design.) “All of human progress has this goal of annihilating space and time: iPhones and cars and airplanes and TiVo,” he adds. “But this house is a place where that runs backward a little bit.”

Electronics are verboten in the itHouse, and Koch delights in the lack of cell phone reception. “There’s a lot of freedom when people can’t find you: ‘Sorry I couldn’t reach you, I was busy relaxing,’ ” he says, chuckling. Koch believes the connection to the desert makes mundane tasks like sweeping or doing laundry meditative, and he catches even the least contemplative of his friends and family fading into a sort of desert-induced trance. Why not? Rest your head in the glass-walled bedroom, and you’ll feel as if you’re about to sleep in the shadow of a boulder.

While the itHouse soaks up the surrounding landscape, desert heat is another matter. Overhangs, window laminates, careful site orientation, and concrete floors keep the home surprisingly cool. Good thing, because the off-grid house, powered mostly by solar panels, has no air-conditioning. Occasionally, says Koch, “we’re very warm,” but he doesn’t see that as a bad thing.

Desert Living
Nearby Pioneertown was built in 1946 as a movie set for westerns, including those of Gene Autry, the Cisco Kid, and Buffalo Bill Jr. Nowadays it’s better known as the home of Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, which serves up barbecue hoedowns and KCRW-sponsored concerts.

Above, from left to right: Walls made of windows look onto Pioneertown’s otherworldly terrain; deep overhangs keep the sunlight from penetrating the living room most of the day; A Fireorb fireplace dominates the living room, with its stunning desert panorama. The dining area is tucked between the kitchen and the living room.

Photographs by Sian Kennedy. Illustrations by John Burgoyne

ALSO: See three more innovative homes in the Joshua Tree area

Home Sweet Beach

By Ann Herold — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Front Row Seat, Hermosa Beach

The Age of Romance, Santa Monica

Open to Contemporary, Playa Del Rey

Altered States

By Marissa Gluck and Ann Herold — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 08:00:00 GMT

01. Starry Nights

A dowdy perch in the Hollywood hills is transformed into a luxurious pad for the modern man

The start: For architectural designer Peter Vracko, the real estate crash has had its upside. When Vracko bought an unremarkable 1977 three-bedroom, three-bath between the Bird Streets and the Sunset Strip in 2007, he intended to remodel and flip the property, as he had a few other homes in L.A. The recession persuaded Vracko to live there himself. Despite the house’s prime location, the windows were small, the ceilings were low, and the rooms seemed dark. “It was the eyesore of the block,” says Vracko, who is also a contractor. “Definitely the worst home on the street.” Capturing the city views became a priority. After a two-year, $2 million renovation, Vracko now has large sliding-glass doors to take in the stunning vistas, ceilings that are anything but low, and an open layout in the four-bedroom, eight-bath, 4,400-square-foot residence.

The finish: Nearly every aspect of the house was completely redone, from the addition of travertine floors and countertops in the kitchen to muted, indirect lighting throughout. Vracko also installed a one-touch Control4 system that lets him manage the lights, music, temperature, pool, and spa settings. Though the house has new air-conditioning, Vracko took advantage of natural ventilation by installing automated awning windows that allow the upper floors to stay breezy even in summer. “It's so easy to keep it cool and clean,” he says. He warmed up the backyard with a small saltwater pool, daybed, and TV lounge.

Peter Vracko, owner/architectural designer/contractor: “I love the brightness of the house. The plan was to sell it, but it’s just as well because I love it.”

02. Glam Factory

Hollywood history reaches deep into the global marketplace in a fashion designer’s sumptuous Los Feliz lair

The start: The homage to glamour that movie director Marcel Tourneur erected in the 1920s in the hills above Griffith Park acquired an ardent—and visually savvy—savior when fashion designer Sue Wong bought the house in 2004. Over time owners that included silent film star Norma Talmadge had added to Tourneur’s original vision of an Italianate palace. Others had left a mark more on the home’s lore—Jimi Hendrix camped in one bedroom during the tenure of rock guitarist Arthur Lee—than on the building itself. By restoring the ornate ceilings and fireplaces, then filling the rooms with elegant furniture and fabrics, Wong has not only brought back a gilded age, she's living it.

The finish: Wong prides herself on channeling a period’s zeitgeist in her gowns, and her new home’s ornamentation was certainly a mixture of eras—Italian renaissance, French baroque, Greek neoclassical. To even see the treasures, though, required removing decades of grime. For that Wong brought in Zoltan Papp of Artisan Restoration Center in L.A. He revived a faded Italian-style fresco leading to the solarium, where Howard Hughes had played a grand piano (he owned the house in the 1930s). Papp replaced the peeling gold leaf on the living room colonnade and restored the opulent ceilings throughout. When a find of 18th-century baroque throne chairs arrived, Wong charged Papp with their repair. The house is a rich blend. African statues stand vigil by an art deco chest. Assemblages from modern artist Koji Takei meld with Empire ormolu. What’s next? A little TLC for the stucco exterior.

Sue Wong, owner: “I had been looking for a two-bedroom hideaway but fell in love with the house immediately. It’s a museum in its own right—I took it upon myself to restore its grandeur.”

The screen in front of the living room fireplace and the torchères flanking it were loaned for the film The Aviator. Wong designed the art deco sofa and elaborately embroidered and beaded curtains; the latter were handmade in China. “The colors in the Jayme Odgers painting pick up the Navajo-meets-Viking-meets-Black Forest ceiling,” says Wong.

Wong attributes many of the lion images in the house to MGM director Marcel Tourneur, including the fireplace decoration in what had been Norma Talmadge's master bedroom. In between portraits painted on the gilt ceiling are witty sayings in gothic lettering. “There is nothing permanent except change,” reads one aphorism.

The sitting room that adjoins the bedroom in which Jimi Hendrix lived was decorated with Moroccan fabrics and furniture in a nod to Wong’s bohemian past. Last year she went to the North African country for the first time. “I thought I did a pretty darn good job,” she says of her Moorish styling.

The designer, who fled Communist China with her mother when she was five and a half, opens the frosted-glass doors to the dining room. The doors and their ironwork, which include blossoming irises, are original to the house. The ceiling is decorated with French baroque courtship scenes in porcelain.

Zoltan Papp, restorer: “No one had tried to restore the ceilings improperly, which was good because the buildup acted like a protective coating. Less oxygen reached the surfaces; oxygen combined with the high temperatures we have here is what causes paint to fade. The fireplaces had been heavily used throughout the house, including in the room with a lavish painted ceiling—the Norma Talmadge bedroom. Various owners would burn all manner of materials in them—papers, old upholstery—producing a lot of smoke. The bedroom has tiny windows and is small and cozy, so the soot had piled up there. I had to use my best team: Jozsef Sipos, Ildiko Sinkovics, and Imre Kovacs. They’ve been with my company for ten years. They’re from Hungary, like me, and we spoke to each other in Hungarian as we worked on that ceiling, not unlike how the French and Italian artisans would have spoken to each other as they worked on the house in the 1920s and ’30s.”

03. Guiding Light

The bold new entry to a Pasadena home is both nighttime show and tribute to the woodsy locale

The start: The 1980s house was straining to be modern, but several renovations had left it with a patchwork feel. The location, though, couldn’t be more spectacular: a stand of sculptural Pasadena oaks. When owners John Frank and Diann Kim approached the downtown architecture firm B+U about remodeling their master bathroom, architects Herwig Baumgartner and Scott Uriu saw the potential for evoking the sweep of the trees with a man-made canopy that would also serve as a vibrant entry to the home. The old garage became a new master bath with a courtyard garden shielded from view by frosted-glass walls. The pair also redesigned the kitchen to give it a more open look, using, as they had done in the bathroom, Corian for the countertops.

The finish: From the beginning the canopy was intended to connect the tree-filled landscape to the house. Supporting it is a pylon that extends 30 feet into the ground to bear the weight of the dramatically cantilevered structure. The covering that Baumgartner and Uriu selected has a naturalistic, canvaslike finish they favor over the more glossy alternatives. The LED lights that beam through it were placed to create shadows that enhance the design’s lines. For 40 minutes each night the fantastical takes over as the light changes seamlessly from pink to purple to cyan to magenta.

Herwig Baumgartner and Scott Uriu, architects: “Architectural fabrics are a great material for the ephemeral quality we are after,” says Scott Uriu. “We wanted the lighting design to be just as magical in that you don’t know where the light is coming from,” adds Herwig Baumgartner.

How They Did It
For the canopy, a skeleton was constructed from steel tubing and draped with an architectural fabric—fiberglass dipped in silicon. Philips LED lights illuminate it at night.

1. THE BONES
One thousand feet of tubing that varied from three to six inches in diameter makes up the frame, which was welded together in a Fontana warehouse. The structure weighed about two tons when completed.

2. THE MUSCLE
Tomas Osinski, who worked on the fountain at Walt Disney Concert Hall, originally hoped to transport the skeleton by helicopter. Instead it was cut into five parts and trucked in, then installed by crane.

3. THE SKIN
Most of the 1,800 square feet of fiberglass covering was cut ahead of time based on a computer model. Applying it to the skeleton along with final fitting and detailing took about six weeks.

04. Country Digs

An architect couple keeps the humble footprint but goes for high function in their Solano Canyon home

The start: When Bo Sundius and Hisako Ichiki of Bunch Design bought their 100-year-old house in 2009, the tiny redwood home had been flipped. Not financially. Physically. The construction of Dodger Stadium in the early 1960s closed off the street to the front door, so guests entered from a dirt alley in the back. With a baby on the way, the couple worked fast on the remodel, with a $60,000 budget. Their stove, sink, and newborn son arrived on the same day. “I came home from the hospital, and everything was perfectly installed,” says Ichiki.

The finish: Sundius and Ichiki, who met at SCI-Arc, opened up the 1,250-square-foot space while retaining its footprint. They knocked out the third bedroom and added sliding-glass doors to create an airy, expansive first floor for the living room, dining room, and kitchen. A storage area is cleverly concealed beneath the stairs, and a closet has been transformed into a daybed nook. The couple used reclaimed materials as much as possible, including an oak floor from a Kentucky horse farm. “We picked out the wood slats one by one,” says Ichiki.

Hisako Ichiki, owner/architectural designer: “It was my dream to have a big dining room table for the family. Luckily we had one leftover sheet of walnut plywood. Bo whipped up a table in two days.”

Photographs by Noah Webb. Illustrations by Lucinda Rogers.

Five Decades, Five Classics

By Ann Herold — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 07:00:00 GMT

L.A. beats all cities for variety of home design. Credit the view-rich hilltops, rugged canyons, cool coastline, and expansive flatlands for inspiring generations of architects native and foreign born. Even as dramatic statements were made by the dreamers, others took on the challenge of affordability and, most recently, environmental responsibility. Here we look at the past 50 years, drawing from each decade a home emblematic of its time—and much loved by its owners then and now.

Mass Appeal

The postwar housing boom produces some modernist havens, among them a Valley tract
Read
Wooden It Be Fab

A generation welcomes the sunshine in: Donald Hensman blazed the way at his Hollywood Hills bachelor pad
Read
No Turning Back

The been-there, done-that group takes industrial materials into a new dimension. See what happens at a Malibu home
Read
Old Soul

In the 1920s, Angelenos clamored for designs from Europe. L.A. wants the look again, but a Pasadena home by Marc Appleton shows why you have to keep it simple
Read
Open Wide

Who doesn’t want to help the environment? Do more with less space? Steven Ehrlich answers today’s green theme with his own nature-loving home in Venice
Read

Redirected: L.A. Home

Affairs of Estate

Lafayette Square

Trousdale Estates

Colfax Meadows

The Outdoor Room Grows Up

Malibu Matrix

Palisades Pavilions

Treasure Seekers

Good View Hunting

A Person of Interests

Casa Vidal

Sand and Stone II

Sand and Stone

Pool Hardy: Desert house

Gold Standard: Acido Dorado

Grid Lock: The itHouse

Home Sweet Beach

Altered States

01. Starry Nights

02. Glam Factory

03. Guiding Light

04. Country Digs

Five Decades, Five Classics

Mass Appeal

Wooden It Be Fab

No Turning Back

Old Soul

Open Wide