Ca Boom Design Show Gallery
CA Boom’s New Independents West Hollywood Hills and Laurel Canyon Architectural Tour
CA Boom’s LA’s New Independents fall 2006 design and architecture tour series continued with a tour of West Hollywood Hills and Laurel Canyon homes.
Homes were introduced by the actual designers and architects involved in the project sharing their insights, their design process and execution challenges and solutions. Models and presentation boards as well as homeowners often joined the day’s event.
Going to open houses of homes on weekends is a sport shared by many from the City of Angels. Whether to see how their homes compare, or to see what others were doing, many visitors on an open house Sunday were truly, just looking.
An architectural tour then, should hold no surprise to find, attendees looking for an architect or designer, those considering remodels or a new design project, or even those shopping for a home. We even met, architectural groupies, that came on the tour to meet the architects and see some of their latest works.
Tanager Way Residence – Update of 60’s Hollywood Hills Home
by Bonura Building, www.bonurabuilding.com
The intitial stop on the architectural tour, displayed the desirableness of a Hollywood Hills home. Stylishly modern with high 11 foot ceilings, it has an openness emphasizing the indoor/outdoor relationship and the view above the infinity pool and spa. Elegantly casual, one of its design intents is being able to get out of the pool and walk to the kitchen.
Openness to the hillside view from the master suite and bathroom, living and dining areas reminds one of island tropics and renews one with a serene freshness. Elegant details include honed travertine floors, French marble, rift oak cabinetry, skylight columns, a museum-like base reveal, a front door reminiscent of the Getty museum, golf leaf fireplace.
During a 14 month period, the homeowner and designer first came to Bonura Building and the entire process of design, constructions and permits were built for this spec home. Fortunately, Bonura Building, a design build firm has contractors and architects within the same firm enabling accelerated timelines.
Braseth Riggio Residence
West Edge Studios - Michael Allan Eldridge, AIA , www.westedgestudios.com
Visit the birth of a contemporary home from a 60’s track home in the hills. Architecturally clean lines and open living spaces makes one forget its former life.
Upon first glance I wondered why it was included on the tour. Upon closer look, you could see the attention in the stucco on the fireplace and the exterior. Sensually smooth with a depth of color only a master plasterer could create who happened to work on this home instead of a luxury class resort.
Glass walls, a sculptural steel trellis, and a mountain like sereneness, it is no wonder that it’s become a favorite for location shooting since being completed only 2 months nor that it’s been featured in the Los Angeles Times home section. The homeowner selected the architect after being mesmerized watching another of his projects, the Astral house, in process.
Peck Residence – Update & Restoration of a Thornton Abell Design (1959)
Unruh Boyer Architecture + Design, www.unruhboyer.com
Bringing it back to its former modernist architecture from Mexican pavers, Boyer worked with Bonura Building to create transparency and continuity throughout the home.
Walking throughout the Peck Residence, we felt we’d somehow been allowed into part of old Hollywood. Looking out from the pool area, we experience deja vue, and the scene was in which movie? Perhaps the Sinatra painting and memorabilia and plenty of industry memorabilia, could jar you or take you on walk down memory lane.
Surprisingly it appears to be remarkably similar to the Wilson Residence also by the same firm with Bonura Building.
Struzan Residence
Jeffery Daniels Architects, www.danielsarchitects.com
The Struzan Residence, was originally designed by the architect as his personal residence. Amazingly open and roomy, the home was built on an upslope on a site measuring only 25’ x 100’, with only 19 feet of buildable area with the sideyard setback. Emphasizing peace and relaxation for sleeping, the bedrooms are sandwiched above the garage and below living areas. The living room extends beyond the kitchen and dining and opens to stairway to a loft area. Copper and terracotta colors bring you down to earth and your own place in the hills.
Leonard Residence
Steven Ehrlich Architects, www.s-ehrlich.com
Positioned for city views from the Hollywood Hills, this multi-level home is situated on a 45-degree-angle downward sloping canyon site. The living room is suspended over the canyon with views through the 20 foot high glass walls with floating stairs to the master suite and loft area. Honey woods, granite, slate, concrete, and stainless round out the contemporary feel of this hillside perch. Terraces offer various areas for privacy and relaxation.
Stahl House, Pierre Koning's Case Study #22 House (1959)
Pierre Koenig (1925-2004)
The Stahl House is an infamous case study house which was popularized by architectural photographer Julius Shulman.
Originally the dumpoff area for the developer, this undesirable unbuildable lot became the location of a case study house where architect Pierre Koenig was commissioned by Arts & Architecture magazine. The case study houses were a residential architecture experiment intended to inspire building low-cost modern homes with the housing boom after World War II. Steel construction deep within the hillside enables a birds eye view and the perfect location for Charlotte Stahl to “not miss anything.”
Descriptions of this historical landmark are conveyed visually -
“Powerful minimalist forms with steel construction orchestrated with sublime elegance. Linear forms connecting visually with the LA street grid visible below.” – Notes by Greatbuildings.com.
"I am thinking, of course, of the heroic night-time view of Pierre Koenig's Case Study House #22 which seems so memorably to capture the whole spirit of late twentieth-century architecture. There, hovering almost weightlessly above the bright lights of Los Angeles, spread out like a carpet below, is an elegant, light, economical and transparent enclosure whose apparent simplicity belies the rigorous process of investigation that made it possible. If I had to choose one snapshot, one architectural moment, of which I would like to have been the author, this is surely it.” - Norman Foster, in the foreward of Pierre Koenig, by James Steele, David Jenkins, 1998, p.5.
If you interested in any of the homes, most are for sale, although some quietly, except to our knowledge the Peck Residence or the Stahl House.
Bonura Building
Riggoi by West Rdge Studios, Michael Allen Eldridge, AIA
Next will be The Peck House
Update and Restoration of a Thornton Abell Design (1959) by Unruh Boyer Architecture + Design
(C) MBN 2006 (William Hoehne)
