Architect Melinda Gray and ‘High School Musical’ producer Bill Borden preserve ramshackle charm of Leo Carrillo’s 1932 hacienda
Bill Borden, creator of “High School Musical” and the producer behind the new MTV musical “The American Mall,” and architect Melinda Gray, founder of Gray Matter Architecture, are self-proclaimed “complete modernists,” but they live in a once-ramshackle 1932 hacienda. The Santa Monica residence was built for Leo Carrillo, the cowboy movie star best known as Pancho, sidekick to TV’s Cisco Kid.
Some owners might have restored the fanciful structure as a period piece or just torn it down, but Borden and Gray chose to apply their contemporary design sensibility while preserving the integrity of the vernacular architecture. Here, the loggia lined with salvaged bricks shades daybeds that Gray designed and the couple built themselves. The sculptural seating in the foreground, called Pebbles, was carved from stacked plywood by EIS Studio in Venice.
Some owners might have restored the fanciful structure as a period piece or just torn it down, but Borden and Gray chose to apply their contemporary design sensibility while preserving the integrity of the vernacular architecture. Here, the loggia lined with salvaged bricks shades daybeds that Gray designed and the couple built themselves. The sculptural seating in the foreground, called Pebbles, was carved from stacked plywood by EIS Studio in Venice.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
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