Pro Portfolio: A Hollywood Hills remodel that glows with light, color
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Every Monday we post a newly built, remodeled or redecorated home with commentary from the designer. This week:
Architects: Eric Haas and Chava Danielson, principals, DSH Architecture, Los Angeles. General contractor: Mersola Construction, Burbank, (818) 842-4831. Structural engineer: Structural Design Plus, Sherman Oaks, (818) 905-9871. Landscape design: Terra Form, Los Angeles/Santa Barbara.
Project: Complete renovation of a 2,700-square-foot hillside house
Location: Los Angeles
Architects’ description: This West Coast retreat for New York-based magazine publishers is a colorful backdrop for entertaining, yet also a serene environment surrounded by hilltop views.
The house began life as an intensely ordinary shell. Having been abandoned by its original builder and completed by the lender, it was a study in conventional spaces and banal finishes. To give the house a new sensibility, the renovation had to be substantial. An injection of new colors and materials, along with a dramatic reconfiguring of the interior space, was in order.
We realized that the house, perched on a steep site, would offer little opportunity for a direct physical connection to its surroundings, so the idea behind the renovation was to create a kind of interior landscape. Beginning with the entry, a palette of vibrant colors and luminescent materials leads through a sequence of spaces, some dramatic, some intimate. The quality of that palette changes significantly across the course of the day as light shifts and again at night as polycarbonate wall surfaces turn into lighting fixtures. The glass of the home’s bright pink facade is lighted from within.
New openings between rooms make for better entertaining and conversation. Windows, reconfigured and reoriented, frame views of the city while long views across the canyon become part of the interior experience. Synthetic materials used in the renovation seem to contrast with the expanse of nature captured in these picture windows.
The street presence is discreet thanks to new cladding materials. The cladding is then cut to reveal a brightly colored entryway hinting at the interior that lies beyond. To see inside the house, keep reading ...
The entry hall: Artificial and natural lighting create a combined glow.
Looking down toward the dining area.
Expansive views transform the master bedroom into a true escape. The valance conceals blackout shades.
Canyon and distant views are part of the spatial effect.
The serene master bath.
Spaces for entertaining flow around and through the reconfigured kitchen.
The dining room, looking back up to the entry.
Materials throughout the project change dramatically with shifts in light.
Before the renovation, the street presence needed some love.
-- Compiled by Lisa Boone
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