Lofts in Suburbia : A Santa Monica-Based Architectural Firm Saw a Need--and Filled It

INNOVATIVE ARCHITECTURE ALWAYS provokes dissent. Leading Parisians hated the Eiffel Tower when it was new, and critics panned the first designs for Rockefeller Center. So it was no surprise that the neighbors were up in arms when two young Australian architects-- Hank Koning and Julie Eizenberg--proposed a pair of stark towers for a picture-perfect street in the Hollywood Hills.

Two years later, the buildings remain controversial, but a close look reveals how ingeniously the Santa Monica-based firm of Koning Eizenberg Architecture accommodated special needs on a steep, narrow site. Koning and Eizenberg had discovered that there was an unsatisfied demand for what they called “suburban lofts”--flexible open spaces that working couples could use as home-studios if they didn’t want to live in a commercial zone. Each tower is three 20-square-foot rooms stacked above a double garage. The small base reduced the cost of excavation and allowed the towers to be set well apart and aligned with the converging boundaries of the pie-shaped lot, creating a dramatic composition.

The kitchen, bathroom and storage areas of each tower extend to the hillside behind. These two-story structures with gently bowed roof lines project out at angles that are calculated to give all rooms natural light without having views of the neighbors. An architect and interior designer work out of one tower, a theater producer and a movie director share the other, and both have put their spaces to inventive use.

The street facades are still raw, but within a few years they should be submerged in a riot of honeysuckle, passion vines and bougainvillea to the height of the steel mesh balconies. In fact, half the houses nearby are white stucco cubes, but flowering trees make them as acceptable as the red-tiled Spanish cottages. The architects have picked up on other local features. The sheer profile of their towers echoes that of a 1920s landmark, a free-standing elevator shaft called High Tower, which serves a cluster of hillside homes just a block away. The steps that climb steeply from the street to sheltered patios at the top of the site recall other pedestrian ways in the neighborhood, such as Alta Loma Terrace. Even the deer still come down to feed.