STYLE : Architecture : Pure and Simple

The Larchmont Village area of Los Angeles is full of streets where nothing but the cars seem to have changed since the ‘20s and you half-expect to come upon a film crew shooting a Laurel and Hardy comedy. On one of these streets, furniture designer Roy McMakin has restored a tiny bungalow that looks as innovative today as it did when it was built in 1917.

This modernist gem--white stucco devoid of ornament--was built by architect Irving Gill, a pioneer of concrete construction. McMakin coveted the place when he first saw it six years ago. He had lived in a Gill house in San Diego and could see what lay beneath the years of decay and alterations. “I had $30,000 to make it pristine, and I made a blind leap of faith,” he says. False walls and ceilings were torn out, and the concrete was sandblasted. New doors and window frames were installed, and McMakin built kitchen cabinets based on those in Gill’s Clark House in Santa Fe Springs.

Traces of the original color scheme were uncovered and reproduced. Exterior woodwork was painted dark green; the stucco walls white, with areas of pale blue and yellow. But McMakin is still screwing up his courage to try turquoise on the interior woodwork. Until he does, the rooms around the sleeping porch have the purity of monks’ cells. And the living room, kitchen and bathroom are bathed in light from clerestory windows.

McMakin, who switched from making sculpture to making furniture five years ago, has filled the house with the simple lines of his own tables, chairs and chests, available at Domestic Furniture Co. on Beverly Boulevard. Together, this house and the furniture its owner crafts and collects represent the distilled essence of architecture and design. Everything that is has been stripped away, leaving only bare forms, beauty and harmony.