STYLE : ARCHITECTURE : Rooms With Many Views
For a big house to work on a small lot, every room has to steal space from the others. That was San Diego-based architectural designer Wallace Cunningham’s strategy for the La Jolla house of Judy and Bennet Greenwald. Cunningham often draws on rich structural systems for his organic designs (an exhibit of his work opens Nov. 8 at the Schindler House, 835 N. Kings Road, in West Hollywood), and this three-level townhouse is an everchanging Chinese puzzle of space.
Almost every room has a glimpse of one of the three courtyards that weave together the small site; many rooms have the airy feel of pavilions completely surrounded by greenery. The master suite’s balcony borrows a garden view from the two-level kitchen; a narrow third-level mezzanine is expanded by an unexpected glimpse over an open railing of the central patio far below. “It’s like living outdoors,” says Bennet Greenwald.
Adding to the feel of a larger house are the variety of spaces. Intimate gardens contrast with sweeping bay views; long, low corridors end in wide, open rooms with lofty ceilings. High ceilings disappear from peripheral vision, creating the sensation that the sky alone is overhead. Light bounces in from clerestories (the roof stairsteps up) and off gray walls. And the 17-foot glass wall in the kitchen leaves only peaceful views to a panorama of the main courtyard’s Japanese garden within the range of the chef’s eye.
Besides the couple’s 40 pages of requirements for the house, they brought one other daunting fact to their designer: Bennet grew up at 860 Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, a world-famous high-rise designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for Greenwald’s developer father, Herbert. The prince of architectural precision was a frequent visitor, and from him the younger Greenwald learned much about what he wanted in his new home.
High standards for a young designer to satisfy. But Cunningham never seemed intimidated. “I don’t build houses,” Judy Greenwald remembers Cunningham saying in their first conversation. “I build pieces of art, and people live in them.”
Mies knew the slightest gesture could enrich the experience of a home. Cunningham also balances a sense of sheltering privacy with uncluttered spaciousness.
