STYLE : ARCHITECTURE : Cloud Nine

Remember those ‘50s sci-fi movies in which aliens invaded Everytown, U.S.A., and turned ordinary things into weird apparitions? Something like that has happened in Franklin Hills near downtown Los Angeles. A plain stucco cottage began to swell, puffing up and out until it resembled a cumulus cloud that someone had cut into and outfitted with a door and a garage. Welcome to Jack and Rosalind Lieberman’s dream house.

Jack is a screenwriter turned photographer and businessman who bought the original house about 25 years ago. After he and Rosalind, a program coordinator for hearing-impaired students, reared three children in the no-frills space, they decided to improve it. They built a redwood deck and hot tub in back, then asked an old friend, architect Glen Small, if he would consider remodeling the front of the house. Small responded with a sketch of a bold new structure superimposed on a photograph of the old. They made a snap decision to go with this startling concept. Jack laughs as he recalls: “Glen was dumbfounded. He never thought we would accept it just like that.”

When the Liebermans learned how difficult it was to shape the steel-reinforced wood frame into a series of curvilinear vaults, however, they began to have second thoughts. Construction stretched out over two years; the contractor made mistakes that had to be corrected. But, finally, the frame was finished and could be sprayed with stucco. It envelops an office-darkroom alongside the garage, an entrance stairway and a second-floor living-dining room with a terrace.

Within the living-dining room, light floods in from angled arches in the high vault above the table. The low-ceilinged sitting area is equally light but has a cozy intimacy, with its wall bench and corner hearth. And, when you walk onto the terrace, you feel as though you are floating away on a cloud. This is a house that expresses the personality of its owners, not of a creature from another planet.