STYLE : ARCHITECTURE : Welcome to the Casbah
High in the hills of Berkeley is an Arabian Nights fantasy that might have flown in from a studio backlot on a magic carpet. In fact, it is a recent remodel by Ace Architects of a sober 1940s house owned by two doctors.
Ace partners Lucia Howard and David Weingarten have spent the last 15 years raising eyebrows in the Bay Area with their inventive work: An Italian deli evokes a Roman temple, a mortgage company is laid out like a Monopoly board and a travel agency features a gangplank and airplane wing inside and a turquoise dome on top. The architects dream up their fantasies on the Oakland waterfront in the belly of a scaly green sea-monster-like office that they built and named “Leviathan.” Like well-known architect Charles Moore, Weingarten’s uncle, the architects whistle as they work.
“Xanadu” is the name they gave their clients’ pleasure dome. But the whimsy of trefoil arches, patterned tiles and columns topped with Moorish dragons is balanced by common-sense planning. The remodel, inspired by the husband’s childhood memories of Saturday-matinee swashbucklers, now responds to the varied needs of a working couple and their three growing children. The architects doubled the living space, added a lofty entrance hall, family room and roof deck, plus two additional bedrooms. Ace has always turned dross into gold: The corkscrew columns are sewer pipes, the galvanized sheet-metal domes are normally used for silos and lengths of steel fabricated as structural supports serve as guardrails.
Plywood chairs, cushioned divans and the octagonal etched-glass table in the living room are set off by Weingarten’s stylized mural of the house within one of the stucco arcades. Colors are as romantic as the shapes. Ace found the “Persian Miniature” palette in a 1930s handbook and used it throughout: Ali Baba blue, bisque persimmon, beryl green and camellia red. It’s a tribute to the liberal spirit of Berkeley that this folly has quickly become a well-loved local landmark.
