Back to the Drawing Board

When Parisian architect and urban designer Jean-Maurice Moulene moved to Los Angeles in 1996 with his wife and two young children, his first lesson in cultural nuances was the relaxed attitude his neighbors had to entertaining. “People here are very attached to their homes and are very comfortable opening them up to total strangers,” says Moulene. The family initially made the move when Moulene’s American wife, Kate, became the West Coast bureau chief for InStyle magazine. Moulene’s work in architecture and his beaux-arts training led him to marketing and consulting work for the studios as well as for the Santa Monica architectural firm Marmol and Radziner. It was while preparing presentation materials that he realized that “although computers are tremendous tools for drawing, they have no sensibility for nuanced renderings.”

So Moulene took his love of buildings and landscape design and married them with his childhood passion for drawing and handling raw materials. What has emerged are pen-and-ink or watercolor renderings of people’s homes. These lyrical and lovingly created works cover the gamut of L.A.s architectural styles--the Hansel and Gretel-style “Witch’s House” in Beverly Hills, a recent Hagy Belzberg design, a traditional Paul Williams estate and an elegant Spanish Colonial Revival mansion. Paramount in his drawings is the delicate relationship between the landscape and the architecture. Foliage is sometimes just an outline, giving a hint of the presence of trees without obscuring the house. No detail escapes his attention. When Moulene draws a room, he adds personal touches, whether it’s a favorite teddy bear or the contents of the fridge.

Moulene typically spends three or four days on-site, filling notebooks with room dimensions and marking every tiny detail. The process often leads him to greater insight into an architect’s original intent. One such discovery was the 1895 Charles F. Lummis house in Highland Park, now home to the Historic Society of Southern California. “I was stunned by how modern it was for its time,” says Moulene, who was so fascinated with Lummis’ story and the house that he offered to do renderings for the society. The house, which he grew to admire as he became familiar with its meticulous details, had all the qualities he seeks. “It’s authentic, indigenous and very respectful of its site,” he says.

His own Hollywood Hills house, a Spanish Colonial built in 1931 by Allen Siple for cinematographer Stanley Cortez, was the first drawing Moulene did in California. He created it as a Christmas card keepsake for his children. That led to requests from friends for gifts. Commissions soon followed, and by January 2000 he had established his company, Beaux-Arts. Hollywood’s A-list, such as Steve and Jamie Tisch and Mike and Irena Medavoy, as well as some of the city’s grandest dames, have had their mansions documented. Tim Lefevre, a third-generation California developer, brought him drawings of his grandfather’s first building projects from the 1920s. One of the major film studios has just commissioned renderings of a movie set as a gift for the film’s talent.

Moulene responds to the small scale too. A woman in San Francisco sent photographs of her apartment and Moulene sent back a triptych that included her apartment plan, the building’s facade and her bay view.

Moulene’s fertile imagination sometimes brings his clients an unexpected bonus. He updated blueprints of one old house. He drew up plans for a multipurpose diaper bag for a new mother. He also does a line of stationery and note cards, and he is considering creating plates and towels with pictures of houses instead of monogrammed initials.

And he is fascinated by the diversity of Los Angeles. “I love architectures,” he says, stressing the plural. “I admire any style as long as it’s authentic, not fake, especially the Spanish style, the bungalows of Cliff May and the desert Modernism of Albert Frey.” It doesn’t matter whether he is working on the blueprints or simply drawing a picture. “It’s all about respect for old houses and identity of place,” he says.