From the Ground Up

DOCUMENTARY PRODUCER LAUREN LEXTON AND HER HUSBAND, KEVIN MACCARTHY, A TELEVISION SHOW director, were living in a charming 600-square-foot bungalow near Elysian Park but they desperately needed more space. Rising home costs in neighboring Silver Lake were not only frustrating but prohibitive, so the couple considered a friend’s suggestion to build their own home. At first they were skeptical, but when Lexton happened upon an intriguing property in a real estate brochure, they decided to take a closer look. “By the time we climbed to the top of the hillside lot and turned to see the city at our feet, we were pretty well hooked,” Lexton says. It was in the Moreno Highlands section of Silver Lake-a neighborhood named after Antonio Moreno, the Latin lover of the silent movie era who invested in the area. “The lot was a good price,” MacCarthy says, “but we should have asked ourselves why no one had built on it before.” After initial research showed the hillside had a sandstone foundation, the couple breathed a sigh of relief. It was short-lived. “We discovered that whether you’re on solid rock or landfill, you still have to sink caissons into underlying bedrock and build a retaining wall to hold up the hillside.” A 58-by-14-foot concrete wall now stands behind the home, which is supported by a dozen caissons sunk 26 feet into bedrock. ‘More than a third of our costs were spent just getting out of the ground,” MacCarthy says. To design the house on this complicated site, the couple called in Culver City architect Lorcan O’Herlihy, known for his “architecture of removal” and refined, crafted houses. “I have a reductive approach to architecture,” O’Herlihy says. “I like to pare down to very simple forms and focus on materiality and light.”

He designed a two-story home with a horizontal first floor that encompasses an open-plan living room, kitchen, dining room and office, with a small guest room and second office tucked behind the kitchen. The vertical second story comprises the master bedroom suite. “We raised the house toward the top of the hill, which allowed for privacy as well as optimizing the views,” O’Herlihy explains. “It’s a longer walk up to the front door, but the return is tenfold.” For visual interest and to keep costs down, the architect wrapped the 2,000-square-foot house with inexpensive pine slats “to conceptually link the house to the site where pine trees grow.” O’Herlihy sprayed waterproofing on the plywood walls, then applied a skin of slats set an inch and a half out from the walls to allow air to circulate and the house to breathe. Each of the panels was fabricated on the ground, then tilted up and screwed into the building. “If one of the pine slats needs to be replaced in the future, it can be repaired per panel as needed.” For the home’s interior, the architect used inexpensive materials in creative ways. Varnished kitchen cabinets made of MDF-a composite material that is normally painted-keep company with simple concrete counter tops. A polyester fabric with a metallic backing in a shimmering grayish-blue steel acts as a soft wall that separates MacCarthy’s home office from the open living area. A simple acrylic-and-wood panel screen on a track allows for flexiblity of space between the guest bedroom and Lexton’s office.

“When no one is in the guest room the panel slides open up to make my office seem larger,” she says. Bamboo floors run throughout the house, offering warmth and an interesting alternative to traditional hardwood floors. As for color, “it’s a wood house so it’s basically brown and white,” MacCarthy says. Working with interior designer Charlene Mortale, the couple selected small jolts of color to enliven the space. An orange wall the color of an Herms box is the backdrop for their bed, while a blue storage area adjacent to MacCarthy’s office was inspired by the cool blue of his neighbor’s ’63 Thunderbird, which is frequently parked in front of the house. The couple are happy they built their own home, but MacCarthy admits: “It requires a bit of lunacy to start a house from scratch. But I wouldn’t love any house as much as the one we’ve built for ourselves. It all worked out, thank God, and that’s a very satisfying feeling.”