Water, Water Anywhere
This isn’t a lap pool or a swim-in-place space-saver. Its designer, landscape architect Mark Rios, of Rios Clementi Hale Studios in Los Angeles, calls it “a wet outdoor living room.” The owner, Darren Star--creator of “Sex and the City,” “Melrose Place” and “Beverly Hills 90210”--agrees: “It’s a great pool to hang out in, have a few drinks, talk, be with friends.”
In keeping with the social concept, Rios added a submerged bench along the length of the pool. A nearby split ironwood deck offers other lounging possibilities, while a bed of dichondra between the house and pool is a luxurious, cool place for the feet on a hot day--”like a squishy carpet,” Rios says. “And it’s amazingly resilient.”
Originally, a kidney-shaped pool with a flagstone deck stood outside the ‘60s modern Hollywood Hills home. A 12-foot-tall hedge blocked the hillside view and gave the small yard a claustrophobic feeling. Rios designed a new 14-by-35-foot rectangular-shaped pool farther from the house. A raised spa at one end features a pair of spillways: one empties into the pool, the other into a sunken rock garden that appears to extend under the glass-sided living room. Thirteen caissons driven 50 feet into bedrock support the new pool and deck, which extends the hillside backyard by 12 feet. “It’s a great way to make a small yard larger,” Rios says.
He also added a pool room. Huge steel-and-glass doors slide out on tracks that extend beyond the house to open the room to the outside. The pool’s wood deck reaches into the space, set flush with the white terrazzo floor, blurring the lines between inside and out. Fast-growing timber bamboo is planted around the perimeter of the property for privacy and its soft rustlings in a gentle wind.
Star says he loves coming home after a long hot day to sit in the water and gaze at the stars: “It’s so peaceful here in the canyon. I always feel like I’m on vacation.”
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RESOURCE GUIDE
William Hefner Architecture & Interiors, Los Angeles, (323) 931-1365; John Feldman, KAA Design Group, Los Angeles, (310) 821-1400; Dan Garness, Garness Architecture + Landscape, Los Angeles, (310) 390-2466; Rios Clementi Hale Studios, Los Angeles, (323) 634-9220; Tighe Architecture, Santa Monica, (310) 450-8823; Hagy Belzberg, Santa Monica, (310) 453-9611; George Wittman, Seattle, (206) 275-2259; Glen Irani Architects, Venice, (310) 305-8840; Todd Williamson and James Magni, Magni Design, Los Angeles, (323) 866-0600; Jay Griffith, Venice, (310) 392-5558.