Water, Water Anywhere

Being French,” says independent film producer Stephane Sperry, “I had this cliche of a California dream house--a very clean, open Schindler-esque home with a beautiful pool and view. Like a David Hockney painting.”

But his 1962 Hollywood Hills home and pool fell short of the Hockney image. “They had undergone a number of unfortunate renovations,” says Santa Monica architect Patrick Tighe. “Tile mermaids lined the pool’s bottom, tree roots grew through the cracks in the old gunite, and the house had these stucco arches that made it look like a Mediterranean grotto.”

Tighe enlarged the pool to 20 by 40 feet, in a shape he describes as a “warped rectangle with bent ends.” Resurfacing the pool in dark gray gunite gave it more visual depth; adding a mosaic of 1-inch black glass tiles at the waterline served as a shadow for the new coping. The former concrete and terra-cotta deck was removed. In its place, large concrete pavers interspersed with dichondra abut a new redwood deck that cantilevers over the hillside.

Tighe’s biggest challenge, he says, was to make a visual and physical connection to the house, which was on a much higher grade than the pool. To solve the problem, he constructed an 8-foot-high redwood slat wall that rises from the pool’s deck to form the back of the upper patio’s new 20-foot-long banquette. “It’s as if the living room extended outside and you’re sitting on the edge overlooking the water,” Tighe says. New redwood staircases flank the wall, leading visitors down to the pool. Or they can sit on the stairs at parties and admire the city-to-ocean view.

“It’s not so much that this is a technological, tricked-out pool,” Tighe says. “It’s basic. But the composition of the pool to the house tied everything together. The pool is the most important part of the project. It wouldn’t be Sperry’s ‘California dream house’ without it.”

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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.