Modern Age
In 1994, just before the Modernism craze hit Southern California, Brooke Lauter and Randall DeLave went shopping for a house. Newly married, they were looking for a fresh start in a place where they could blend their art collections, raise a dog and have a garden. Both had grown up in the ‘50s--Lauter in Los Angeles and Palm Desert, in a low-slung ranch with a kidney-shaped pool, and DeLave in Chicago, where he passed Frank Lloyd Wright’s simple Robie House on his way to school.
Because the pair are architecture buffs (DeLave is a real estate broker and a board member of the Schindler House; Lauter does marketing and public relations for commercial real estate firms), it was inevitable that they would wind up someplace stylish. What they found was a pristine dwelling from 1948, when architect Gregory Ain and landscape architect Garrett Eckbo collaborated on the Mar Vista development known as Modernique Homes.
Well-designed yet inexpensive, homogeneous but with room for variety, the enclave was conceived for easy postwar living. Fifty-two houses with the same basic 1,060-square-foot plan were arranged in seven configurations. None had fences. Eckbo’s continuous expanse of lawn and street-side tree plantings tied the properties together, creating the look--and feeling--of a close community set in a park.
Such cohesiveness, and the friendliness it suggested, “spoke to me,” Lauter says, and so did a house whose clean, strong lines evoked memories of her childhood. DeLave was just as smitten: “The house was perfect, in turnkey shape,” he recalls. Six years earlier, it had been carefully renovated by Pasadena architect Ruben Ojeda, who converted the garage into a dining and entertaining space, updated the kitchen and enlarged other public rooms. Ojeda had even drawn plans for a master suite and bath, which DeLave and Lauter considered building.
But after furnishing the house with their shared collections of pieces from the ‘50s through the ‘90s and hanging paintings by their friends, they chose to “remodel” the garden and turn their landscape into rooms. “With all the windows and glass doors, the indoor-outdoor link was always strong,” DeLave says. “We’re either looking out from inside or we’re out puttering or entertaining.”
When they moved in, though, giant ferns obscured the front views, and the rear garden was just a lawn edged with overgrown trees. They began by removing the ferns and some unappealing brick planters. But when it came to bigger decisions such as shaping space and choosing trees, they called professionals--Basia Kenton of Santa Monica and Stephen Silva of Suburban Design in Los Angeles.
The two landscape designers had created a garden for friends of the couple, demonstrating their relaxed and site-specific aesthetic. Still, there was much discussion on how to approach a 75-by-100-foot lot charged with the spirit of Eckbo, who died in 2000 at the age of 89. “I was picturing a lot of ‘50s plants and Eckbo’s trademark geometric hardscape,” Lauter says.
The designers, on the other hand, didn’t want to get trapped in a period piece. “Eckbo himself intended his work to evolve and change,” Kenton explains. “Our challenge here was to suggest the past without repeating it.”
Given the neighborhood’s visual unity, she and Silva preserved the front lawn, but to make it interesting they planted a swath of gazanias through it to create a stylized, blooming meadow. They also laid an inviting double entry path and punctuated it with yuccas and gingko trees that soften the home’s facade. Purple iris and orange daylilies flower seasonally, while there are flowerlike succulents--graptopetalum, sedum and kalanchoe--near the front door.
In the backyard, the mood is practical yet whimsical, with tree aloes towering above the patio instead of the usual shade trees. Border plantings, Silva says, suggest Hawaii in the ‘40s, with birds of paradise, red cannas, elephant’s ears, gingers and bananas. Some of the old trees remain--tall, enclosing pittosporums, eugenias and even eucalyptus, which create maintenance headaches.
“Low maintenance is a relative term,” says DeLave, who compares tending a new garden with owning a dog. “What took me by surprise was how much both give back. You love them, you care for them, they change your life.”
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Resource Guide
Basia Kenton, Santa Monica, (310) 395-2443. Stephen Silva, Suburban Design, Los Angeles, (323) 965-5533. Ruben Ojeda, Ruben S. Ojeda Architects, Pasadena, (626) 564-2688.
