(uptempo music)
- We are here in Venice, California.
In the house that I designed for my family.
The way I started the design, it was very much
about how does the indoor space connect
very strongly or graciously with the outdoor space.
- [Nancy] We had been looking for a lot in Venice
for a while and we loved the fact
that there were three mature trees.
Two beautiful Aleppo pines and a Canary Island palm tree
and we wanted to create a house that would preserve
the trees because they were here first.
- The house is very carefully composed
as a series of enclosed spaces,
open outdoor spaces, then enclosed spaces.
But the reality is that the courtyards
are actually designed around those trees.
There's the entrance court where you walk in
through the courtyard which also has the pool in it.
Then we have the tree court which has this marvelous
85 year old Aleppo pine tree, then there's the family court.
The family court connects to the kitchen,
dining, living area.
This courtyard is symbolic of the big ideas
of the house design, which is that this is an outdoor
room that is very detailed, very well defined,
and it is an extension of the indoor spaces
and that courtyard extends to the back building
which includes a guesthouse and a garage
slash gallery slash mancave space.
I started to truly understand the power
or potential of courtyard housing
when I lived in Africa, I was in the Peace Corp
in Marrakech, Morocco in the early 70s.
Lived in a courtyard house right in the heart of the medina,
the ancient city of Marrakech.
You become connected to nature, you can create
a compound, your own urban oasis,
sustainable, low impact living.
So for example, there is an exoskeleton
pulled to the outside of the house
on the southwest facade, and it is a large, steel
armature for roll down shades and roll horizontal shades
that then reduce the impact of the sunlight
coming in, using less energy.
I wanted to use materials that would be
as sustainable as possible.
The main materials on the outside of the house
are weathering steel, so it's steel
that will rust and then stop rusting.
There's glass of course.
You'll see a material which looks like wood
but it's actually recycled sawdust and plastic.
There's concrete block which is a special blend
of block that I developed with the concrete block company.
It's made out of white cement and pumice
and it's bead blasted in the factory
so it's very textural.
There's no paint, the white walls that you see
or white ceilings are actually burnished
plaster with wax over it.
I'm very interested in seeing the hand of the craftsmen.
Notice this writing, right?
It says 'Shrameck', that's the name of the contractor,
Mark Shramek.
No paint.
This plaster that you see the trowel mark
of the craftsmen and it's waxed.
We as architects, what we want to do is we
want to expose what we do to a broader audience.
Because how many people are going to come to this house?
Houzz is a way of reaching out to many many many people,
and with Houzz this house will become known to other people
and the philosophy will get to be understood.
(uptempo piano music)
I wanted to look at how technologically
we could actually make the barriers
between indoors and out disappear,
namely glass, basically sliding doors
or pivoting doors that can slide completely out of the way.
It's obviously a fluid, open, loft-like space.
I also love the flexibility of the space.
This can be a very cozy environment
on a cold night, a fire burning
or it can have all the glass doors slid completely open
and morph into an open air indoor, outdoor pavilion.
So we'll have up to a hundred people sometimes.
- Steven's experience of the space
is the form, the lines, the proportions.
- So I designed this table and the benches
and I like it because it's really simple
and it's like a floating plane that doesn't have chairs.
- When I see a chair, my response is
'Is this comfortable, do I want to sit here.'
But he's looking at it.
- I designed these benches just so you
would experience this table and not have
other things like the back of a chair.
- I would say my major contribution has been
to make it comfortable, big cushy chairs
and throws and pillows.
- These chairs are just so much fun because they swivel.
- Now I can't get him out of them, but it really
did take five years to persuade him of them.
- Ah, that's fun.
(laughs)
- [Nancy] The art collection is eclectic.
- [Steven] Often the artists are friends of ours.
- [Nancy] Steven has a lot of things from Africa.
- [Steven] This is an African stargazing bed.
It's carved out of one log, there's no joinery.
- [Nancy] It's about our life experience,
it's not about this would look good on the wall.
- Clearly the time I spent in Africa was very formative.
In the late 80s I did a project in Tokyo
and had four wonderful trips to Japan.
One of the philosophical mantras that I've developed
over several decades of design and thinking and travel,
is called multicultural modernism.
This house embodies it.
This stair was influenced by Japanese architecture.
It's a tansu stair which combines stairway
and storage and display.
- On the mezzanine level we have a couple of small bedrooms
we call them pods and they are like small guestrooms.
- [Steven] They're flexible spaces
and there are glass sliding windows but they're
really more like shoji screens.
So for example, we come up the tansu stair
and then we slice across the space on this bridge.
It's multicultural and yet it embraces modernism.
What I like about this bridge is it's a new way
to explore the space but you have to believe in technology.
We're being held up by these cables
walking on glass, so I love that juxtaposition,
that counterpoint of something almost ancient
and something maybe almost futuristic.
(midtempo piano music)
- This place is like a crucible for Steven's ideas.
With himself as client, he could do whatever he wanted to.
- [Steven] This house is very personal to me,
it's I guess in some ways a summation
of many things I've been thinking about.
I must say though that probably the most important
thing about the house is that it's
been an amazingly wonderful place to live.
To have our family participate in what it is,
it's very special.