A Contemporary Beach House With Modernist Allure

If there’s one constant among ocean-adjacent residences in Southern California’s Manhattan Beach, it’s their dense proximity. Lots are typically long and deep; street-fronting faces are narrow. That’s not to say that the houses are necessarily cramped. Quite the opposite. Take the 6,000-square-foot striking, contemporary dwelling by Montalba Architects unfolding over three floors. From outside, the abundance of glass, paired with a pared-down palette of plaster, Douglas fir for the roof overhang, and Western red cedar for a textural screen wall, hints at the voluminous presence. Inside, any sense of compression dissipates. That is mainly because the plan is organized around a double-height interior courtyard open to the sky. Here’s how it works.

Starting at ground, “entry is through a screened, semi-outdoor garden space,” founding principal David Montalba notes of his debut MB project built for a husband and wife who had long lived in the area. Past the entry court, the first level houses a guest room and bath, mechanical and laundry space, a large gym, and even larger garage for up to six vehicles. After all, this is California, home to automobile aficionados, in this case a Porsche collector.

A Beach Home With a Vertical Garden 

Ever the modernist, Montalba enhanced the architecture with minimal finishes and furnishings, much of the latter by contemporary maestri. Flooring throughout is white oak except when it transitions outdoors to ipe. “The idea was to dissolve the edges.” Other prominent materials are vertical-grain white oak for millwork and acid-blasted silver travertine for the fireplace. Furniture embraces a role call of designers including Finn Juhl, Rodolfo Dordoni, Edward Barber & Jay Osgerby, Roberto Barbieri, and Roberto Lazzeroni. Artists join the cast, too. Count Andy Moses, Casper Brindle, and the wife herself. She plays the pride-of-place Steinway that has been in the family for three generations.

The California Home Features Heirloom Accents and Contemporary Art

Classic and Classy: KAA Design’s SoCal Home Renovation

Grant Kirkpatrick, founding partner of KAA Design, says it best. “Warm modern” is the architect’s description of the Los Angeles-based firm’s work, most of it residential. That goes for new-builds and renovations alike with this recent project in Palos Verdes in the latter category. Dating to the 1980s, the ranch with low-slung roof came with built-in assets that, well, were not built. To wit: panoramas of the Santa Monica Bay stretching into the Pacific Ocean, a sighting of Malibu, and, to the east, Downtown Los Angeles’s cityscape. Meanwhile, the owners had lived nearby “in a classic, two-story Italianate revival residence with dark brick walls,” while raising their family,” Kirkpatrick begins. Empty nesters now, they were ready for a change.

Change meant transforming their new purchase from one with a Spanish vibe, including carved beams and a heavy plaster fireplace in the middle of the living room, to a breezy, contemporary setting with a pale monochrome palette. Aside from the views, “the house was laid out beautifully,” it’s L-configuration creating a courtyard setting around one large lawn with another at back to accommodate a new pool and terrace that were part of Michael McGowan’s elaborate landscape scheme. “Gardens everywhere,” Kirkpatrick continues. Maybe the best part? It all comes as a surprise upon entering the new anodized metal gate and descending a half-dozen concrete pavers leading to the outdoor entry gallery hugging the front lawn and culminating at the entry door.

A Contemporary Home Renovation With Ocean Views

This first introduction to Kirkpatrick’s contemporary vision, the allée now has slimmed down plaster columns where heavier originals once stood. Just inside, updating the living room entailed demolishing that obtrusive center wall. Obviously, new bracing was needed, and Kirkpatrick opted to leave the steel beams, finished with automotive paint, exposed. Building, not just razing, was a good part of the renovation. KAA Design created a ground-up indoor-outdoor dining extension running perpendicular to that al fresco entry passage and serviced by a Bulthaup kitchen. Sliders let it be conjoined with the adjacent living room. Black-painted aluminum louvers spanning the opposite face suggest a sense of summer while allowing shaded views of the lawn and gardens. Even in SoCal evenings turn chilly so Kirkpatrick installed heat lamps and a radiant-heated floor to ensure the couple’s frequent dinner guests are comfy.

A new wing with three bedrooms and a “bunk” room for the owners’ extended family constituted the other big construction move, increasing the home’s area from 6,000 to 7,500 square feet. A gap in roof lines between this new piece and the existing house proved an asset. Kirkpatrick turned the interstitial space into “the olive courtyard,” so named for its massive tree.

Inside, the pervasive creamy coloring is achieved chiefly via the seamless bond resurfacing treatment, Semco. It covers walls and floors, while tongue-and-groove ceilings with their existing beams were painted white. While the main bathroom with its limestone flooring and ash cabinetry came under Kirkpatrick’s aegis, most of the furnishings were selected by the owners.

KAA Design Creates a Home for Indoor-Outdoor Living 

The Renovated Home Features a Neutral Palette

Outdoor Space Designed With Modern Pizazz

A Quintessential Santa Barbara, California Home

In the hills of Santa Barbara County, California, this 3,000-square-foot home is all about the views. With nods to the Mid-Century Modern aesthetic, a former professional football player and his wife trusted interior designer Corinne Mathern—at the helm of her eponymous studio—to shape a peaceful refuge from which they could enjoy the sunshine all year long. 

“One of the inspirations that the homeowner came to the table with was of Aman Kyoto in Japan,” remembers Mathern, noting that the couple recently moved from Dallas, Texas. “I derive a lot of inspiration for tranquil spaces from the Aman Resorts, so I knew it would be a good fit.”

This Home in Palm Springs, California Mirrors the Surrounding Landscape

2022 Best of Year Winner for Small Country House

Spanning an arroyo backdropped by the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains, the 3,800-square-foot weekend retreat by Woods + Dangaran perches lightly above existing boulders so as not to impact the rugged terrain. It’s that terrain that determined everything about the Miesian house, from its orientation and floor plan to its exterior materials and interior finishes. The visual language mirrors the natural landscape to create a seamless indoor-outdoor experience while also providing a sense of comfort that’s completely man-made. The rooms’ muted palette—sage greens, dusty pinks, sandy browns—blends with the desert colors, as do the tones and textures of the various woods throughout, including the custom oak dining table, walnut side tables, and teak poolside lounges. Plush furnishings complete the quiet, contemplative interiors, which glory in unobstructed views of the valley below.

woods + dangaran: brett woods; joseph dangaran.

---

---

AIA California Design Awards Focus on Climate Change and Sustainability

Since its 1983 inception, the AIA California Design Awards has been a yearly event honoring the best and brightest, both projects and their architect-designers, throughout the Golden State. This year the organization cited 25 honorees across four categories. The Climate Action Award winners, considered the organization’s highest classification, met criteria regarding strict environmental performance standards in such areas as water, energy, materials, health, ecology, and resilience. Categories also included Honor Awards, Merit Awards, and the newly initiated Special Commendations. Notes the organization: “These awards recognize architects who have protected and enhanced the delicate interface between the natural and the built environment, while also stewarding our precious and limited resources.”

Three projects and their teams were awarded the Climate Action Award honor. They are: the Atherton Library by WRNS Studio; San Francisco International Airport’s Harvey B. Milk Terminal 1 by Woods Bagot, ED2 International, HKS Architects, KYS, and Kuth Ranieri Architects; and Aidlin Darling Design’s The Prow, a biophilic retreat on Expedia Group’s 40-acre campus. Aidlin Darling Design also took home three more awards. Its residential retreat in Palm Springs was granted an honor citation; Three Gables, also an IIDA Interior Design Competition winner, received a merit mention; and the Geneva Car Barn and Power Source a special commendation for transformation of a historic building as part of San Francisco’s first electric railway into a community cultural center. This special commendation category, one of seven, was design for resources. The other special commendation considerations were named for: integration, energy, change, equitable communities, discovery, and water.  

After reviewing 206 entries, the jury set out to determine “what elevates a project to an award when there is so much proficiency and talent” amongst California designers. Having their work cut out for them were: Kevin Alter, partner at Alterstudio; Oonagh Ryan, founding principal of ORA Arch; S. Claire Conroy, editor in chief Residential Design Magazine; and Neal Schwartz, founder and principal of Schwartz and Architecture.

Designers and Manufacturers Gather in Sunny Santa Barbara for Interior Design’s re:Source

It’s hard not to have a great time in a location as stunning as the Ritz-Carlton Bacara, Santa Barbara in California. Just ask the more than 100 designers and manufacturers who recently spent a a few days there, talking about the future of design at Interior Design‘s latest re:Source event. From a kick-off dinner at the hotel’s Ocean Terrace to an action-packed day of meetings—more than 1,300 during the three-day event to be exact!—every minute left a lasting impression.

But the event was far from all business all the time. For a dose of early morning inspiration, EVP of SANDOW Design Group and Design Futurist, AJ Paron, presented on the role design plays in building empathy and how built environments can improve human interactions—and wellbeing. Several rounds of morning meetings followed Paron’s talk before an afternoon of R&R. Activities ranged from a wine tasting and tour at Stolpman Vineyards to yoga on site as well as an eco hike. Day 2 closed with cocktails and dinner at the hotel’s Ocean Bluff before a final day of meetings commenced.

As re:Source came to close, attendees had an opportunity to take home an array of door prizes thanks to Interior Design‘s partners, from a custom 3form table to a Delta faucet of the winner’s choice, to the Emily stool from Nightingale Chairs, and more.

Check out event highlights in our image gallery below.

PrevNext

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

A very special thank you to our event sponsors:  Arc|Com, AGI, B+N Industries, Carl Hansen & Søn, Cascade Architecture, Chilewich, Delta, Gandia Blasco Group, Davis Furniture, Emeco, Expormim, 3form, Juniper, Kinon Surface Design, Klein, Lutron, Mohawk Group, Moooi, MPS Acoustics, Nightingale Chairs, Parador|Modular One, Pure+FreeForm, Rockfon, Sloan, TUUCI, Turf, WETSTYLE, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. Business to Business, Woodard | Craftmade, Xtreme Interior by Tamlyn

---

---

Hawk & Co. Outfits This Indoor-Outdoor Oasis Along the California Coast With Striking Interiors

The old adage—location, location, location—holds true, especially when it comes to coastal living. That’s why Summer Jensen, CEO and principal of Hawk & Co., decided to take advantage of this home’s sweeping California views when designing its interiors. The structure of the house, designed by Brandon Architects, and its simplicity of materials offered a starting point. “I always look to architectural cues to inform the space,” shares Jensen, noting that the home offers a nod to those in Napa Valley—rustic meets industrial.

Jensen, who grew up in Hawaii, looks to nature as a constant inspiration. “The natural world has given us everything we need,” she shares, stressing the importance of creating a symbiotic relationship with nature. With this in mind, she ensured the home has plenty of natural light and indoor-outdoor living spaces (the living room opens onto a patio with coastal views). Skylights, such as the one in the primary bath, further harness the power of natural light to regulate circadian rhythms and barely perceptible kitchen cabinets are veiled by a staggered batten wood-paneling exterior. “I love to make things disappear so the cabinets were easy to disguise amongst the vertical slats,” she adds. The lower level of the residence even features a brewmaster’s bar, complete with 16 microbrews on tap illuminated by a lighting sculpture above. We’ll raise a glass to that.

Aidlin Darling Design Creates a Stunning Home on a Hill in Napa Valley

IIDA Award Winner for Residences

For Aidlin Darling Design and “passionate clients with exquisite taste and humble values,” according to co-partner Joshua Aidlin, this house, perched atop 10 acres overlooking California’s Napa Valley, is a phoenix rising from the ashes. Literally. The firm’s original design was destroyed by a wildfire midway through construction. Fearless, owner and architect were determined to rebuild, making the resulting 4,000-square-foot home both resilient and an homage to its owners, specifically, the entrepreneur husband’s rural Welsh roots and the wife, who’s transitioning from her high-power law career to a passion for farming. Ergo the project’s name, Three Gables. The moniker also serves as the organizing scheme, since the residence is composed of three structures, each with said roof formation and built of board-formed concrete, standing-seam steel, and glass, with weathering steel used for landscape walls at the open-air entry procession.

Each structure is dedicated to a family member. The main house is the project’s heart, containing the industrial kitchen and living-dining expanse with an oak ceiling and access to a pair of cantilevered decks. Upstairs, an open loft is conceived as a study area for the couple’s son. Similarly, the wife’s office is an airy expanse accessed by a rooftop bridge setting up a treehouselike environment. The husband’s retreat is conveniently located over the garage.

Aidlin Darling Design: joshua aidlin; peter larsen; ryan hughes; mason hayes; cherie lau; tory wolcott green; michael pierry; sean kakigi

Johnson Favaro and Diane Lam Design Eschew the Expected for the Riverside Main Library in California

America’s postwar suburbanization has not been kind to its downtowns. But some U.S. city centers are staging a quiet comeback. In a certain Southern California city with a population of 326,000, the new Riverside Main Library by Johnson Favaro is catalyzing the turnaround of a downtown now aimed at more business, greater walkability, and increasing residents in more sustainably designed buildings.

The handsome, sculptural library, its squared mass raised two stories over a public plaza, is the first part of a 2½-acre, mixed-use development with high-rise housing and retail stores, all of which the firm master planned after winning a 2017 competition. At the turn of the last century, the City Beautiful movement used beaux arts buildings to shape dignified public spaces; now Johnson Favaro is using modernist design to create comparably grand structures to dignify the civic environment.

Just down the street, Riverside already boasted the sprawling Mission Inn, an extravaganza of Spanish revival styles built over several decades in the early 20th century. The imaginative building, a designated national historic landmark, elevated expectations for the 38,670-square-foot library. “But the city had seen enough knock-offs, so we emphasized the need for something authentic that would contribute a statement of our time and could match the stature of the buildings they love,” notes principal Steve Johnson, who met co-principal Jim Favaro when they were both students at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

The full-block site, occupied by an old police station and parking lots, had deteriorated. “There was no there there,” Johnson observes. “We sought to make a downtown neighborhood.” To integrate the library and mixed-use buildings into the adjacent business and Mission Inn areas, Johnson Favaro proposed a paseo running down the middle of the development, connecting the avenues on either side. A shaded plaza under the elevated library would serve as a general event space for a farmer’s market, book and food fairs, and festivals. The ensemble would become a destination for the entire town.

The architects maximized the library’s presence by designing the front facade as a bold, declarative block surfaced in porcelain tile printed like marble, all lifted on blocklike concrete cores housing the building systems. They wrapped the blocks with smaller structures—aluminum-and-glass boxes or red metal–clad rectangular prisms containing a friends-of-the-library bookstore, the city archives, a community room, and other complementary facilities.

The 50-foot-high, 200-foot-long facade acts like an Old West storefront behind which the building transforms into arching prows that scoop out a wide, landscaped terrace and a long balcony overlooking the future paseo. The squared, straight-edged facade, centered on a distorted, parabolic view window, is a foil and datum for the scalloped rear facade, which reads as a monumental piece of public art pedestalized on its base like an elevated Henry Moore sculpture.

A glass-enclosed elevator takes visitors from the plaza to the library entrance on the balcony. The adult reading section occupies the upper floor of the lifted volume, and the children’s and young adult section, the lower. A generous, open interior staircase connects the levels, domesticating the interior as if it were a two-story house. Traditionally, libraries are organized around a large reading room, but Johnson Favaro turned the interior inside out, like a sock, placing seating and study carrels in the double-height perimeter for viewing the spectacular San Gabriel, San Bernardino, and Box Spring mountains to the north, and Mt. Rubidoux to the west.

Because libraries no longer simply warehouse books but also act as community centers, the firm broke up the stacks into a landscape of neighborhoods devoted to different activities for various age groups. That suggested different approaches for each of the spaces to Diane Lam, principal of her eponymous studio specializing in library design, a frequent collaborator who led the interiors team. “I looked at each room individually,” Lam says. “I placed tangerine Panton chairs at the end of the visual corridor in the children’s area to complement the explosion of orange, yellow, blue, and green in that whimsical space. In the entrance ‘marketplace,’ the white shells of the lounge chairs echo the soft curves of the window and the white exterior. Furnishings that picked out architectural details made the spaces feel more complete.”

The handsomely designed stacks are generously scaled with wide corridors, some furnished. The clean detailing of the white, gently vaulted upper-floor ceiling sails over the space, unifying sections. The lower-floor ceiling is painted with rectangles of bright colors that refer to the different cultures of Riverside’s diverse constituencies. The architects and the designer have fused form and program inside and out to coalesce a sense of community and urbanize the library with activity. The programming and physical placement on the site help create a connective social and urban tissue with nearby Market Street and the Mission Inn.

“The challenge was to design a building of stature that still adheres to a public budget—to defend things like double-height spaces and porcelain tiles against value engineering,” Favaro observes. “Our goal was to accomplish something as good as those old beaux arts buildings, but in a modern vocabulary.”

To see more about the design process from planning to opening, watch the full video.

Johnson Favaro: brian davis; kevin geraghty; dexter walcott; hongjie li

linda demmers: library consultant

EPT Design: landscape consultant

Randy Walker: graphics consultant

darkhorse light­works: lighting consultant

Antonio Acoustics: acoustic consultant

Englekirk Institutional: structural engineer

interface engineer­ing: mep

sherwood design engineers: civil engineer

cima west: woodwork

yamada enterprises: furniture supplier

MGAC: construc­tion manager

icon-west: general contractor

davis: sofa, chairs, low tables (entry), black chairs (innovation)

arper: white task chairs (entry)

naughtone: GRAY lounge chairs (ENTRY, children’s)

Steelcase: white side tables (ENTRY, children’s), furniture (terrace), tables (children’s)

bloom lighting: custom ceiling fixture (children’s)

Arcadia: modular bench

TMC: gray ottomans

Bentley Mills: rug

urban accessories: tree grates (terrace)

Bega: sconces, in-ground floodlights

vitra: side chairs (chil­dren’s)

delray lighting: pendant fixtures

ocl architectural lighting: pendant fixtures (innovation)

designtex: wallcovering

Mannington Commercial: floor tile

bernhardt design: lounge chairs

momentum textiles: chair upholstery

herman miller: table

stonepeak ceramics: exterior tile

sto corp.: exterior limestone finish

kawneer: curtain wall

alpolic: exterior panels

pyrok: acoustical ceiling plaster

estey shelving: custom book­shelves

worden casegoods: custom carrels

umenwerx; philips light­ing: lighting

vista paint: paint

Movers and Shakers Convene in Palm Springs, California for Giants of Design 2022

Marking a long-awaited reunion, designers and manufacturers gathered at The Parker Palm Springs in California, for Interior Design’s three-day Giants of Design event, last held shortly before the onset of COVID-19 pandemic. Here is a look at the event kick-off, which included a cocktail party under the stars and a celebratory dinner, and the days that followed.

Night 1: Cocktails and Dinner

Day 2: Speakers and Events

PrevNext

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Day 2: Cocktails and Dinner on the Great Lawn of the Gene Autry House

PrevNext

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•