It’s common for clients to compile idea books stuffed with magazine spreads and paint samples for their design teams. But the London-based clients who purchased a hillside property in La Jolla for a vacation home suggested another barometer for their tastes.
“They wanted us to visit this trendy biker-surfer bar and store,” says designer Anita Dawson. The Venice shop, Deus Ex Machina, bills itself as an “emporium of Postmodern activities,” which translates into an idiosyncratic motorcycle and surf shop selling actual bikes and boards as well as sporty apparel—and paninis and coffee. “It’s hip, very California and edgy,” Dawson says of the store. So, the clients challenged Dawson and architect Mark A Silva to couple that West Coast-cool vibe with a healthy measure of London sophistication.
None of this, of course, was congruent with the 1960s ranch house that occupied the site. The clients got a deal because the soil of Mount Soledad on which it was built had terrible bearing value, explains Silva, resulting in shifting and cracking of the existing home’s foundation. The architect remedied the foundation conundrum by building his new modernist stone-and-wood design on 32 caissons submerged into the bedrock. The east-facing front façade looks clean and low-key but offers no hint of its size or the drama just beyond the redwood-and-corten steel front door. The door opens directly into the home’s great room. On its south side is a stacked-stone wall, and on the north side is a white wall with a floating staircase—both extend to the white-oak ceiling, and all three, Silva reports, “splay out at 9 degrees, spreading toward the ocean view.”
Read the rest of the article at Luxe.com here:
https://www.luxesource.com/features/article/london-sophistication-meets-la-jolla-in-this-ultra
