The House Of Tomorrow

Respectful of the Hollywood Hills environment, Hagy Belzberg built himself a home for years to come

Edie Cohen -- Interior Design, 11/1/2007 12:00:00 AM

Hagy Belzberg got lucky. He was firmly entrenched in the single life seven years ago, when he purchased a ridgeline Hollywood Hills property and began to contemplate designing the proverbial statement piece that all architects dream of. Cut to last July. By the time that he and a team from Belzberg Architects completed the family-size house, he was married with a son and stepdaughter. Even now, he expresses surprise at his personal change of fortune.

As for the form of the 5,000-square-foot one-story residence, luck had nothing to do with it. Ditto for the AIA/LA Next Honor Award that Belzberg won for the project. "It's about treading lightly on the land," he says. Huh? That 122-foot-long volume looks about as light-footed as a herd of bulldozers, all visible from the road. So is the guesthouse, which echoes the language of the main house while adding 1,000 square feet to the compound.

"The shapes respond to the microenvironment," the architect explains—that's a 1½-acre property with most of it on a steep slope downhill. "A house like this would fail miserably at the beach." Site-specific concerns are a linchpin for Belzberg's practice overall, as are the project's other guiding principles: budget concerns and eco-sensitivity.

"Everything was set up to capture the southwest prevailing winds from the ocean," he continues. At just 22 feet wide, the house opens up completely at both ends via sliding glass doors in standard aluminum storefront frames. "The air sails right through," he says. Breezes or not, though, it gets hot in the Hollywood Hills. To play it smart, he built in heat deflectors. His most dramatic move comes due south, where a concrete flap thrusts 14 feet upward, totally blocking the entry from the sun. On the south elevation, the wide glass wall is fronted by massive horizontal slats of recycled wood composite, no paint or stain needed.

High drama on the exterior gives way to reined-in simplicity inside. In fact, the interiors may well confer 21st-century Case Study status on this project—they're that clean, that minimal. One open living area welcomes family sprawling. Essentially an indoor-outdoor room, it has two sets of huge glass pivot doors facing each other. Flooring is concrete, a polished version of the adjacent concrete pool surround. Reflected in the glossy floor, a spun-steel fire orb descends from the ceiling in a Sleeper kind of way.

The kitchen, outfitted in walnut and marble, serves as the pivot point between the main volume of the house and the perpendicular wing that contains four bedrooms, plus the master suite. Further demarcating the shift to the private zone, flooring transitions from concrete to white epoxy terrazzo. The bedroom corridor presents a chiaroscuro composition with sunshine streaming in through the slats in front of the glass wall—art of a more literal nature, primarily by Los Angeles painters, hangs on the wall opposite.

Of course, we're all aware of L.A.'s major art form. "I grew up here, so I love movies," Belzberg says. He turned his garage roof into an outdoor theater by adding gravel, grass, and a cherry-colored sectional sofa. The sofa is positioned to face the guesthouse's gray plaster end wall, where movies appear courtesy of a $1,200 projector simply mounted on the header of the garage. No expensive high-tech approach here.

Eco-consciousness in the construction phase meant purchasing materials close by. Belzberg stayed local for furniture, too, returning to one of his favorite haunts on Venice's hip Abbot Kinney Boulevard. In her hybrid gallery-shop, Elizabeth Paige Smith filled the bill with almost everything the architect needed: a chartreuse leather-covered sofa, an electric-blue acrylic Parsons table, a creamy resin-surfaced dining table, reminding Belzberg of his cherished surfboards. Oh, and denim-covered seating—this is L.A.

Looking ahead, Belzberg intends to up his green points with photovoltaic cells. He'll install them on the roof, and his solar water-heating system, already framed and plumbed, will be ready to go. And if he gazes deeper into his crystal ball? No doubt he sees a future full of daring design decisions.

Previous spread: Soaring 14 feet high to block the sun, a concrete plane helps control heat inside the Los Angeles home of Belzberg Architects's Hagy Belzberg.

Opposite bottom: The concrete plane also folds down to shade the entry, its storefront system framed in aluminum.

Top: A guesthouse, with sleeping loft above and studio below, shares the 1½-acre property. Bottom: Four doors, 10 feet high by 6 feet wide, open up the living area, where Elizabeth Paige Smith's chaise faces Doug Garofalo's spun-steel fireplace. Flooring is polished concrete.

Top: A hallway's Parsons table belongs to Smith's series of hollow acrylic furniture filled with pigment powder. Above hangs an oil on canvas by Fumiko Amano. Bottom: The stairway descends to the two-car garage, built into the hillside.

Opposite top: A window of low-iron glass provides garden views to the entry. Opposite bottom, from left: Cotton-upholstered plywood chairs surround the resin-topped table in the dining area, which shares its epoxy terrazzo flooring with the kitchen. The wing's 65-foot-long corridor leads to five bedrooms, including the master suite.

Previous spread, left, from top: Steel trusses support the guesthouse's overhang. The garage door of steel-framed plastic laminate opens to a courtyard paved with 10-foot-square concrete slabs. A screen of Extira, a treated wood composite, fronts the bedroom wing's double-glazed wall. The downhill retaining wall is concrete. Previous spread, right: Casablanca's Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman demonstrate how the guesthouse's plaster end wall can serve as a movie screen, thanks to a projector mounted on the header of the garage.

Top: Belzberg turned the garage roof into a theater with crushed granite, native wild grass, and Hans Hopfer's sectional. Bottom left: Smith's acrylic boxes line up beside the master bathroom's Matteo Thun tub. Bottom right: Smith's chaise longue reclines near the 65-foot pool.

PROJECT MANAGER: BILL BOWEN. PROJECT TEAM: CARINA BIEN-WILLNER; MANISH DESAI; BROCK DESMIT; ERIN MCCOOK; DAN RENTSCH; ERIC STIMMEL; ERIC SOLLOM; RYAN THOMAS. FIREPLACE (LIVING AREA): FIREORB. REFRIGERATOR (KITCHEN): SUB-ZERO. COFFEEMAKER: MIELE. OVEN, MICROWAVE: VIKING. SOFA (EXTERIOR): ROCHE-BOBOIS; KENZO (FABRIC). TUB (BATHROOM): HASTINGS TILE & BATH COLLECTION. SINK FITTINGS: DORNBRACHT. FURNISHINGS: ELIZABETH PAIGE SMITH. RECESSED CEILING FIXTURES: ELCO LIGHTING. SCREEN MATERIAL: CMI. STOREFRONT SYSTEM: ROMANOSKI GLASS. STRUCTURAL ENGINEER: DANIEL J. ECHETO STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING & DESIGN. LANDSCAPING CONSULTANT: BILL NICHOLAS.