A moody palette and exaggerated use of materials create drama in the self-designed clifftop home of two Los Angeles architects. Innovative artworks inspired by music complete the look.

“No homes. Just trees, landscape and wildlife with hundreds of bird species, including hummingbirds and hawks that guard over the ridge” is how architect Chris McCullough describes the view from the “back yard” of the home he shares with partner and architect Peggy Hsu. When asked what the primary inspiration for their striking new build was, the Los Angeles couple are quick to answer: the plot of land itself. “Our property frames an uninterrupted view of Fossil Ridge Park, a protected parkland that can never be developed.” Perched hillside above Sherman Oaks on the northern side of the Santa Monica Mountains, the palaeontological park is bordered by a community that dates back to the 1960s. “Many of the homes along the ridge were developed in the early ’60s, when the 405 freeway was first built,” explain the principal architects of Hsu McCullough. “They’re mostly Mid-century Modern, ranch-style, single-storey homes.”

It was in an equally dated house on their newly purchased plot that the couple took the time to fine-tune the design of what was to become their future home. “We lived in the former house on the property for more than two years, mapping the natural light and wind movement throughout the year and tweaking our design,” explains Peggy.

The Modernist vernacular that characterises their neighbourhood (low-slung rectilinear structures with walls of glass and seamless indoor-outdoor flow) served as inspiration. “We are students and fans of Los Angeles’s rich residential history,” Peggy says, pointing out the living-room fireplace, all that remains of the former structure and a nod to a bygone architectural era. “But we also drew influence from modern Brazilian homes, as well as a visit to Mexico City during early construction.” The latter provided material inspiration for the couple’s considered continuation of unusual surfaces from the outdoors in. “Because the home emerges from the ridge, there was a conscious effort to select darker earth tones for the exterior materials,” says Chris. “We wanted several of these to cross thresholds.”

One such material is an irregular-shaped slate flagstone, used as flooring on the entertainment level. Alongside it, equally interesting surfaces are used to similarly moody effect. A charcoal stucco exterior wall treatment is repeated on selected interior walls and ceilings, and a seeded stucco treatment extends into the entrance and dining area. “The reclaimed, painted wood cladding that wraps the street-side facade and continues into the entrance also folds into the kitchen, hiding the pantry,” explains Chris.

The darkness of the material palette is intentional;the couple view it as an exploration of architectural chiaroscuro. “Darker interiors can have a cosiness in a location such as Los Angeles, where available natural light is sometimes just too intense, overexposing material colours,” says Peggy.

If texture and colour were key to the design of the architects’ home, so too was music. “We collect and listen to a wide range of music, and have nearly 10 000 records,” explains Chris. “Our kitchen is heavily used, and when we cook, we play records. So, a cosy kitchen with a seamless flow into living spaces – all with great acoustics and views of the ridge – was important to us.” The couple’s passion for music is unmissable. A steel-and-black-walnut shelving system that’s home to their record collection is a feature of the living room, while numerous artworks created by Chris hang on the home’s walls. Inspired by the music he listens to, these were assembled from obsolete media formats, and include a pixellated portrait of The Notorious B.I.G in the dining space that was created from compact discs.

Furniture, too, offsets the dark interior. The architects paired the moody material palette with bold pieces. “We wanted to contrast sharp interior angles with bulbous, curvy and colourful furniture,” says Peggy. “The first piece we purchased was the pink sofa; we also gathered and commissioned pieces, or made them ourselves,” she adds, referencing a log bench and brass dining table the couple designed. The duo’s creativity is visibly multifaceted, and their home is its perfect showcase. “We hope that our house inspires future clients to embrace the use of materials in an equally creative manner.”

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WORDS Annette Klinger PRODUCTION Mark Serra PHOTOS Paris Brummer

“You know, I counted every single brick in this house,” says architect Adèle Naudé Santos, smiling, as she stands looking around the main bedroom of the first house she ever designed – a solid Modernist four-bedroomer completed in 1967 and situated in a narrow, leafy avenue in Cape Town’s Kenilworth.

She may not actually be joking. Their modular layout, visible through the unplastered whitewashed walls, means you could conceivably measure the dimensions of the house brick by brick. US-based Adèle may now be a world-renowned architect, but back then she was just starting her career, and this was her first-ever build. And as if the stakes weren’t high enough, the client was her father, the late architect Hugo Naudé.

“My father didn’t want me to become an architect because he didn’t believe it was a woman’s profession,” says Adèle. “When I graduated top of my class in my third year at UCT, he told me it was time to move on – so I went to London to complete my degree at the Architectural Association.”

Conspicuously different from its neighbouring properties, the house’s facade is hidden from street view. “The house was designed to be experienced from the inside outwards,” says Adèle. “My parents wanted a lot of privacy, so they asked for the bedrooms to feel like their own houses within the house. Each has its own private garden, and doesn’t look out onto any other part of the house.”

Standing next to Adèle – who had flown into Cape Town just the day before from the US – is the home’s new owner, Italian-British sculptor Marco Chiandetti. When Marco first saw the inside of the house three years earlier, the self-admitted Mid-century Modern fanboy realised he was being presented with a rare real-estate opportunity (25 years of accumulated clutter and ill-advised building extensions by the previous owners notwithstanding). “Everything had been painted with a white gloss paint, and there was carpeting everywhere,” he recalls. “But it was just one of those situations where I was like, wow, a property of this calibre doesn’t come on the market very often. And so I bent over backwards to get it.”

Marco’s artistic sensibility and knowledge of Modernist design meant that he had a reasonably accurate instinct about what needed to be done to restore the house back to its original glory – but there were a few gaps. “Through the joys of the internet, I found out that Adèle lived in Boston, where she was the dean of architecture at MIT.” Marco reached out to Adèle, and she sent him scans of the original blueprints and a collection of personal photographs of the home’s interior, taken when her parents resided there. Marco describes the restoration process as a systematic stripping back of layers until the house revealed itself as it was intended to be. “It was a bit like an archaeological excavation, really,” he says. He did the lion’s share of the work himself, most of it during the pandemic.

The only real renovation that took place was the modernisation of the kitchen and bathrooms, to which Marco introduced bespoke cupboards and cabinetry in vivid shades of teal, green, orange and yellow that landed it firmly in the mid-century. “I tried not to introduce materials that you wouldn’t have found in the 1960s, but I didn’t want the house to become a museum, either,” he says. “I tried to gauge the tone of the era while still giving it the flavour that it needed.”

And so the day finally came for Marco to give Adèle the grand tour. In every room, there was one feature or another that she’d pause at to reminisce: the little corner window her father liked to look out of when he was seated in his favourite chair; the skylights that were specially incorporated to illuminate Hugo’s collection of paintings by his uncle, the famous Impressionist also called Hugo Naudé; and, yes, the brickwork that she had so fastidiously overseen during the build that launched her career.

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Portuguese-based architecture studio BOX arquitectos transformed this narrow plot in the centre of Ponta Delgada into a modernist micro-house.

Tucked neatly between the traditional terraced homes in the centre of Portugal’s Ponta Delgada, the crisp white façade of Moinho de Vento – the Windmill House – may look at one with its surroundings, but it’s what lies behind the front door that really sets this tiny home apart from its neighbours.

Built on a skinny 4.20sqm-wide infill, BOX arquitectos wanted to play with volume, depth and light to help create a sense of space within the confines of such a small plot. They divided Moinho de Vento into two sections with a central garden courtyard acting as the connecting element between them.

In the main home, the kitchen and living areas take up the entire ground floor and open directly onto the garden to give the space depth and natural light. “The only social space of the house gains dimension in its depth when it finds the garden at the end of the space,” says BOX arquitectos.

While the ground floor of the main home uses depth to create a sense of space, the top floor uses volume. “The necessity to simulate a greater spatial amplitude is made possible by the skylights in the pitched roof, which receives the light and spreads it throughout the interior spaces, working as a ” diaphragm”, increasing the “vertical perspective”, explains BOX arquitectos.

The sloping ceiling and skylights illuminate the eastern bedroom and bathroom, while the west-facing second bedroom looks out onto the street through the building’s only front-facing window. | boxarquitectos.com

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Local designer, artist and illustrator Xee Summer (Xia Carstens) has added Modernist digital paintings to her extensive creative portfolio. We chat with her about the process.

You have such a versatile style from logo design to detailed illustration, how did you start the Modernist house collection?

I have been obsessively saving pics of my dream home for the last couple of years so I have so many beautiful images and references of homes, architecture and furniture. Most of my series aren’t really planned. It’s when I sit and take time to draw for myself between work, at night and in the early hours of the morning when I draw. I did one, then another, then another and so on. Quite like my Cape Town series. I guess this shows a part of me and my brain too. I get bored easily and explore new styles and new things the whole time. Playtime.

Do you have a particular favourite?

Probably the first pink one I did 

What is the medium used for these?

I draw them on my iPad and I use a whole variety of brushes. Pencils, charcoals, watercolour, oil paint. It’s a whole fun vibe where I haven’t limited myself at all. I put some music on and just have fun. I allow each one to turn out how it does, I don’t go in with an idea of what style I want it to be.

What do you love about this style of architecture?

It’s classic. Timeless. It will still look just as sick in 30 or 50 years from now. Super classic and tasteful.

Are these imaginary spaces or have you used references?

There are definitely reference images.

How do you go about choosing a colour palette?

I choose colours from the reference pics and then I see which colours work well together and try use those complimentary colours predominantly.

What do you think you’ll get up to next?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Where can people get hold of your work?

I mainly use Instagram and I have a website where you can buy prints. I am also always available to do commissions. 

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An architect’s decision to restore rather than renovate her 60-year-young modernist marvel of a home is a timely reminder of the movement’s roots – and a valuable lesson in the power of longevity.

When architect Lisa Rorich and her partner, Garth Robinson, bought their iconic home on Durban’s Berea four years ago, it was the realisation of a long-held dream. “I’d put the word out that we were looking for a mid-century modern home,” says Lisa, who felt they had outgrown the Victorian semi-detached they’d lived in for years. Now, standing in the spectacular courtyard of her Hans Hallen-designed home, she recalls the old adage, “be careful what you wish for”. “It’s powerful stuff, as not long afterwards I got a call from interior architect Mario Rodrigues, who had heard this house was on the market.”

By a stroke of serendipity, Lisa realised that she not only knew the owners but had been into the house – and had loved it. “It was the childhood home of architect Janina Masojada, in whose architectural practice I’d worked, and at whose invitation I had attended a party at the house a few years ago,” she says. “I remember walking into the courtyard and being totally blown away. The entire house is cantilevered off a slab and a staircase – a feat of engineering no less impressive now that I am its owner.”

READ MORE: Bantry Bay Home

The house was commissioned in 1960 by original owner Shirley Masojada, a Mauritian remedial educationalist. Her husband Milek was the structural engineer on the project, and their good friend Hans Hallen, the architect. “They were all mates and hung out together, so it was really more of a collaboration between engineer and architect than any formal arrangement,” recalls Janina, Shirley and Milek’s daughter – herself a successful architect, whose practice won the design and build of South Africa’s Constitutional Court. “But my mother was most definitely the client!”

Fast-forward to 2016, and Lisa and Garth bought what was very much a well-loved, lived-in family home. Situated high up on the Berea on a 1 000m2 narrow plot, the house is laid out over two floors in a T-shape, with the living areas running lengthways down the plot, while the upstairs bedrooms form the stem of the T. This section is supported at the protruding end by a reinforced concrete wall, embellished with a contemporary relief-moulded sculpture that Lisa likes to call “the fossil”. The house was built in two stages, with the living areas and tiny kitchen on the lower level, while the three bedrooms on the upper level were cantilevered off a slab-like support of relief finish to provide a veranda and link to the staircase.

READ MORE: Mid-century-inspired Plettenberg Bay Home

“The first phase was built at the time of Durban’s Ocean Terminal, a project on which my father was the chief designer,” explains Janina. “And so the house was very much a laboratory for the structural systems and integrated artworks that he was working on then, and much inspired by the Ocean Terminal. Of course, he and Hans were also influenced by trips they took to international expos during that emerging modernist period.”

A second phase of the house became necessary in the late ’60s as the Masojada family grew – they had five children – and an L-shaped wing was added to the courtyard at the back. “There is something in this modernist design that, combined with the authenticity of the materials used and the extreme level of detail found here, surpasses anything I’ve encountered to date,” says Lisa, who runs her own architectural practice. But for her, the most extraordinary feature of the house is the constant play of light throughout the day. “There are several textures of glass in the windows that look out to the courtyard, and there is an exact rhythm to the way the light falls here during the course of the day,” she says. “It is the best quality of this house – and what I find is most lacking in architecture today.” It’s clear she feels a responsibility to honour the original principles of the design while modernising the home to suit her and Garth’s needs.

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This restaurant and bar space in Johannesburg caught our eye. Take a look at La Boqueria’s Bar in Parktown North.

The Hispanic street market-style dishes at this Parktown North restaurant are reason enough to visit, but before you start eating, have a seat at the bar and take in the eclectic decor in front of you. Apart from the wonderfully warm lighting (this place really is a masterclass on how to light a restaurant), you’re looking at a bar made of repurposed Post Office box doors topped with a huge slab of white marble.

Behind that is a double-volume wall adorned with refurbished mid-century display cabinets. Former owners Ryan Stroebel and Gary Hollywood did the decor and the pair scoured everywhere from salvage yards to furniture boutiques for materials to create this unique display-slash-storage solution for the bar’s liquor bottles. “It was all about thinking locally – and laterally,” says Ryan.

“Gary and I trawled places like Re-Trend and Modernist for these one-of-a-kind units. We then chopped off the legs, arranged them on the back wall, backlit them for extra impact and stocked them with liquor, greenery and artefacts.”

Plastic sports stadium seats, reframed with slick steel and upholstered in oxblood leather, flank this generous space. And the lateral thinking doesn’t stop there. Lights on the bar counter resemble the headlights of Royal Enfield motorcycles, while the overhead lights are repurposed from truck radiator air filters.

The result is an area that succeeds in making a large space both quirky and warmly inviting.

For more information, visit laboqueria.co.za.

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From a getaway spot in Australia to a cherry blossom tree built from LEGO and a cocoon lounge set by Kevin Haviid and Martin Kechayas, these are the VISI picks of the week series – week 233.

1. JR’s Hut at Kimo Estate

“This JR Hut in Gundagai, Australia was designed by Anthony Hunt Design and Luke Stanley Architects,” says Content Producer Mary Garner. “Inspired by the classic A-frame cabin, this little abode allows guest to escape from modern distractions.”

Image credit: Hilary Bradford via archdaily.com

2. LEGO Cherry Blossom Tree

“This beautiful LEGO replica of a cherry blossom tree, built at LEGOLAND Japan, is made up of 881 470 bricks and took over 6 500 hours to build,” says Online Editor Lindi Brownell Meiring. “I just wish I could go and see it in person.”

Image credit: thisiscolossal.com Video credit: Guinness World Records on YouTube

3. New Carrol Boyes Chocolates

“Renowned South African designer Carrol Boyes has just launched a line of dark and milk chocolates, all of which reflect one of the brand’s distinct designs,” says Editor-in-Chief Sumien Brink.

Image credit: carrolboyes.com

4. Cats in Architecture Photography 

“Photos of cats dropping in on an architectural photo shoot is testament to their carefree spirit,” says Assistant Editor Tracy Greenwood. “I just love the collection of pics that Archdaily rounded up from a selection of featured projects.”

Image credit: Filippo Poli.

Image credit: Kyungsub Shin.

Image credit: Olivier Mathiotte.

Image credit: Pedro Vannucchi.

Image credits: via archdaily.com

5. Cocoon Lounge by Kevin Haviid and Martin Kechayas

“These modernist 1960s-inspired lounge chairs by Danish design duo Kevin Haviid and Martin Kechayas perfectly blend wood, rattan and all-purpose coolness,” says Features Editor Amelia Brown. “They’re kind of like grown-up, chic Mose’s basket-cocoons and all I want to do is curl up with a book in one of them.”

Image credit: Chris Calmer via designboom.com

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Bruno Basso and Christopher Brooke, the design duo behind lifestyle brand Jupiter 10, have added 30 new designs to their trendy Modernist Wallcovering Collection.

After initially releasing an award-winning catwalk collection that was entirely digitally printed, Bruno and Christopher went on to showcase their collections across the globe. In 2017, they started Jupiter 10, with a focus on creating patterns and prints for interiors.

Jupiter 10’s Modernist Wallcovering Collection, now with an additional 30 designs, make use of graphics, geometric shapes and bold colours, described by Jupiter 10 as “a reimagining of Mid-century Modern design, mixing the strength of tradition with technological innovation”.

For more information, visit jupiter10.com.

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The Muse fabric and wallcovering collection by Zoffany, designed and printed in England, epitomises the decadence and sophistication associated with the 1920’s.

Created with luxurious materials that exude elegance, the collection perfectly combines craftsmanship with modernist style.

“The Muse collection represents Zoffany at its most contemporary, telling the story of an imaginary muse and the art she inspired – and many of the designs are named after real life artists’ muses,” shares Peter Gomez, Head of Design for Zoffany. “Everything the muse touches turns to gold and captures the artist’s imagination.”

Colours included in the range are Vine Black, Rose Quartz and Sahara for fabrics and Malachite, Prussian Blue and Smoked Pearl for wallcoverings.

The range is now available locally at St Leger & Viney. For more information, visit stleger.co.za.

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Douglas & Company has just released a new range of four striking designs, which were recently showcased at 100% Design South Africa in Johannesburg.

E.1027

Influenced by Eileen Gray’s modernist holiday home on the French Riviera, the E.1027 features curved lines and a dusty pink interior.

HERR EULER

This mild steel table has two timber inlays in oak and walnut that can be removed or alternated to rearrange the composition of the table.

DIE REGTERHAND

This versatile table lamp can be carried around, hung on a wall or suspended.

McSORLEY’S WONDERFUL SALOON

A new colour palette has been introduced for the popular trolley with Nero Marquina marble and a polished brass wheel. A moody version that’s very well suited to a serious environment.

View more at jandouglas.co.za.

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