Residence in California

Perched nine hundred feet above Los Angeles, this house has a panoramic view of the city, the Pacific, and the mountains to the west. Designed for a couple who admire the work of mid-twentieth-century Los Angeles architect Paul Williams and designer Billy Haines, this house is inspired by their interpretation of Regency style, an idiom which combines historic reference and modernist sensibility, delicacy of detail, and spareness of composition. The exterior palette of white painted brick, gray limestone, black steel windows, and extensive decorative ironwork render the house in a rich monochrome which recalls black-and-white movie sets of an earlier decade.

The major rooms of the house are organized around a central gallery which will accommodate both the owners' art collection and frequent entertaining. An elevator descends to a basement art gallery which leads to a pool pavilion, swimming pool, and gardens to the south of, and some twenty feet below, the main house. To the west, a sloping lawn will terminate at an elliptical garden, beyond which is a tennis court and pavilion.