A Daring Home Clad in Shining Copper Armor Fends Off Natural Disasters

"There’s a ‘matter of factness’ to the detailing," says architect Sarah Lorenzen. "You see this in the LVL beams, and the chain-link fence—very much like you’d see in a skate park—that forms the handrails and the fence for the exterior." She likens this use of materials to the work of the L.A. School of Architecture in the 1970s and ’80s. "Architects, like Frank Gehry, had a real interest in how materials fit together, but not in a precious way," she says.