Beverly House

This house is the trans­for­ma­tion of an ex­ist­ing in­ti­mate 1100 sf bun­ga­low into an ex­panded space for a grow­ing fam­ily. The site is one of the few re­main­ing through-block lots in the Ocean Park sec­tion of Santa Mon­ica. It gen­tly slopes to­wards a lo­cal pub­lic park and has a dra­matic west­ern view of the Pa­cific Ocean.
The up­per por­tion of the house is the ren­o­vated bun­ga­low and has be­come the main liv­ing area with a mas­ter bed­room and study. An ad­di­tion to the house was es­sen­tially ex­ca­vated from be­neath the orig­i­nal bun­ga­low and sup­ports a new ter­race that takes ad­van­tage of the ocean view. The wall fram­ing of the ex­ist­ing bun­ga­low was left in­tact; a new roof is sus­pended over the house al­low­ing light to drift through all in­te­rior spaces via the in­te­rior cleresto­ries.
Within the house a sim­ple palette of ma­te­ri­als uni­fies all of the spaces. Al­ter­nat­ing planes of solid and translu­cent ma­te­ri­als evoke the col­ored planes of Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park paint­ings se­ries as well as con­nect the house to the slop­ing land­scape. Ver­ti­cal el­e­ments in­clude slid­ing doors of alu­minum hon­ey­comb for pri­vacy
with­out omit­ting light, cus­tom maple cab­i­nets, a fire­place cov­ered in a blue-grey col­ored plas­ter, and the main stair formed of col­ored cast con­crete and lined with glass. Up­stairs the floor­ing is of maple to match the cab­i­netry and down­stairs the floors are paved with a cus­tom-cut blue-green soap­stone.