Favorites

Perched below the Griffith Observatory and overlooking Hollywood is a lush lot crowned with four towering olive trees and a 1965 home designed by modernist architect Craig Ellwood. When a young couple purchased the home in 2018, it needed substantial work. For a historic restoration, they called on Woods + Dangaran, a local firm fluent in modernist history. The team completed a meticulous restoration of the home while keeping original components like the linear shape, open plan, and expansive windows. One of the most striking features is the original koi pond (a feature deemed so essential that its preservation was a condition of escrow) that is now crossed via a bridge that leads to a new lap pool—perhaps the biggest intervention on the property.

Cutlery for a giant? Sure! Winners might receive a fork, spoon, or knife, but the real prize is the inevitable conversations to come while walking down the street with one in tow.

Pritzker Prize winner Oscar Niemeyer, one of the architects behind Brasília’s grand modernist vision, stands in front of the Supreme Court building he designed. Photo by Gil Pinhero

Crestwood Hills, in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, is an endangered enclave of midcentury post-and-beam houses designed by A. Quincy Jones and Whitney R. Smith.

A consistent wood palette makes the interior feel cohesive.

On a five-acre property outside Taos, New Mexico, designer Molly Bell worked closely with her father, builder Ed Bell, to create a new residence for owner Lois Rodin. “Lois requested that it appear as a grouping of individual masses, so that it read more like a cluster than a solitary shape,” Molly says. “I hope it shows that it’s OK to do something modern in such a traditional environment, and not to be afraid of it.” - Taos, New Mexico Dwell Magazine : July / August 2017

From the 1940s through the late ’60s, the Case Study House program produced some of the United States’s most famous modernist residences. VKG furniture was used for many of the houses; it even appears in architectural photographer Julius Shulman’s famous photo of the Pierre Koenig-designed Stahl House. Photo by ©J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)

GilBartolomé Architects says the metal facade looks like "the skin of a dragon set in the ground when seen from below" but "waves of the sea when seen from above."

From the street, large trees provide shade to the private courtyard in the summer. A unique remote-controlled gate has been added to the house’s original carport. A new address monument matches the angle of the house’s roof.

Built with a steel frame, the Frost House features panels of styrofoam between aluminum sheets for the exterior walls and styrofoam between plywood for the roof and floors. Bold, primary colors accentuate its geometric form. Shortly after Karen Valentine and Bob Coscarelli purchased the home in 2016, they began to unearth nuggets of information about its pedigree. Their realtor had provided a brochure that identified the prefab as designed by architect Emil Tessin for the now-defunct Alside Homes Corporation based out of Akron, Ohio, which had held a patent for the structure’s aluminum paneling. Their new neighbors provided a stack of Alside Homes sales materials, floor plans of various models, and even a script that had been written for salespeople during home tours. They determined that the Frost House had been a sales model for the company, and that Tessin had been the son of Emil Albert Tessin, the legal guardian of Florence Knoll.

The house was built in 1954. However, this front is an extension that was done in 1962 to expand the dining space and the kitchen.