As it does for many, the idea of taking on a time capsule by a renowned midcentury architect gave Nick Pourfard pause. But where others might balk over the idea of how to sensitively restore one while still getting their dream kitchen, the designer and maker’s hangups with a Walter S. White–designed residence he was looking to buy in his hometown of Escondido were more over what, if anything, his own work could add to its iconic feel.

The Newton Stafford House II, built in 1988, had everything going for it. There was a butterfly roof—“one of White’s calling cards,” says Nick—and a metal frame with a distinctive two-by-six lumber construction style that allowed for vaulted, open living spaces, with a wall of glass running along them. But it also had a perfectly neglected rear acreage where Nick could get up to any number of experiments, whether earth casting garden sculptures, planting cactus or fruit trees, or keeping bees. “I was pretty keen on having exactly what my dad set up for us as kids,” he says, namely some land in a rural area near where he grew up that he could mold to his vision.

Now seven years since leaving his adopted homes of San Francisco and Brooklyn, and after having made a name for himself building guitars from old skateboards with his brand, Prisma, Nick has figured out what a working relationship with the White residence can look like. It shouldn’t be a sealed off relic, he says, but instead, a living, breathing monument to ephemerality. We spoke with Nick to hear about his ongoing interventions—including, yes, a kitchen refresh—how the home inspires what he decides to design and build next, and his resolution to make meaningful marks on the property that satisfy his many whims, support his design community, and cement his own legacy of constant evolution.

I’d love to know what you saw in the home. What attracted you to it? Why did you decide to buy it?

Nick Pourfard: I had lived in San Francisco, and New York for a while, but I knew I wanted to move back to Escondido, in San Diego. I grew up in a really rural area, on a dirt road in the middle of strawberry fields, kind of attached to a horse ranch, kind of attached to a nursery, and I just grew up being outside, you know? I have only good memories of childhood. So I wanted the same thing as what my dad had made for us. A lot of houses in Escondido come with land and your neighbors are farther away. I could do the types of things I wanted to do and have something that could be a lifetime project, something to grow into, something that I could bring my identity to.

This home had the land and everything I was looking for. But it’s also an architectural house, designed by Walter S. White, who did the Wave House in Palm Springs. It just blew me away. It had a butterfly roof—it looked so Japanese and so cool. There were also these crazy engineering things, like two-by-sixes for the roof slammed together. But I was torn because as a designer moving into a house that’s already so designed, that has so many characteristics that are iconic to midcentury architecture, I was a little nervous to coexist with that, you know? How could my pieces look in a space that’s already so iconic looking?

But then I sort of started to feel like it could work. I had to let go of the idea of restoration via White’s identity and kind of combine it with restoration via my identity, while considering him. I was like, what could I do that feels like me that still contributes to this era?

What are a few examples of how you brought your own identity to the home?

It was almost like the budget dropped when they did certain rooms, like the kitchen. The house has incredible windows and crazy millwork, and then when you look at the kitchen, it was like, okay, it’s just formica, and the basic white cabinet setup was really really weird and didn’t match. It had pretty basic red tiles that kind of worked. Everything just felt economical. But it didn’t make sense, either. I’m six two, the vent hood covers the burners, and I can’t even see while I’m cooking. So I just started ripping stuff out and rebuilding, but tried to mimic wood paneling that was here and color matched everything. I also rebuilt some of the soffit beams. People walk in and they think it’s always been like that. And I was like, no, you don’t even know.

The tile for the backsplash is new, too, right?

Yeah, so the tile was a challenge with a house that’s all wood. The wood is so comforting, but you need something to pull you out of that. I made friends with a company called Lofa, they’re in Guadalajara, and they push tile-making to a crazy level where there’s three dimensional stuff and really cool irregular glazes, like with broken glass bottles, or lava rocks melted down, or cutting slits in the clay and shoving pebbles into them so when they’re fired the spread open. I just wanted to support a company like that, you know?

What are some other things you added that respect White’s vision while kind of bringing your own sensibilities to it?

I made sort of like a Judd-esque niche in the closet to display things and ran electricity through it. Just these little things. And I would hear comments like, “Oh my god, this house is so cool. Was this like this when you moved in?” Because I added things that looked like they belonged. It made me feel happy, and proud, because I would be like, no, this is me being Walter White for a moment while being me as well. Like, trying to channel him, you know what I’m saying?

One thing that was challenging, there was an OG George Nelson light in the dining area—this has been my issue with the house—me and Bennet Schlesinger, who does lighting design, traded for the light. I’ve traded a lot of artists for things. I was like, damn, I’m literally replacing the OG Nelson. But I think it’s really important to be supportive of community and to make those connections, and realize not everything has to be vintage, which has been my ideology of restoring the house. A lot of stuff is from friends and has sentimental value.

And you wanted to make it your own, right?

I guess what I’m trying to say is, I needed to remove the midcentury slightly, I needed to pull back from the period piece. I needed to get out of it being a museum and make it more contemporary. Like when you see a house in France that’s like, 200 years old and they have some insane contemporary chandelier. It looks so cool. I have been trying to treat it like that.

I love it when you see modern interventions in really historic places, like there are crumbling walls but then there’s like a crisp stainless steel chair or something weird.

Right, exactly. And then in the living room, I created the whole setup. I did the furniture and the built-ins. Prior, there were different colored carpets, and it would just transition…it was really weird, almost like someone had stained it, or just replaced a section and stopped caring.

It seems like you see your house as this series of vignettes. You’re like, how can I frame these moments from different vantages?

Ya I think about a lot of this stuff that way, but also nothing is sacred. Like if you come to my house regularly, I will be changing art and plants and stuff constantly. I kind of get bored. I think it’s important not to be super attached to some of this stuff, you know? That’s what creates a more interesting pace of life, where you’re like yeah, this is an ever changing thing that will constantly get better and feel more like me. I think it’s naive to be like, oh, I’m done with the house. It’s like, no, you’re doing this for your whole life if you care about it.

I feel the same way, because as a person, you’re ideally not static, right? So why shouldn’t your space evolve with you and continue to change? I share the same philosophy. Are you still building guitars, by the way?

They kind of took a backseat because I’m doing pretty well with furniture, but I shipped like three or four this month. I took an order recently that’s going to Tokyo.

Love to hear it.

And I make them here, in my workshop in the basement. When I saw the house, I always had this idea that I wanted a house workshop. If I was realistically going to be working on the house in a serious way, it was going to be necessary for me and be more fun to kind of like, stay more connected here, you know?

I love the idea that you can iterate on ideas or create things right here for the house.

Yeah. Sometimes I get an itch, like late at night, where I’m like, I just want to see how this would look. Or when I was doing the kitchen—I built everything in my other workspace—but I didn’t do any of the trim or the moldings or anything like that. I was like, I’m gonna do it all here and make adjustments here.

That’s super cool.

And then in the garden, there’s a lot of sentimental stuff happening. In terms of feeling attached to the land, me and my friend Michael Upton, who has his own design studio, earth cast a totem in the dirt and erected it. I have a few of them in the yard. We dyed the concrete before we poured it and used leaves and random things we found around the house to texturize it and make shapes. And then I built a patio for 200 bucks, using bricks from a warehouse sale from Concrete Collaborative. A step there is from a red gum eucalyptus my zip line was attached to as a child. I’ve brought it with me everywhere and I finally used it. I was like, I finally have a place for it.

It looks like you have a good amount of land.

Yeah, Escondido is famous for its farmland. Obviously fruit grows really well here so I was keen on planting some fruit trees. The table in my dining room is inspired from walking in the yard and seeing the cactus flowers. I have so much cactus here. But what you’re seeing, the house was dirt, dude. Literally dirt. There wasn’t a single rock on the property. The orchard I planted, I’m pulling tons of fruit nowadays. I make my own honey. I’m going to get chickens. It’s going to be a total farmstead here.

Very cool. Back to the house, I would love to hear more about how it informs your design practice. Does it connect to it in any intrinsic way for what you create in the end?

I’ve known this for a while about myself, after having lived in apartments in San Francisco, but I like designing for what I need personally. So if I have a corner that needs a lamp, I make a lamp. And that lamp becomes the lamp I sell to people. So it’s almost selfish…I’m a selfish designer, I make things for me. But I feel like that’s the best thing because I’m almost designing exactly what I would want without considering anyone or anything or even money. I’m considering nothing. I’m just like, this is what I would want in my house.

How often would you say something ends up going into production?

Like 60 percent of the time, maybe 70.

That seems pretty good. Do you think the vintage of the house affects what you ultimately produce? Is it driven from the desire to create something that contrasts the midcentury aesthetic?

Yes, but I think my practice is evolving a lot. When I first started doing design, I wanted to do things within my capabilities. But then I would take classes, like machining metal, and I’d be like, well, I need practice, so what do I practice on? Now that I know how to do something, is there a way to make it useful? And now that I’m more experienced with tools, I feel like I’m finding my identity and trying to do things that are less repeatable or less product focused and more bespoke. I think my work is splitting into stuff that’s collectible and stuff that’s a line.

Do you have a recent example of something more bespoke?

There’s a cabinet that’s my favorite thing ever. It’s made of old wood from a fence in Solana Beach and earth from Iran that my dad, who’s Iranian, brought back from land he bought there years ago. He thought the dirt was really good for your skin and started shipping it over, but then didn’t do anything with it. Once it hit him that oh, you have to do X, Y, and Z for the FDA and all the testing, he just gave up. He was like, this is too expensive. When I was maybe 15 or 16 I watched all these guys throwing the dirt into a river near my parents house and I was watching it wash away, and I was like, wait, stop, this is crazy. I literally made him put it somewhere and tarp it and he kept it for me. I just tapped into it, and I’m 34. I don’t know what I was thinking as a kid, but I knew I would never be able to bring dirt here from Iran, so the fact that I have it is crazy.

And that’s what the fingerprint element is made of with the cabinet?

Yeah. So I processed it into clay and started making shapes with it as a test and at some point thought, OK, this is working. And then I wasn’t expecting this, but my grandpa was in town, and my dad called me and said he was leaving back to Iran, and I was like, maybe he should be helping me with this. He’s pretty old, and I hate to say it, but I was like, I don’t know if I’ll see you again. So I just freestyled these little spheres and told him to put his thumb on them. He doesn’t speak English, and I don’t speak Farsi, which is part of what makes it this really sentimental thing…one of my favorite things.

And then with everything happening politically right now, knowing it’s not possible to go to Iran, I have sort of this imposter syndrome of making this thing. It feels like the only way I’ll ever touch the earth of this place that I come from, you know? It’s the only way I’ll be able to really get that close to it, at least for a while. So it’s really sad, and cool.

It’s connecting your own history with the house, just in this one object.

It’s only the first piece of a series I hope to explore. I have a lot of dirt. It could be a lamp. It could be sculpture. It could be a lot of things.

More My House stories:

A Creative Renovation Inspires Two Musicians to Put Down Roots on the Rhode Island Coast

She Custom Made More Than 1,000 Kitchen Tiles for Her Austin Renovation

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Walter S. White

Designer: Nick Bijan Pourfard / @nbijanpourfard

Also Appears In

My House: Designer and Maker Nick Pourfard’s San Diego Home Might Never Be Finished