L Shape

Solid European oak flooring by DuChateau runs throughout the home. The sculpture is by Jorge Yázpik.

A pair of Icelandic prefab pioneers deliver an efficient family home in Culver City. Building smarter is at the heart of everything designers Tryggvi Thorsteinsson and Erla Dögg Ingjaldsdóttir do. Whether they’re testing the limits of indoor/outdoor living or developing a prefabricated wall system that they hope will make traditional wood framing a thing of the past, the founders of the Santa Monica design studio Minarc are consumed with making structures stronger, lighter, and more efficient.

At the family home of an Israeli architect, modern and light-filled interiors enliven a brutalist, raw concrete structure. Located in the city of Ramat HaSharon near Tel Aviv, the home that Pitsou Kedem designed for himself and his family boasts a powerful and striking horizontal form with a low silhouette.

In the master bathroom, the Smiths worked with a Boston-based company, Artaic, on the mosaic tile.

To revive the original architects’ vision, studioWTA restored a four-foot roof overhang above a wall of La Cantina sliders. The shade helps limit solar gain, while a pool by Evans + Lighter Landscape Architecture provides respite on sweltering summer days.

View looking from the new deck along the central axis towards the new pool and existing living room (with new concrete deck). The new design built-up the sloping site around the pool so its surface could be raised to allow more of a connection between the existing indoor spaces and the water.

The house that Fleetwood Fernandez Architects designed for contractor Mehran Taslimi and his wife, Laila, embraces its surroundings. “They wanted doors that they could just throw open,” designer Hunter Fleetwood says of the retractable wall system from Vitrocsa.

Pool Terrace