Open House Event: This Cozy L.A. Home Pairs High Design With Down-to-Earth Sustainability

Dwell’s Open House: Los Angeles event offers a rare opportunity to step inside three architecturally amazing homes on the east side. Read on for a peek at one of the projects our ticket holders are touring—and sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know about other upcoming Open House events.

The boardwalk path that snakes through the garden at Lizz Wasserman and Isaac Resnikoff’s Highland Park home leads past aromatic Mexican marigolds, Matilija poppies, and swaths of cardoons, down stairs below peaches and persimmons to a shady spot beneath an old black walnut tree. Further down the slope, a self-watering, raised wicking bed regularly produces tomatoes, basil, chard, cucumbers, and fennel.

"We hardly ever water," notes Lizz with a mix of pride and wonder as she surveys the backyard that she and Isaac conjured from a bare hillside. Given the record high temperatures in Southern California this summer, that’s no small feat, but look closer and you’ll see that the couple has woven environmentally conscious features throughout the property that rely less on devices than on thoughtful choices and solid planning. Yes, there’s a solar array on the home’s roof, but just below it are high-efficiency insulated panels that help keep the house comfortable no matter what the weather.

When the couple decided to build a house for themselves and their family, efficiency and sustainability were top priorities. Fortunately, they had two environmental champions at the helm: architect Louis Wasserman and landscape architect Caren Connolly, who also happen to be Lizz’s parents. The result is an elegantly simple home that incorporates passive heating and cooling strategies, such as operable skylights that create a kind of "heat chimney."

They nestled the home’s lower level into the hillside to keep it cool in summer and warm in winter, and Connolly and Los Angeles firm Terremoto designed the terraced, low-water gardens to take advantage of the sloping property and lessen its ecological footprint. Lizz and Isaac specified a heat pump heater, a heat pump water heater, all-electric appliances, and an extensive gray water system. Although the solar array is sized to cover the home’s energy needs, the couple do pay about $80 per month for electricity to charge their two electric cars.

At one point, Isaac, an artist, designer, and founder of the collaborative design studio Project Room, became fixated on the idea of forgoing natural gas and put in an induction range to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "I was telling people at parties about it—I became totally obsessed," he says with a laugh. "But once you move away from a gas stove, you don’t care about gas for anything else. I’d never go back."

For Lizz, a creative exec at Mattel who formerly worked in fashion, the success of any project is all about making specific choices. "If you have limited funds or limited time or limited anything, make the decisions you need to make in order to free up everything else," she says.

She points to the kitchen counter that Isaac crafted from dead stock Bacterio laminate by Ettore Sottsass and the cabinets that he made in his shop. "The fact that Isaac was capable of building so many things freed up a lot of resources."

The lacquered plywood that envelops the main floor was a choice Louis wasn’t sold on initially. "It could be overpowering, but because it’s monolithic, your brain can read it as a neutral," says Isaac.

 "I think sometimes people are afraid to make decisions—that’s why you see so many new builds that look the same and so many white walls and black, industrial finishes," adds Lizz. "Having something that we could never change versus walls that we could paint is a really good framework for our colorful artwork and our colorful life."

Whether they’re Isaac’s creations—like the faux-sandwich Hero lamp over the Project Room dining table and the built-in sectional in the "dank lounge" downstairs that Lizz topped with discounted, all-organic blankets from Ikea—or furnishings sourced from estate sales and thrift stores, like their recently acquired LC4 chaise lounge and Alvar Aalto tea trolley, the house is filled with much-loved pieces. And they’re right at home alongside artworks by the couple’s children, 9-year-old Eli and 4-year-old Esphyr.

It’s clear that five years after they moved in, Lizz and Isaac’s residence is a "lifetime home." Asked if they’d have done anything differently if they had to do it all again, Isaac laments that they didn’t put a laundry chute in the kitchen, while Lizz muses that it would have been nice to have a tub in the primary bathroom.

"We should have taken advantage of the slab and put in a sunken tub, but we were young and wanted the smallest bathroom possible," she says. "My parents were like, ‘Don’t you want a bathtub?’ It’s a lesson: Even if you know what you want, you should be open to other ideas."

More Open House: Los Angeles tours:

This Ever-Expanding L.A. Home Was 24 Years in the Making 

They Gave Their "Grey Gardens" Craftsman a Grand Reinvention

Project Credits:

Architect: Louis Wasserman

Construction: Zorzoli Construction

Structural Engineering:  HTK Structural Engineers

Additional Engineering: B+W Engineering and Design

Landscape Architecture: Caren Connolly and Terremoto / @terremoto_landscape

Interior Design: Project Room / @projectroomla

Soil Engineering: Earth Systems

Gray Water System: Greywater Corps  @greywatercorps

Energy System Engineering: Monterey Energy Group / @montereyenergygroup