This spare, contemporary house in Beverly Hills—designed by Leonardo Umansky of Arxis Design Studio—stands out in a residential community renowned for traditional design and oversized statement structures. The clients, a mathematician and an artist, own a comprehensive operetta collection and required specific storage for it. Umansky designed 2,600 feet of built-in shelving for such odd-sized items as posters, vinyl records, sheet music, CDs, and cassettes.
Design concept and solution: The house is based on a centralized plan whose perimeter is fragmented by a media wall. Rather than concentrate the collection into one room, like an archive, the architects distributed the collection throughout the house based on item type. Each programmatic element within the house contains specific items of the collection. The media walls are organized into niche, partition, and freestanding walls.
The central space is a double height rectilinear volume that is directly off the entry and connects to all other rooms. From here one can get a visual sense of the collection’s vastness and extension into other areas of the house. On the opposing long ends of the central volume are two staircases. The front stair is off to the side and the rear staircase is on axis with the front entry, helping to guide the eye upward and diagonally through the central volume and to the rest of the collection.
PeopleOwner: Witheld
Location: 614 North Foothill road Beverly Hills California 90210
Completion Date: January 2010
Gross square footage: 8,659 square feet. 1st and 2nd floor are 6,727 and basement and garage are 1,932
Total construction cost: Withheld by owner
Architect: Arxis Design Studio
Personnel in architect's firm who should receive special credit: Architect of record: Arxis Design Studio (Design firm)
Interior designer: Arxis Design Studio (Design firm)
Engineer(s): Structural Engineer: Joseph Perazzelli
Consultant(s): Landscape: Lighting: Acoustical: Other:
General contractor: Fort Hill Construction
Photographer(s): Cameron Carothers cell:818.517.1966
CAD system, project management, or other software used: Power Cad on Apple. |
ProductsStructural system Steel and wood framing with subterranean parking
Exterior cladding Redwood siding, Ledger stone and steel trowel plaster with integral color Masonry: Wood:
Roofing Built-up roofing: Torch down roof
Windows Wood frame: All the windows were custom made for the house.
Glazing Glass: Low E Skylights: Sun Valley skylights
Doors Entrances: Steel frame with wood clad pivot door Wood doors: VGDF Sliding doors: custom
Hardware Locksets: All Baldwin
Interior finishes Cabinetwork and custom woodwork: Design Made Real Paints and stains: Willburn Floor and wall tile: Travertine (18x36)
Furnishings All free standing furniture by owner. All built in furniture was designed by Arxis Design Studio
Lighting Lighting system was Lutron Downlights: |
