A multifaceted Beverly Hills house puts the beauty of potentiality in the frame

Designing a big house is one thing. But how do you design one with big ideas? For architect Robin Donaldson and his client, an investor, that was the question confronting them nearly a decade ago, when the pair began discussing what to build on a one-of-a-kind site in Los Angeles. The choicest cut of the city’s most prime real estate, the Trousdale section of Beverly Hills is a glamorous redoubt of Hollywood talent and business titans, prized for its eye-popping views stretching clear from downtown to the sea.

The neighbourhood’s architecture is equally distinguished, boasting treasures from masters of modernism such as A. Quincy Jones and Paul R. Williams. All in all, this one-acre clifftop parcel (later expanded to two acres) demanded something very special.

Explore this Beverly Hills house, where big ideas come to life

‘The client said he wanted to do a contemporary home, but he didn’t want it to be too cold, too conventionally modern,’ says Donaldson. ‘We wanted to go a step beyond. It was the kind of challenge the architect tends to relish: the LA- and Santa Barbara-based Donaldson (then working with longtime partner Russel Shubin; now under his own monicker as Donaldson + Partners) has built a reputation over more than three decades as one of the region’s most daring residential designers.

Emerging from the office of local legend Thom Mayne in the early 1990s, the ostensibly laidback, in fact quietly intense Robinson proceeded to pursue his own course with projects—notably his Hill House in Montecito—that temper the exuberant and techno-forward style of the SoCal scene with a contemplative, intellectual aura very much his own. ‘I’ve always been interested in terrain and topography, and how those intersect with architecture,’ he says. ‘I don’t believe in just doing a neo-modernist case-study sort of house.’

Robinson’s experimental disposition would be a key asset in working on this project with this client, who has a presence on both coasts and a personal philosophy that keeps him in constant search of new thinking in the arts and sciences. ‘The greatest journey is the realization of potential,’ says the client.

‘What’s wonderful, I think, is living a life of curiosity.’ With that as a starting point, Kabiller summoned Donaldson, Shubin, and a diverse group of collaborators - including representatives from jewellery company Van Cleef & Arpels (a longtime favourite of the geology-loving client who was keen to have them involved), as well as London-based artist collective Based Upon—-for an open-ended mental jam session aimed at creating a house that could foster similar exchanges, hosting salons and lectures with visiting writers and artists: a place, as the client puts it, ‘where ideas and learning would always be happening.’

As the design began to take shape, it would prove an ample container for all the concepts at play within it. At fourteen thousand square feet the structure forms a flying wedge in plan, its two upper-level wings housing the primary bedrooms and opening out to a pool deck with a dramatic panorama of the city; in the middle of the ‘V’ sits a half-sunken courtyard, surrounded by the lower level of the house with its ample bar room, 24-seat movie theatre, spa and gym.

The recurring theme, visually speaking, is the fractal: rendered, on the exterior and interior, in multifaceted fiberglass panels, the motif is everywhere, its hard-edged, armour-ish effect softened by the rich bronze colour of the material and by the lush interior scheme from designers Nicole Hollis and Joan Behnke. As seen from the northeast, down the length of the nearly 100-yard allée that approaches it, the building’s funnel-like entrance and unusual skin make it singularly hard to read—exactly as its architect intended. ‘It’s something you can’t easily pin down,’ says Donaldson. ‘It has this timelessness.’

As the project moved forward, the client’s particular creative outlook and ambitions began to map themselves onto the ShubinDonaldson scheme, becoming part of the architectural procession. Moving through the house, visitors encounter a series of raw gemstones—blue lapis from Afghanistan; and opal from Australia—embedded in niches in the walls adjacent to various rooms.

Prepared in tandem with the French jewellery house Van Cleef & Arpels, the rough geological specimens represent the latent possibilities inherent not just in materials but in human beings. ‘It’s about beauty and potentiality,’ says the client. ‘And the beauty of potentiality.’

With almost any other architect, making this unusual narrative an organic part of the design might have been a challenge; not so for Donaldson, whose particular approach helped him accommodate the heady agenda. ‘I think of it almost like a film,’ he says. ‘The house frames these various views and experiences.’

And in a twist befitting a Hollywood screenplay, the house—with its intricate story of being and becoming, of growing up and out towards the great world beyond—is now also home to a new, unexpected, younger occupant: the client’s first child, who was born shortly before the project was completed. For its residents, the thematic synchrony is just another of the house’s pleasures. ‘It was done with so much love and care and intent,’ says the client. ‘It’s very cocooning.’

donaldsonplus.com