Bow & Truss North Hollywood: Modern design, to go

Bow & Truss, the new North Hollywood restaurant and lounge crafted from what had been an auto body garage, may not sound like the kind of place with design elements that could translate to a residential environment. But as envisioned by Beth Holden, principal of the West Hollywood architecture studio New Theme, in collaboration with her client, Morgan Margolis of Knitting Factory Entertainment, the updated 1930s building will indeed hold some design solutions with high visual impact that diners just might bring home.

The restaurant, scheduled to have its grand opening Friday, has a stunning showpiece: a richly patterned bar that's actually just formaldehyde-free medium density fiberboard, or MDF, finished with paint that’s low in volatile organic compounds. The pattern, inspired by the jali screenwork common in Islamic design, was cut with a router by hand, then set on sanded plexiglass backed with dimmable LEDs. This particular pattern may be intricate, but the concept and simple materials could be deployed as an accent wall, adding ambient light to a stairwell or entryway. At Bow & Truss, the geometric cuts of the MDF are meant to blend with the restaurant's Spanish bent and with Southern California's architectural traditions.

"We studied different patterns and abstracted it to look a little more modern,” Holden said. “We wanted it to have that cross-referencing."

American Craftsman meets Swiss chalet in Pasadena

A dentist named Francis K. Ledyard paid $10,000 to the Milwaukee Building Co. — the firm best known for Grauman's Chinese Theatre — for his two-story, four-bedroom house. Believed to be the only home like it in Pasadena, it sported furry, bark-on redwood logs, russet-stained redwood shake siding and a white limestone chimney — an American Craftsman with a touch of Swiss chalet.

That was 1909. By the time architect Douglas Ewing spotted the house in 2003, the defining log trim was gone, the house had been painted brown and the kitchen and bathrooms had undergone Midcentury Modern remodels.

PHOTO GALLERY: Log Craftsman in Pasadena

But Ewing, who grew up among Pasadena's Craftsman bungalows and worked for Case Study architect Whitney Smith, had by then designed several Adirondack-style projects, including a Colorado ski lodge for Ralph Lauren.

“I fell in love with log buildings,” Ewing said. So he and his wife, Maggie, decided to buy the house, warts and all.

Negotiations fell through, however, and the house wound up back on the market. Enter Faith Dymek and her husband, Mark, who were moving from Virginia. They brought with them daughter Ryanne; Faith's mother, Sharon McCabe; plus Arts and Crafts furniture that had never looked quite right in their old Colonial-style home.

The couple bought the “falling-down, ramshackle, termite-ridden house” in 2004, Faith said, figuring a little elbow grease was all they needed to fix it up. Then they met Ewing, who explained the difference between making the house livable and bringing it back to life as originally designed. The latter, he said, would require more time, more money and more expertise.

The Dymeks' decision?

“We decided we would restore versus renovate,” Faith said.

To economize, she served as general contractor, visiting the job site daily and gathering leads on local artisans.

Malibu modern: New house makes most of every inch, every view

You could admire the ocean view from the second-floor deck — coastal bluffs covered with wind-sculpted cypress trees to your right, pretty Point Dume off in the distance to your left, 10 miles of prime Malibu beach in between.

Or you could admire the architecture from the street below, looking up at a first floor that juts out from a cliff and hovers over nothingness.

Or you could contemplate the house from the front, where the weathered redwood siding turns out to be planks recycled from olive and pickle tanks.

You could do all of that, but then you might miss part of what makes this house special. This dream of a retreat — set along exclusive Broad Beach, among the mansions that Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford, Goldie Hawn and Steve Levitan have called home — holds smart design ideas that could translate to houses that are miles and miles away, in geography, budget or style.

PANORAMAS: Interactive 360-degree images from inside this house

After all, on paper this house is merely 1,700 square feet of living space: open kitchen and living room, powder room, small office and guest bedroom with bath on the first floor, master suite on the second. That's it.

But as conceived by the young Los Angeles firm W+D, this Malibu house plays out as a case study in the efficient use of space. Wedged next to noisy Pacific Coast Highway and set snugly between neighbors, the house also is inspiration for anyone trying to balance a love of the outdoors with the need for quiet and privacy.

Before and after: Old L.A. storybook house gets a sensitive makeover

When Christina Craemer's client bought what was listed as a "gentleman's hunting lodge," designed by architect Robert Byrd in 1950, the client inherited a rustic wood structure and a remodeling challenge. The house, with a steep-pitched roof and weathered redwood siding, was on a two-acre hillside just a few blocks above Hollywood Boulevard, but it reminded the owner, a producer and author, of childhood summers spent in the woods near a Minnesota lake. It was straight out of a storybook.

Craemer, owner of Arc54 Studio, an interior design and fine arts firm, wanted to respect the site and the lodge's original character while upgrading the home into a contemporary two-story residence.

"It was like a tree house among these amazing California oaks, redwood trees and sycamores," she said. "But since it was built close to the hillside, the interior was very dark. The challenge was to find a way to expand the structure, make it brighter -- and retain its character."

Craemer gained more daylight for the once-gloomy living room by replacing a picture window with a custom, three-sided glass box measuring 10 feet by 6 feet, with a 24-inch-deep pop-out. Inside, the ceiling volume was pushed up to accommodate taller windows without altering the original roof proportions. Her client no longer has to hunch over to look outside at the stately sycamore tree in the front yard.

L.A. at Home photo gallery archive open for touring

Our home profiles are collectively meant to represent the here and now, whether that means side-by-side Schindler houses in Inglewood with a shared front yard for an improved sense of community, above, or an architect's Laurel Canyon retreat that delivers a wonderful sense of privacy. A Midcentury Modern residence remade with some Latin American flavor, or a traditional Craftsman bungalow built as a family DIY project. Eames, Wright, Lautner. Santa Monica, Hollywood Hills, Ojai, Joshua Tree. We've been there and covered that. You will find dozens of our most recent profiles in our archive, so check it out. And if you see a cool house with a great story, email us at home@latimes.com.

HOME TOURS: The L.A. at Home photo gallery archive

Photo: Joel Bell helps son James traverse the garden in front of twin houses by Modernist icon R.M. Schindler in Inglewood. Credit: Katie Falkenberg / For The Times

Bubbletecture: Step inside CasaBubble and Airclad inflatables

A pair of exhibitors at next weekend's Dwell on Design show will have a new take on living in a bubble. AirClad, a British company that makes an inflatable pool house, and CasaBubble, a California firm that designs pneumatic backyard guest rooms, are trying to capitalize on the outdoor-living and small-space trends with structures built using little more than lightweight PVC and air.

“The idea was to be able to spend the night under the starry sky as comfortably as in a hotel bedroom,” said Frederic Richard, a native of France who splits his time between Paris and Santa Ynez, where he began distributing CasaBubble in April.

CasaBubble, pictured at right, is a sphere that holds its shape with air blown by quiet turbines, which use less than 100 watts of electricity per hour to run — roughly the equivalent of a light bulb. The sphere is fully pressurized in as little as 15 minutes, and the air inside is refreshed as often as seven times per hour, preventing humidity and condensation from clouding the bubble. The design has two doors, but only one can be open at a time or the structure will collapse.

CasaBubble was designed by Frenchman Pierre-Stephane Dumas and is manufactured in France. The portable living space is designed to be used as an outdoor guest room, a dining room, a children's play area or a pop-up shelter at the beach. It's available in 30 colors and five sizes, weighing 53 to 190 pounds.

Vision House in Pacific Palisades opens for public viewing

Green "demonstration" houses loaded with what are touted as the latest in environmentally conscious technology and materials may have ebbed with the real estate crash, but a development-and-design team in Los Angeles is about to revive the idea with the Vision House.

Billed as a luxury green demonstration home, Vision House is a collaboration of Green Builder Media and L.A.-based builder Structure Home, which worked with L.A. architecture firm KAA Design, the Newport Beach firm P2 Design, Calabasas interior designer Jill Wolff and Westlake Village landscape architect MJN Design Studio.

Some of the house's features -- an ultraviolet light air-purification system, mold-resistant shower and duct systems, solar panels, a central vacuum system, Gaggenau appliances that include a countertop steamer and a refrigerator with motorized shelves -- are more about function than design beauty. But decorating fans won't be disappointed.

The kitchen, laundry area and bathroom have dramatic textural wall finishes using Porcelanosa tile, at right. Eco-friendly furnishings from Cisco Home include side tables made from repurposed car parts and light fixtures made from reclaimed blown glass. (Asked if the cotton and linen fabrics were kid-friendly, Wolff said she washed all of the slipcovers, brought them to the house in a garbage bag and put them on -- without an iron.)

Dwell on Design modern home tours begin Saturday

Tickets are still available for Dwell on Design modern home tours this weekend, in advance of the annual design exhibition June 22 to 24 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The self-guided East Side Modern Home Tour this Saturday includes Simon Storey's 960-square-foot Eel's Nest, shown above and featured by L.A. at Home earlier this year, and designer-developer Jerome Pelayo's sustainable Sunia Home, both in Echo Park. Farther east, the tour will include OKB Architecture + Construction's colorful addition in Pasadena, shown at right, as well as a Buff, Straub and Hensman home in San Marino and Fer Studio's modern update of a 1980s La Cañada Flintridge residence, which we featured back in 2009. 

A Prefab Plus Home Tour on Sunday will highlight a pair of prefabricated town houses designed by Whitney Sanders, Linda Taalman's Back Yard Plug-in Module, a hybrid prefabricated structure using Blue Sky Building Systems in Santa Monica, a Ray Kappe-designed LivingHome in Santa Monica and a Venice residence by Marmol Radziner Prefab. (A West Side Home Tour on June 24 is sold out.). Homes will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; tickets are $85 per tour.

Bow & Truss, A-Frame, Post & Beam: Diners, do we sense a trend?

There's the new Post & Beam in Baldwin Hills, the even newer restaurant and bar Plan Check on Sawtelle Avenue, A-Frame in Culver City, Salvage Bar & Lounge in downtown L.A. and, opening soon, Bow & Truss in North Hollywood.

The latest trend in restaurant names, it seems, are allusions to design and construction -- phrases that resonate with architectural allure. Now that Los Angeles has enough idiosyncratically animal-named restaurants to populate a farm -- Blue Cow, Hungry Cat, Black Hogg, Lazy Ox -- design-oriented monikers appear to be emerging as the next wave.

"The restaurant world went so far with design, I think it's a natural cyclical reaction," Post & Beam co-owner Brad Johnson said, adding that the restaurant-going public has tired of "gimmicks and over-the-top antics that get in the way of the experience."

Woodbury shed poll: And the coolest cabin design is ...

 

Several weeks ago we reported on 17 architecture students in Woodbury University's design-build program who were asked to create three cabins using mainly components of a hardware store shed kit. Each cabin had to sleep two and provide light, ventilation and insulation. We asked readers to tell us which team had the best design. After a week of voting, the results were surprising: We had a tie. With 2,145 votes cast, the green split-level and the orange hammock hangout each received 1,002 votes. The silvery recycled bottle loft was a distant third, with 141 votes.

We look forward to seeing three more cabins, to be built next semester. Meanwhile, you can read our full story and click through a photo gallery of the finished projects.

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Small-space stories

Homes of the Times archive

Eames House moves into LACMA: Time-lapse video

Marmol Radziner house: 360-degree interactive panoramas

Photos: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times