Architects recycle truck trailer into lofty tower

Mexican architects Alejandro D'Acosta and Claudia Turrent have turned a priest's 19th century adobe house into a 21st century residence, rejiggered a hotel of ill repute into their architecture office and built a rammed-earth dwelling into a seaside cliff in Ensenada. But it's their off-grid country home in the Valle de Guadalupe wine region that may be their most unusual project to date: The house is partially built from an abandoned refrigerator truck trailer, but unlike the converted shipping container projects that have been so fashionable in architecture, this one is flipped up on its end — a tower with rooms stacked vertically.

PHOTO GALLERY: Truck trailer remade as loft tower

Dubbed El Granito for the elephantine granite boulders that surround the property, the 50-acre parcel was the discovery of D'Acosta's brother, winemaker Hugo D'Acosta, and a friend while they were looking for land to plant more vines. In a rocky plain where hawks soar on thermals by day and coyotes call to the moon by night, they came upon the truck trailer lying on its side next to a cinder block shack. Barrels smelling of chemicals filled the trailer.

“It was an abandoned meth lab — more el gramito than El Granito,” said a chuckling D'Acosta, referring to the term for a gram of drugs. “We liked the idea of taking a place that was used for making something bad and turning it into a creative place to cook up some good ideas.”

Home tour: Rammed-earth house on an Ensenada cliff

There's nothing new about rammed-earth construction, tapial in Spanish. The technique for building walls using earth, chalk, lime and gravel is ancient, found in 2,000-year-old watchtowers in Dunhuang, China, or the 13th century Pakimé pyramids in Mexico, or contemporary Hmong houses in Vietnam.

But architects Alejandro D'Acosta and Claudia Turrent, known for their experiments in sustainable living, recently completed their own version of an earthen home in a most unlikely place: built into a seaside cliff in Ensenada, Mexico.

PHOTO GALLERY: Rammed-earth house on the Ensenada coast

They call it the Bridge House, not surprising because the other main components are recycled 100-year-old redwood planks from a bridge in Northern California. The couple bought 200 of the timbers, each 27 feet long and 1 ton, from a salvage yard in Rosarito Beach. The planks have been used to fashion the front walkway and back deck, the front door, the roof, the house floor and the kitchen table. Other broken and splintered posts of varying heights are stationed on the deck, “recalling an old pier,” said D'Acosta, who admires the shadows they cast on the land.

Centre Street lofts in San Diego: New vision for apartment living

On an otherwise unremarkable avenue in San Diego, architect Lloyd Russell has built an apartment complex intended to challenge commonly held assumptions about apartment living. How? By targeting a very specific group of renters — a generation of young Californians burned by the housing bust.

“Dad and I thought there were a lot of young people out there who have had a hard time holding on to their first homes,” said Russell, who developed the Centre Street apartments with Lloyd Russell Sr., formerly a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. “Their expectations about how they wanted to live had expanded, but their ability to pay for them had contracted.”

Soon after the Centre Street complex was finished in late 2010, the architect placed a small “for rent” sign outside. Russell confessed to having been nervous. He posted the apartments on Craigslist as well, knowing that the project needed to reach 90% occupancy in 90 days before the bank would agree to the long-term financing he needed. Russell wondered, “Is there such a market?”

PHOTO GALLERY: Centre Street lofts in San Diego

The answer came quickly. Despite rents that were as much as 20% higher than what the San Diego real estate research firm MarketPointe said was the average per-square-foot price for newly constructed rental housing in the city, Centre Street reached its occupancy goal well before the bank's three-month deadline. Today, the loft-style apartments are loaded not only with design features that are novel for rentals, but also with residents who have happily set aside the dream of house ownership for a cool, modern apartment.

“Several applicants had been through short sales,” said Keith Weibrecht, an associate architect in Russell's office, who manages applications at the Centre Street lofts and lives on the third floor. (That's his apartment with the glass sliders pushed open, above right.) “Another applicant had a credit rating of 400.”

LivingHomes C6 house and the promise of affordable prefab

The concept is simple: Make a modern, prefabricated home with the lowest environmental impact -- and price -- possible. It's called the C6, and it's premiering in two locations this week: Palm Springs, where it is part of a Modernism Week prefab showcase open through Feb. 26, and the TED Conference in Long Beach running through March 2.

Starting at $179,000, the C6 prefab from Santa Monica-based LivingHomes is half the price of the company's other models. The C6 is touted as the first production home designed to achieve LEED platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, and it's the first to incorporate a range of products certified by Cradle to Cradle, the environmental rating program founded by sustainability gurus William McDonough and Michael Braungart. The cost, $145 per square foot, includes 34 tons of carbon offsets. (That's the main living area of the Palm Springs installation pictured above, photographed earlier this week while workers were still staging it for tours.)

PHOTO GALLERY: LivingHomes' C6 prefab house

“When we started in 2006, we wanted to bring homes to a class of consumers who value design, health and sustainability in the products they buy,” said LivingHomes chief executive Steve Glenn, citing Prius-driving, Whole Foods-shopping, iPhone-wielding, Patagonia-wearing consumers as his target. “Production builders haven't historically targeted those people. LivingHomes does.”

Sunnylands: Sneak peek inside the Annenberg desert fantasyland

It is the Xanadu of the California desert: Sunnylands, formerly the winter residence of Walter and Leonore Annenberg, he the TV Guide publishing magnate, she the niece of Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn, who raised her. On 200 fabled acres now set behind a pink security wall, Walter and Leonore built a 25,000-square-foot house with an art and design collection so singular, no one seems able to estimate its value.

Presidents, princes and movie-star friends arrived by helicopter and limousine to golf on the private course, fish in stocked lakes and otherwise luxuriate in the Annenberg fantasyland. Now you can have a glimpse of it too.

On March 1, after a $61.5-million renovation that includes a new visitors center and garden, Sunnylands will open to the public. On view will be the Midcentury architecture by Los Angeles icon A. Quincy Jones, the interior design by the legendary William Haines and his associate, Ted Graber, and, most important, the Sunnylands mystique.

PHOTO GALLERY: Inside Sunnylands, a modern castle in the California desert

Preview tours during Palm Springs Modernism Week quickly sold out. But earlier this month, Geoffrey Cowan, president of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, and curator Anne Rowe led a private walk-through of the storied Rancho Mirage home, one of the Coachella Valley's largest and most historic.

Silent film studio revived as architect's live-work retreat

A hundred years before “The Artist” made its run for Oscar history, American Film Co. arrived in Santa Barbara and produced nearly 1,000 silent films in what the industry considered Hollywood North. You can find out about the influential Flying A, as the studio was called, and take a trip back in time at the recently opened Santa Barbara Historical Museum exhibition “The Flying A: Silent Film in Santa Barbara.” Or if you're architect Peter Becker, you can simply take a walk in your garden.

Becker is the proud owner of what had been part of the Flying A. His long, narrow garden, planted circa 1913, still has the original redwood pergola and a profusion of Cecile Brunners, the ubiquitous soft pink roses that bear successive flushes in spring, summer and fall.

“Indeed, they seem to be in bloom year round,” says Becker, who believes his Cecile Brunners may be some of the earliest plantings of the rose in Southern California.

PHOTO GALLERY: Peter Becker's garden and home

They are but one part of the silent film studio once located at Chapala and Mission streets — at its peak, “one of the most influential studios in the world, cranking out nearly a reel or two a day,” says Dana Driskel, studio professor of film media studies at UC Santa Barbara.

Smith & Others twofer: Pacific on one side, Torrey Pines on other

With banks of windows up to 20 feet high taking in the ocean to the west, the new Del Mar home of David and Linda Weinman would seem hard-pressed to deliver a more glorious view -- unless you were to look toward the south, where more glass frames vistas of Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve.

"Our idea was to connect the park at the back with the ocean in front,” said Ted Smith, who, with Kathy McCormick, makes up the architectural firm Smith & Others.

Their task was not easy, given that the sloping site has large houses on both sides. The architects not only positioned the new house close to the property's rear boundary, thus opening up the view to Torrey Pines, but also elevated it, expanding the views northward.

The result feels like something of a giant Modernist balcony from which the Weinmans can take full advantage of their perch high above the Pacific.

PHOTO GALLERY: The Weinman house

The three-bedroom, 3,500-square-foot home looks deceptively simple: two concrete-and-glass boxes. Inside, however, the ingenuity of McCormick is much in evidence. She designed every room with a different ceiling height, ranging from 20 feet in the living room to a mere 7 feet where the sloping ceiling of the master bedroom hits the east wall.

This bedroom, above right, a mezzanine only 12 feet wide, is walled by glass for an exaggerated sense of living, and sleeping, above the ocean.

Spacious house on tiny lot? L.A. architect aims high in Echo Park

Just 15 feet wide, architect Simon Storey's new Echo Park house feels much larger than its 960 square feet. With oversized windows and skylights, the two bedrooms and one bathroom built above the garage are filled with plenty of light and air. On a clear winter day, the rooftop deck with olive trees and native grasses provides views of the snowcapped San Gabriel Mountains, the Griffith Observatory and the Hollywood sign.

But the biggest accomplishment: All of this has risen on a lot that's just 780 square feet.

“Every single person at the building department had the same reaction when they saw my plans,” Storey said. “They would shake their head and laugh.”

Given the challenge of building on a lot with such extreme constraints, the architect managed to get permission to build three stories high, essentially doubling the interior square footage. The house is now a live-work space with Storey's office, Anonymous Architects, in the second bedroom.

The interiors are helped by 11-foot-high ceilings and simple white walls that help to create the illusion of spaciousness. The result is a surprisingly livable home that manages the property's limitations and retains some quirkiness. Situated on a hill, in the crook of L-shaped, one-way Fairbanks Place, the house and its custom windows let Storey know exactly when visitors are approaching. “The cars look like they're coming straight toward you,” he said.

PHOTO GALLERY: Simon Storey's Eel's Nest, inside and out

Storey bought the lot and its tiny 1929 house in 2007, at the height of the boom, for $270,000, nearly 10 times its selling price a decade earlier. He essentially tore down the home in early 2010 and rebuilt from the ground up.

With a construction budget of just $110,000, he had to abandon his original plans for the exterior once he discovered that fire-treating wood would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, the tall house is sheathed in black stucco. Storey dubbed it Eel's Nest, a term inspired by the long but narrow buildings common in urban Japan.

Wall treatment ideas: Instant mood with pattern, texture, color

The red spaghetti wall at the new Highland Park restaurant Maximiliano is a reminder that bold looks can come from the humblest of materials. As we reported last week, the graphic design is etched MDF, the same kind of inexpensive medium-density fiberboard you can find in hardware stores.

The Maximiliano wall prompted us to blast through our weekly home profiles and pluck examples of designers and homeowners who decided to forgo the basic paint job in favor of something different for their walls.

One of our favorites is in the Pasadena home of Walter Herrington, a graphic designer who painted an abstract backdrop for his master bedroom, above. It's complemented by a bed and wooden stool by Christian Liaigre, a floor lamp by Isamu Noguchi and pottery by Oly.

We also love how architect Rebecca Rudolph and her husband, Colin Thompson, a designer and builder, repurposed materials when they remodeled and expanded their house in Atwater Village. In the living room: a wall wrapped in recycled pine fencing, right. 

For more glimpses at wall treatments, keep reading ...

Earthy modern: new Marmol Radziner house in Venice

Megan Schoenbachler is distracted. While giving a tour of her family's Marmol Radziner-designed house in Venice, she notices the light and the angle from the second-floor master bathroom, looking over the courtyard hot tub and toward the kitchen on the first floor. “That would make a great shot,” she suggests in a friendly tone to a Times photographer, gesturing to her husband down below in the kitchen. “Open the window, Jonathan,” she says as he slices potatoes.

The photographer tries the picture. Green ferns and the rustic spa are reflected in glass. Jonathan Sela is outlined by a charcoal gray frame around the window. The house's indoor-outdoor beauty comes through perfectly. The shot offers a hint of how Schoenbachler, herself a photographer, and Sela, a cinematographer, applied their eye during the house-building process. Though the couple turned to a noted architectural firm to guide the design, their house is still very much their vision: indoor-outdoor, family friendly, modern but warm and inviting.

The couple were inspired to build a new house after they fell in love with architect Ron Radziner's home, seen on the Venice Art Walk years ago. After remodeling two houses in Venice — one Spanish, the other ranch — the couple knew that this time they wanted something modern for their growing family.

PHOTOS: Marmol Radziner house, warm and family friendly

Tour the Marmol Radzinger house 360°

On a narrow, 5,000-square-foot lot near Abbot Kinney Boulevard, Schoenbachler and Sela's house has the qualities typical of Marmol Radziner's work — efficient, modern, striking in its apparent simplicity — as well as a lush landscape that brings some softness to all the clean lines.