Sheer determination
Architecture professor Dariouche Showghi was determined to build a smaller, more economic house for himself and his wife, and so the teacher became the student: He did his homework. There was a vacant lot for sale in Laguna Beach that no one wanted to buy. It was so steep, dropping 90 feet from street level, that it seemed impossible to build on. For months, Showghi sat on top of the extreme slope and studied it. He stomped up and down the solid bedrock and envisioned a tiered house cascading down the property, with ocean views from every room.
He had the ground tested by a geologist to make sure it was stable. Then he asked his son, Kurosh, a fine cabinetmaker by trade who climbs mountains for sport, to help him. Kurosh, 36, joked that it would be a "crash course" in construction, so he'd bring along his rock-climbing harnesses and ropes.
Showghi, 69, knew what he was getting into. He has taught structure courses and construction technology for 30 years at Cal Poly Pomona and has designed two other homes for his family, one on the same Laguna Beach street. This house, however, would be tricky.
"If it were any steeper," says Showghi, "you'd have to carve into the rock and live in a cave."
Building on an angle is expensive, time-consuming and dangerous. Machinery, materials and workers have to be hoisted up and down the site. One misstep and something crashes to the ground. A structural miscalculation can make the home uninhabitable. There is also intense design pressure. In addition to being safe, people have to feel safe and not as if they're on the ledge of a skyscraper.
Yet Showghi was ready to accept the challenge. The key, he says, is to use the negatives to make a positive. He analyzed property values in the neighborhood, which reach into the millions. He considered that no one had faith in the weed-overrun, 60-by-140-foot lot. So he offered a puny $85,000 -- and got it. Then he put his classroom lessons to work.
Last December, after two years of construction, he finished his house, a Lego-like contemporary on four levels: office and garage on the top; the main living area on the second; guest apartment on the third; and on the bottom, a design studio for Poly students visiting Showghi's hands-on lab. Switchback stairs indoors and a long column of steps outdoors connect the floors.
The cost: $433,000, half the price of a comparable house on a flat lot.
- Two-Year Grant Received Jun 19, 1988
- SAN DIEGO PEOPLE Nov 08, 1988
- USC Honors Architects Apr 03, 1994
