CARMEN ROGERS found her new home almost by accident a couple years ago while flipping through the pages of a magazine at the supermarket checkout line. There it was photographed on a steep hillside in Montecito, the home that architect Barton Myers built for himself and his wife in 1998.
Divided into three separate structures, the steel-and-glass house is uncompromisingly industrial in style yet is still in harmony with the unspoiled, oak-filled hillside.
Carmen and her husband, Rick, knew this was the home they wanted, but they didn't know if it could be adapted for a corner lot on a busy Westside street.
They contacted Myers, who was intrigued by the challenge. Could the new house retain the qualities the couple most admired in his home, particularly the sense of openness to landscape, in a single-family neighborhood, near Olympic Boulevard?
Myers had been toying with the idea of designing a series of houses, each repeating a few signature elements: steel frame, floor-to-ceiling windows and roll-up doors. These projects -- and the Rogerses' home in particular -- would explore steel home construction and test the idea that the hard-edged design of his Montecito house could fit any location.
The newly finished Rogers house resembles the Myers house in some ways but is anything but a replica. The individual pavilions of the Montecito house march straight down the hill like stair steps. The Rogerses' house, in contrast, sits on a flat double lot on a busy Westside corner and is built around in a "classic Los Angeles courtyard," Myers says.
THE architect formed the courtyard by arranging three separate, steel-framed structures in a "U" shape around a long, narrow courtyard. Two of the buildings have roll-up doors filled with windows. (The architect calls them "roll-up curtain walls.") The more conventional walls have rows of clerestory windows along the roof line to maximize natural light.
At the center is the main house, with a large living-dining room with 16-foot ceilings facing south, while a guest house faces west. On the opposite end is Rick's home office and pool parlor.
The most dramatic moment occurs when doors on the main house roll up out of sight, literally opening to the courtyard. In this configuration, the house looks almost as if no walls ever existed between indoors and outdoors, much as those walls seem to disappear at Myers' Montecito house.
