Space Rhapsody

Walk into Anthony Pearson and Ramona Trent's Mar Vista home and it's difficult to tell that the dynamic space, rippling into the outdoors from a deceptively low entryway, began its life as a simple postwar California bungalow. By the time its latest owners encountered it, the house, not far from the Santa Monica airport, had already been renovated several times. "An L-shaped floor plan had turned into something approaching a zigzag," Pearson laments.

To help them reimagine its possibilities, the artist couple--Pearson is a rising star whose work combines sculpture with photography, and Trent is well known for her emotive portrait photography--sought out Frank Escher and Ravi GuneWardena, partners in an increasingly high-profile Silver Lake architecture firm. Nearly two years of conversations about design led the owners and architects to a plan for transforming the inward-looking traditional home into a highly varied expression of easy futuristic living. "In the day it feels very calm--like a vacation home," Trent says. "But at night, when the architecture's almost primal, it can become very dramatic."

The architects suggested moving walls and adding giant structural ceiling beams to create an open box. Then they proposed a gently rising roof. No longer strictly a cube, the now-wedge-shaped space began to promise a sense of movement and excitement.

Implementing the design took some ingenious construction, especially with a budget of less than $500,000. In one inspired move, they lowered the roof above the front door. So now, Escher says, "when you walk through and come into the long, open living room, it feels like stepping into the rear of a cave."

That's where Escher and GuneWardena's concept takes off. Not only does the room seem to expand before your eyes, but the far end of the outsized living room appears to have been ripped right off. As indeed it was. The only barrier to the outside is a four-panel set of floor-to-ceiling windows that, for much of the time, remain tucked into a wall cavity. Looking out from this multipurpose living area, the rest of the house now seems to float off the hillside--into thin air.

The process of turning this bungalow into a unified space mirrors the transformations the architects have made in other unlikely Los Angeles locations--such as the extremely minimal Pho Cafe in a Silver Lake mini-mall, and the run-down warehouse on La Cienega they redesigned for the Blum & Poe gallery.