Inside a Breathtaking Beverly Hills Home by Montalba Architects

Rip & Tan: Can you start by walking us through your typical process?

David Montalba: This can vary a lot depending on the type of project, although it’s generally centered on the human experience and creating a framework for engagement and interaction in our environment.

Initially, it’s all about listening to the client and the priorities of a project. We then collect that information and turn this into a client’s aspirations program too. It’s also about understanding the context of a project, its parameters, underlying issues and opportunities, and uncovering ideas and creative solutions that integrate design and architecture into an integrated design approach. We align on imagery and aesthetics and conceptualize various concepts in a manner that the clients find legible through drawings, sketches, models, and CD visualization.  It’s an Iterative process—this often leads us to a dialogue within our studio and then with the client about various options and alternatives that eventually reveal a single vision for a project. 

We don’t have a prescribed process as we try to tailor this to the project and the client but these steps are rather consistent in the early design process. Ultimately once the vision and design are clear it’s all about sharing the options on how to make the project happen including developing a budget, schedule and approach to the project’s completion. 

Rip & Tan: How would you describe your ethos as an architecture firm?

David Montalba: We have always focused on the evolution of core ideas within our work and crafting spaces that both engage and aspire are paramount. Through the process ultimately trying to uncover what is holistic, integrated and often a creative solution with a focus towards conceptualism and the big idea. However, what has consistently remained throughout the years of work and growth has been our design values—considering the place, integration of the landscape, honesty of materials, expansion of space, expression of technique, sculpted light and movement through space/flow.

Whether it’s inspiration for a project in the preliminary stages or a point of resolution during the height of design, these principles define and explain our decisions. All of these values create a common thread throughout our work and ultimately we hope Clients also see that as the cohesive feel of our projects. 

Rip & Tan: In terms of style or function, what’s the throughline for this particular home?

David Montalba: The home’s craftsmanship and the simplicity of space create a throughline that is enhanced through framed views and details. Some choices were self-referential, like our desire to combine architecture, interiors and landscape into a singular experience.

For the home, the design began with three courtyards and the home’s interaction with each. From there we complimented the courtyards with custom millwork and furniture that matched the idea of a California Regional Modernism and a clear Japanese influence of the home.  You could say east meets west.

Rip & Tan: What was the initial vision? What of this initial picture most heavily informed the home’s end result? 

David Montalba: The aspiration for the home was to provide a much-needed reprise from the hectic Los Angeles lifestyle and celebrate the idea of peacefulness and recovery, bringing a sense of warmth, texture, and expansion to one’s time in the home.  Our focus was to create an integrated home with expansive connections to the gardens and landscape that take advantage of the unique Southern Californian climate and the home’s unique position facing westward towards the sunset.

Using this inspiration we integrated a series of volumes/courtyards that serve as transitions between the more public and more private zones while creating key poetic and focal moments that form the main circulation and spatial organizational lines within the house.

Rip & Tan: Can you give us an overview of some of the materials you chose and why? 

David Montalba: Many of our homes can be a rather hard-edged modernism and we often find it important to balance this with warmer materials, landscapes, and furnishings. For this home, we were inspired by organic materials and texture, wanting the materials to have unpolished elements. So we implemented a unique rough-hewn lime-based plaster finish on the walls and brushed limestone slab flooring throughout the home. To add warmth and unify the major spaces in the home, we incorporated wood ceilings and integrated unique millwork elements as edges and thoughtful storage throughout the home.

Rip & Tan: At what stage of this project did you feel like it was truly coming together?

David Montalba: This evolved as the project progressed, as we did both the architecture, interiors, and furnishings. From the architecture side, it was the framing phase and feeling the immense scale and volume of the main living space. 

From the interiors and furnishing side, the moment was when the entryway focal piece was placed. It was inspired by a vase we love at Kappa Masa in New York City, which anchors your arrival at the restaurant.  In this case, it anchors the arrival to the entry and provides a powerful focal point and transition to the main living space. 

We worked with local ceramicist Caroline Blackburn to commission a large vessel made with soil from the site that would both welcome and set a ceremonial moment within the home. Once the sculpture was in place it was clear it was all coming together.

Rip & Tan: Are there any particular details you feel most proud of? What about them feels so special to you? 

David Montalba: Perhaps not the most exciting detail, but the most impressive, is the unique structural aspects of this home. Given the neighborhood’s strict maximum structure height of 14 ft, we developed a complex framing strategy to make the roof as thin as possible with all the mechanical equipment running underground. The expansive sliding glass doors in the main room have a specially made support beam that allowed us to maintain design integrity while still being functional. These technical details allow the larger emotional spaces to occur, so while they seem less important they highlight the science of building technology supporting the aspirations and emotional ideas of the space and home.

Rip & Tan: How do procession, light and space play in this home? How did you achieve this?

David Montalba: We thought a lot about this concept of procession—how one is guided to the entry court, framed with an overhead sky opening, large and intentional.  This was followed by the entry door which is solid teak and suppresses your view before you enter and are met with being enveloped by the scale of the main living space and view.  Then leading out into the sunken great room that centers and grounds the home. 

As with all our projects, we focused on the shaping of the natural light through the courtyards and curated a series of uniquely positioned skylights and windows to reflect the distinctive atmosphere of this particular space. 

Rip & Tan: In what ways was the home influenced or inspired by its surroundings?

David Montalba: The client and I were both super aligned and shared appreciation with the site to ensure we created a home that inspires one’s emotions, anchors you in its space, and leaves you with an everlasting sense of peacefulness. We wanted to capture the spirit of the place and its unique position on the hills overlooking the western edge of the Los Angeles Mountains while maintaining expansions of space on the site through variations in the transitions between rooms.

We introduced a series of internal and external garden courtyards that infuse the home with natural light and a unique landscape element corresponding to the adjacent program. To compound the ceiling limitations the great majority of the utilities, duct, piping, etc. are subterranean rather than in the ceiling/roof allowing us to take full advantage of the 14 feet throughout the home. The great room, living room, and primary bedroom floor levels are sunken, while all additional spaces within the home are elevated by a foot with 13-foot ceilings.

Rip & Tan: Architecturally-related or otherwise, what’s something exciting or inspiring you lately? 

David Montalba: Ideas of regeneration and a better understanding of the provenance of materials we use in our projects.  I think our shared responsibility as shepherds of the environment and our limited natural resources is both a larger concern but also exciting as we see ourselves and our clients being able to better shape this in our work.  

Art always inspires us, how texture and or polish can add to spaces and the unique practices of the artists.  Most recently, I met the artist Alex Israel and have been inspired by his diverse mediums that are rooted in LA culture but seem to navigate both the past and our future in a transcendent way.

Creating a special one-of-a-kind reading room.  This idea of making a room dedicated to reading and history, with a clear bend towards the silencing of technology.  I have always had a love of books, and am obsessed with the idea of creating a space that is preserved for reading, learning and concentrating. I am truly centered on how we learn and focus on ideas and stories without the distractions of modern life. A grounding idea!