L.A. breakthroughs - new house and remodeling ideas

"The City of Tomorrow." "A laboratory of marvels." "Instant architecture in an instant townscape." This is how historians and writers have described the spirit of invention in Los Angeles when well-known architects and designers like Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolph Schindler, Richard Neutra, and Charles and Ray Eames were experimenting with new materials and concepts for modern houses.

Today, Los Angeles remains an exciting laboratory of design ideas and strategies, offering lessons for anyone contemplating a remodel or building a new house. The innovative spirit continues even as it is challenged by the high cost of real estate, especially in western sections of Los Angeles.

Here, homeowners, and architects are showing a knack for creative compromise as they build and remodel. Their pragmatic, problem-solving designs make the most of small spaces, tight lots, and difficult sites without sacrificing outdoor living or privacy. Both new and remodeled houses pack a variety of spatial surprises within minimal square-footages.

Above, you can glimpse four of the eight houses we show on the next 10 pages. The consistent thread is drama. No single style has emerged--but that seems proper for a city composed of so many images.

Small House opens up with bright gallery

Add a floor while keeping interiors open and light--this second-story addition to a three-bedroom, 1,200-square-foot house in Mar Vista met the challenge.

The extra 1,500 square feet (three bedrooms, two baths) is organized around a two-story, 5- by 36-foot gallery running from the front door to the back of the house. A ridge skylight extends the length of the gallery, bringing daylight into both floors. A balcony leading to the bedrooms rings the open space upstairs.

Supporting the gallery are 4-by-4 posts. To stress the 16-foot height of the hall, the architects created a tapering effect by wrapping the lower posts with built-up columns of wire mesh covered with plaster. Upper posts are exposed.

The gallery helps define spaces on the ground floor without shutting them in. There, only a bedroom and bath are enclosed. The architects incorporated the two other original bedrooms into a single living-dining-kitchen area.

Roof decks on the front of the house provide outdoor space off the upstairs bedrooms. To express the house-building process in a graphic way, the architects treated the railings as if they were unfinished, recalling unplastered lath. Design: Santa Monica architects James G. Stafford and Rebecca L. BindeR.

A tight-budget tower house

Like a modern dollhouse or perhaps even Rapunzel's tower, this tiny 795-square-foot house turns smallness into a theatrical event. "A very tight budget, and the client's fond recollections of carriage houses and old garages, suggested making a simply framed structure with living spaces behind a pierced wall," recalls one of its architects.

Built for artist-printer Susan King, the house consists of a single volume rising to two stories at a corner tower and divided by an angled stairway. The stair leads up to a built-in desk-landing, then to a reading-sleeping loft in the tower.

Both loft and landing overlook a printing studio on one side through the "pierced wall" and the kitchen-sitting area on the other. Only the combination bathroom-drakroom is fully enclosed.

Two big, old-fashioned carriage house doors open the skylit studio, making installation of heavy printing equipment relatively easy.

Under the tower, the corner front door leads past the stairway to the compact kitchen. There, curved seating--recalling a booth in a 1930s diner--saves floor space. The stairway provides a crescent of bleacher seating. Design: Santa Monica architects Buzz Yudell and John Ruble of Moore, Ruble, Yudell.

Two-bedroom bungalow grows long, lean, tall

A long, narrow, two-story extension at the back of this two-bedroom Santa Monica bungalow gives Pat and Jack Lasater needed space for their growing family without loss of much precious outdoor living area. It's also practically invisible from the street, in a neighborhood of low-slung bungalows from the 1920s and '30s.

With a family room below and a master bedroom suite above, the 650-square-foot addition projects 23 feet beyond the rear of the house, displacing part of a very generous house-wide deck.

The Lasaters wanted to preserve as much of this deck as possible, so the addition was restricted to 12 feet in width. Tied in with the house, it forms an L around the deck. A 4- by 5-foot pop-out at the junction of the L makes room for doors between the deck and new family room.

Upstairs, the wing is slightly larger, with a walk-in closet and bathroom occupying a double-gabled section that projects 4 feet over the deck. This projection also serves as a kind of canopy over the doors to the family room.

From the bedroom, French doors open onto an elegantly curved balcony with a view west across rooftops to the ocean. Supported by 6-by6 posts, the balcony shelters a deck-level sitting area where the Lasaters enjoy outdoor meals.