Better Steel

The house is profoundly personal, shared minimalist vision of landscape architects Abbie and Bill Burton and their architect Jennifer Luce, who won two American Institute of Architects awards for it in May.

“What we’re passionate about, along with Jennifer, is design from the essential elements. The raw character of the material is in full view, in its natural form, not covered by anything else,” Bill Burton says. In Luce, 47, Canadian-born with a Harvard design degree, the couple found an artist who heeded the spirit, not just the specifics, of what they wanted.

The Burtons, who live with their two teenagers and a Bernese mountain dog, bought the 1970s, two-storey house seven years ago. “It looked frightening at first…Really odd big bedrooms, black walls, mirrors everywhere,” Bill Burton says. But the couple agreed it had potential. “It had a great ocean view, great basic form. The flat-roof shell was what we were attracted to. And we loved the upside-downness of it.”

Two large bedrooms were on the ground floor. The kitchen, living, dining and master bedroom areas were upstairs, where the entire back of the house overlooks the ocean. Burton says the bedrooms were too big, the public spaces too small, the ocean view minimised by traditional doors and windows.

The couple wanted the house closed in front, where it faces the street, and totally open to the view in back. “Everybody’s private space would take a hit,” Burton says. “We would increase the public spaces which is where we really live.”

The Burtons did keep a central skylight as a “kind of homage” to the old house. Luce turned that into what looks like an art installation by covering it at ceiling height with light-diffusing industrial fabric the same colour as the ceiling.

And then there are those blue-tinged steel floors. The Burtons say they got the idea on a visit to a 50-year-old Wonder Bread bakery in San Diego, where they loved the look of the steel floor, including the marbled patina that occurs over time (some might call it rust).

Luce commissioned the steel plates from one of many different metal craftspeople she regularly works with. The result is a floor that almost calls out to be touched. Slip off a sandal on a torrid day, and steel caresses the sole with its cool, soft, satiny surface.

And there’s more steel here. Entering, what you first see is the profile of a sculptural black steel staircase with what appears to be a vast solid wall of hemlock behind it. The wall isn’t solid at all. It contains invisible doors that camouflage entries to closets, a powder room and the two teenagers’ rooms on the other side of the wall.

A stairway leads up to the heart of the house — the kitchen. It forms the centre of what is essentially one large open living, dining and cooking area, all with an ocean view. Because the Burtons are avid cooks, Luce says, they wanted the kitchen as part of the main living space, rather than off by itself, the “ground zero” of the house. “We live around it, because that’s how we…like to live. We cook, we talk, that’s what we do,” says Burton.

Then there’s that horizontal steel trough set low into the living room wall, filled with what look like crystals. But it’s no decorative misfit in this minimalist environment. Burton clicks a lighter and flame shoots up through the bits of recycled glass. The fireplace.

LAT-WP