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MASS AND TRANSPARENCY IN A PACIFIC COAST HOUSE MALIBU RESIDENCE - MALIBU, USA

SCOTT Mitchell Studio

MASS AND TRANSPARENCY IN A PACIFIC COAST HOUSE MALIBU RESIDENCE - MALIBU, USA
By Michael Webb -

Malibu is shorthand for glamorous oceanfront living, but much of the traffic-clogged Pacific Coast Highway is walled off from the water by wood-framed shacks that seem to be leaning on each other for support, and a jumble of unsightly development scars the arid hills. There’s little for visitors to see. A few lucky residents enjoy expansive, impeccably-tailored houses by Richard Meier, Gwathmey Siegel, and other fashionable architects, but these are concealed behind high walls. The residence that Scott Mitchell designed for Kurt Rappaport stands apart and it has an entirely different character: elemental, raw, and monastic in its rigor. Before establishing his LA studio, Mitchell worked for a protégé of Paul Rudolph, the master of “béton brut”, and he was inspired by two other formgivers. Like Louis Kahn, he has a passion for antiquity, and the influence of Rudolf Schindler is evident in his combination of mass and opacity with transparency and openness. The seed of this project can be found in Schindler’s Kings Road house.
A tangle of regulations slows construction in Malibu and it took seven years to secure all the permits and build this house. The original scheme was a safe variation on a traditional model; happily that idea was abandoned. Rappaport is co-owner of a residential brokerage firm so he understood the need for patience. Having seen Mitchell’s Nobu restaurant and his beach house for a friend nearby, he gave his designer a free hand to interpret an ambitious program on a two-and-a half-hectare bluff that slopes gently down from the highway and then tumbles thirty-five meters to the beach. “It was important to me that the house respond to the natural grade of that rolling slope”, says Mitchell. “I wanted people to feel that we had come with a surgeon’s scalpel and inserted the mass into the land”.
The house was permitted to rise no more than 5.5 meters...

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