Our California Modern Legacy: 38 Years of Evolving Luxury Resort Style Living
Looking through our design archives at the number of projects and the terrific clients we’ve enjoyed serving over the years, nearly four decades has added up to a body of work that we’re excited to share! Today we continue to bring the California modern resort style to clients all over the country and abroad. Keep an eye out for upcoming work in Las Vegas, Tahoe, Reno, Palm Desert, Los Angeles, La Jolla, Beverly Hills, Montecito, Pacific Palisades, Great Falls, VA, and Paradise Valley, AZ!
Now solidly in our luxury modern resort style era, let’s take a look back through the years to see the design evolution that has brought us here.
Marc: Until the last 15 to 20 years, LA wasn't overly receptive to modern design. Early on, having a passion for designing modern houses, well, you needed the clients to go along with that and they didn't exist for the most part. Those projects were few and far between. It’s odd because public spaces, the Case Study houses, Bauhaus, were meant to launch a whole modern LA era. But when there was a brand new tract development, the common denominator was traditional homes. The interesting thing is, LA has some extraordinary modern designs of office spaces, museums, commercial buildings, even restaurants. It’s two parallel paths. What we're good at and what we wanted to do just recently became more popular. Lucky for us, Los Angeles has finally embraced California Modern. We find it very gratifying to have, in small part at least, contributed to its growth.
Starting with the most recent, here are some of our projects and design chapters through the years…
Modern Resort Style Living
Hutton Drive 2641 - 2024
The amenities and functionality of this design make living in 7,500 sq ft feel like 15,000. It’s resort style comfort living, modern, but not cold, with strong lines that hold soft textures, warm colors, and comfortable places to be, with plenty of natural light. Sliding glass walls and an indoor outdoor design open up the living room and kitchen to a backyard with upper level balcony area. From this raised sun deck, views overlook the entire property, including the saltwater swimming pool and spa below, multiple fire pits, and an outdoor kitchen and bar. A private Ipe wood walkway bridge connects this upper level directly to the primary bedroom suite.
Hutton Driive 2641. Photo by Adam Latham
Hutton Drive 2641. Photo by Adam Latham
Hutton Drive 2641. Photo by Adam Latham
Benedict Canyon - 2023
It’s always fun to see the evolution of our projects as they change hands with new ownership. Our original client for Benedict Canyon was from the sports world, and he wanted an open-plan house for entertaining, that would also include a photography studio and gallery space for displaying his large scale artworks, and a large front lawn for playing ball. Seven years later, in new hands, the original bones are still in place, the landscape is more mature, and the rooms have been repurposed to suit the needs of the new owners.
Benedict Canyon 2023. Photo by Anthony Barcelo
Benedict Canyon 2023. Photo by Anthony Barcelo
Benedict Canyon 2023. Photo by Anthony Barcelo
Serenity - 2022
Located inside the gated community of The Vintage in Indian Wells, California, Serenity is a creative collaboration with the clients, a businessman/engineer and artist, who partnered on every aspect of the interior design, and personally curated or co-designed each of the many art pieces throughout the house.
To achieve the spaciousness of a two-story home within a community that requires all houses be just one story high, and to cool the interior from the hot desert climate, a bright lower level (anti-basement) was created by digging down. This floor is filled with natural light from the large front and rear sunken courtyards and glass walls that surround, and includes a dance floor, home theater, race car museum, gym, and spa.
Serenity. Photo by William MacCollum
Bighorn - 2022
This modern desert home was built adjacent to the Bighorn Golf Club in Palm Desert, California, in the foothills of the Santa Rosa Mountains. In addition to a luxury indoor outdoor feeling, the client wanted views of water from every vantage point in the house. At 5,000 square feet, there's a simplicity to the design that honors the mountains, the views, the relationship to the outdoors, and water. It’s a convivial space with room for overnight guests and lots of people eating and conversing in multiple places. It’s also an intimate and serene getaway for one.
Bighorn. Photo by William MacCollum
Bundy Drive - 2021
Our three-acre Bundy Drive project, completed in collaboration with Ramtin Ray Nosrati of Huntington Estates Properties, is brimming with entertainment and the luxury amenities that bring resort style living home. Our design goal for this modern mansion was to create a spacious home with a large footprint, that would still provide a sense of connection for the inhabitants. View corridors between the multiple floors and across the open volume spaces achieved this goal of “living small” (a signature Marc Whipple design element).
Bundy Drive. Photo by Simon Berlyn
Bundy Drive. Photo by Simon Berlyn
Bundy Drive. Photo by Simon Berlyn
Summitridge Drive - 2021
This hourglass shaped property sits high on top of a ridge, with steep slopes on two sides. The challenge was to create a viable home on an unusually shaped site, with height restrictions and required setbacks. The solution was a modern indoor outdoor resort style mansion set on many levels, with beautiful canyon and city views on both sides. It’s a modern design with lots of glass, but with warm, romantic finishes inside and out. A guest house with private roof deck adds to the terraced effect of the design. All furniture was custom designed and built, overseen by Troy Adams of Troy Adams Design, project manager, interior designer, and creative collaborator.
Summitridge Drive. Photo by Anthony Barcelo
Summitridge Drive. Photo by Anthony Barcelo
Summitridge Drive. Photo by Anthony Barcelo
The Anti-Basement & a Commitment to Modern Designs
The era prior to our most recent was when Marc and the team were able to consistently focus on purely modern designs, and it’s when they honed some of the trademark elements and techniques that we still love to incorporate today. These include expansive unobstructed views, indoor outdoor designs, open entry volumes, clean horizontal lines, and optimized functionality. The anti-basement concept was also born in this era. This is when we sink an indoor courtyard-like space down below grade, in order to transform what would normally be a dark basement into a lower level living space that’s full of natural light. It’s still a current design favorite today! At our Serenity House, a three-story atrium floods the home’s 10,000 square foot lower level with light and air.
Los Tilos – 2019
This project, located in the Outpost Estates area of the Hollywood Hills, is all about the hillside and the views, and those views include both the Hollywood Sign and the Hollywood Bowl. Each terrace is the roof of the level below it, in a modern Californian interpretation of the terraced hillsides that overlook the Mediterranean Sea.
Marc: The property is situated at the end of a cul-de-sac, and we pushed the site out as far as possible on the slope, so the house is well below street level. This allowed us to do an upside-down house; the approach is a curvy elevated driveway that’s pretty steep. As you go down, the views just get better and better, the gates open, and you are onto the roof of the house, completely surrounded by south-facing “jetliner” views. So, the whole experience for the homeowner or a guest, just getting to the house, is very dramatic.
Los Tilos. Photo by William MacCollum
Trousdale – 2019
In this project the challenge was to find solutions for fitting a lot of functionality into a limited space, as well as to again have a spacious home still feel like it “lives small.” At Trousdale, a central open volume atrium topped with a skylight and crossed by a glass bridge walkway illuminates a lower level that houses a wine cellar, home gym, golf simulation area, massage salon, and home theater.
Marc: Trousdale was another well-received project. And again, the living small means if you are going to bed you aren’t going up a closed stairway and down a hall to the third door on the left. The idea is that right outside your bedroom you can look back to where you were, catch a corner of the kitchen, or see into the family room to say goodnight to someone. In this design you can be downstairs next to the theater and see someone near the front door, or be practicing your golf swing and in a few steps see who is up in the kitchen. Absent this strong design drive of the central volume, the family connection is lost. This strategy guides a lot of decisions at our end, and when you explain it to a client they sort of get it – but when they see it and feel it as the house takes shape, they say, “Wow, – I love it.”
The program just didn’t fit the capacity of the house, along with the neighborhood height restrictions, shoving all that into a small box was a challenge. It's architecturally really dense, but it works well. The spaces are on the smaller side, but because they're so open to each other, it on the one hand feels big, and on the other hand, it lives small.”
Trousdale. Photo by Jason Speth.
Georgina Avenue - 2017
Located in a quiet Santa Monica neighborhood, this project was a close collaboration with the client, who was inspired by the openness of our Summit House design. The central volume with stairway was part of the original concept, as was the goal that one would open the front door and see all the way through the house to the backyard and outdoors beyond.
Marc: The client is a designer and wanted to project manage and do the interiors. The thing was she had an average suburban site and wanted it to accommodate a substantial program. The central volume with a skylight makes this work. The atrium is open to below grade, making room for a bar, screening area, and gym. It was a great collaboration, she really loves design and was game to learn. Project management is not for the faint of heart.
Georgina Avenue. Photo by William MacCollum
Georgina Avenue. Photo by William MacCollum
Georgina Avenue. Photo by William MacCollum
Benedict Canyon - 2016
Our original client, former California Angels and Texas Rangers pitcher and current auto racing team owner, CJ Wilson, wanted an open-plan house for entertaining that also had a photography studio, and a gallery space suitable for hanging his large scale art projects. The double height X in the glass in the gallery represents the straight-edge no drugs or alcohol lifestyle that he advocates.
Marc: This is an example of a design that was heavily influenced by the site and the topography and very specifically designed to the client’s programming needs. The big hallway off of the bedroom wing was for him to display his photography. And he wanted guest rooms right off the pool area. It’s in the category of super custom for the person that's going to live in it.
Benedict Canyon 2016. Photo by William MacCollum
Benedict Canyon 2016. Photo by William MacCollum
Benedict Canyon 2016. Photo by William MacCollum.
Walker Road - 2015
This three-story house sits on five acres in the Great Falls area of Virginia, a suburb of Washington D.C. The clients were familiar with Marc’s West Coast work, and wanted his talent for framing vistas to celebrate their views of treetops and distant valleys. They also wanted an economical modern house of a certain size, and left Marc to design a floor plan that was simple, beautiful, and livable. The area mostly features traditional homes, but with the site being so large, and with no close neighbors nearby, they felt free to build a fully modern home with lots of glass through which to enjoy the spectacular sights.
Taking into account the changing seasons, steps were taken to provide for the harsh climate - hot and humid in summer, lots of rain and snow in winter. Dual-pane high-efficiency glass was used throughout, and a geo-thermal heating and cooling system was installed. Due to the cold, frost line foundations were deeper, and all structural systems were strengthened to accommodate a snow load on the roof. The exterior materials are white plaster and horizontal stacked stone, and what looks like wood on the exterior is actually porcelain tile, chosen for its warm look and practicality, as it can better withstand the harsh weather. Glass screens surround the second floor terrace in place of guardrails, adding a floating quality to the design that’s an unusual construction element on the East Coast, as special consideration must be made for contraction in cold weather.
Walker Road. Photo by William MacCollum
Walker Road. Photo by William MacCollum
Walker Road. Photo by William MacCollum
Laurel Way - 2013
Laurel Way began when the developer saw our Summit House going up nearby, and sought us out, as the design firm of the project. It’s been dubbed the wedding cake for its terraced hillside exterior, and a jewel box for its luxury interiors. Another standout is the extraordinary moat style swimming pool that wraps around the home.
Marc: It's a promontory site, meaning it is hillside on three sides. It's at the end of a ridge. There are beautiful views in all three directions. But the hillside is steep enough that just for safety reasons it warrants a guard rail. So, the moat is in lieu of a guard rail. The view is unobstructed and it also gives a feeling of tranquility and a feeling of safety. There are public streets at the bottom of the hill on all three sides, so you do feel a little bit exposed. The moat, even though it's only five, six feet wide, in most places, it gives you a sense, like medieval times, of protection. It solves multiple objectives. It's an incredibly well-known house. It was just very well received and I think it epitomized contemporary, warm modern at that time. It sort of defined it, and people are still coming to us as a result of it.
Another interesting concept was the detailing. The client was concerned, for instance, about the primary bathroom. The footprint for it is small due to code restrictions and height limits and so forth. And it had to be that size. So the strategy I suggested was rather than a big palatial primary bath, let's make it small and functional, then detail it like a jewel box. That's where that phrase originated and became the mantra of the project, and we applied the concept to all the rooms. The house is 10,000 plus square feet, so it's not a huge house, but every finish, every detail, everything is just top drawer. It's all considered, and well thought out.
Laurel Way. Photo by Art Gray Photography
Laurel Way. Photo by William MacCollum
Laurel Way. Photo by Art Gray Photography
Summit House - 2011
Summit was a complete tear-down of an existing home, with as much of the materials and components recycled as was possible. This was the project that first initiated Marc’s “living small” strategy, as the clients wanted the fairly large house to still allow their family members to see one another, and feel connected throughout the outdoor and indoor public spaces. This was made possible through view corridors, an open plan design, the use of glass walls, floor to ceiling glass, and a lower level bowling alley with underwater windows that look into the adjacent outdoor swimming pool. The modern design also includes a gray water reclamation system.
Marc: I think they tried to articulate that they wanted a larger home because they felt that that was appropriate to the site and appropriate to their new lifestyle, but they didn't want it to feel like too large a house. The design theory I developed, which I termed “living small” seemed to solve the problem for them. Planning everything around a central volume allows a visual connection along different axes within the house, reminders of where you are going and where you have been.
Summit House. Photo by Roger Davies
Summit House. Photo by Roger Davies
Summit House. Photo by William MacCollum
Turning Points
These earlier projects were important transitional moments for the firm, they exemplified our creative breadth, and were gratifyingly successful, raising our visibility and opening up possibilities for the future.
Hopen Place - 2010
This mid-century modern classic in the Hollywood Hills was an exciting design. It features a sleek infinity pool alongside a luxury glass walled primary bedroom with unobstructed sky and city views, terrace fire bowls and reflecting ponds, underwater pool windows in the home theater, and a textured stacked stone waterfall.
Marc: It started as a remodel and it grew to be a big remodel, in the end half the house was an addition. The pool windows were one of the first times I think that had been done in LA. Hopen Place was definitely a turning point for us. We did the interior design, working with the clients, two fairly young English guys with impeccable taste. Much of the interior, including the furnishings, was ordered from Europe. Our collaboration was a definite success and it was photographed beautifully by William MacCollum.
Hopen Place. Photo by William MacCollum
Hopen Place. Photo by William MacCollum
Hopen Place. Photo by William MacCollum
9342 Sierra Mar - 2008
An early hillside project, this house is built around outdoor living spaces and views, and features a modern use of water, with the pool placed right at the edge of the home. The house is view oriented, but also has the feel of a multi-level residence wrapped around a warm central courtyard. A slight Asian accent is found in the slatted entrance gate edged with bamboo, the dark honey mahogany floors, and the roof rafter details. This project expanded the firm’s work into the Hollywood Hills, starting a run of exceptional hillside homes.
Marc: Sierra Mar was really about outdoor spaces, views, and the Asian flavor. It was a major remodel that honestly should have been a tear down, there wasn't much left of the existing house by the time it was done. The Asian influence came from the existing house. We had to think, what can we do with this to make it feel modern, but not destroy the whole thing? And it worked. Half the house has the existing roof lines. It was the genesis of our warm, contemporary vocabulary, it just worked. It had a really warm, dark colored exterior plaster, and mahogany interior, but in a very contemporary setting. The house garnered a great deal of media exposure, which was really exciting for us.
Harold Way - 2008
This Hollywood Hills bachelor pad was a pure modern design, with out-to-the-edge glass for viewing the shimmering city lights below. The floor plan surrounds an all-white standing fireplace in the living area, and in the dining room sits a modular motorized dining table. When not in use, the seating can be pushed together to create a minimalist glossy cube. Views in the modern living room look on a luxury sports car that’s parked just on the other side of the glass.
Marc: The whole house was edgy and that was the mandate. It was a bachelor pad, overlooking Sunset Boulevard up in the Hills. The kitchen is tiny, everyone ate out. It was the LA lifestyle at that time. There was no formal dinning room but I felt something was needed. The client, a car collector, loved machined designs, so he created a beautiful robotic metal table.
Buckskin Drive - 2006
This house was designed for a repeat client In Laguna Hills, on a sloping property with stunning 180-degree views. It was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie Style, called the first uniquely American architecture. This version features an exterior of natural materials, including brick, wood, and plaster, framed by clean lines and long eaves. It was the first project where Marc also did the hardscape design, and this includes the patio, pool, outdoor eating areas, and the first time he employed the striking combination of water and fire features, still a favorite today!
Marc: We’ve probably done five or six projects for this client altogether over the years. He built this house himself, he was a carpenter and a craftsman. Their desire for Buckskin was to have a modern house, but they had fallen in love with a neighborhood that wouldn't allow a true modern, this was the early 2000s. It needed to be a traditional style, so we chose Prairie Style as a way to get what they wanted and still fit in the neighborhood.
Mandeville Canyon - 2001
This house is a romantic blend of contemporary and Mediterranean architectural sensibilities, with a plan that called for open, cleanly outlined spaces that would flow one into the other. The thick, clay colored walls feature deep portals that create sculptures of light in constant variation throughout the day. This is the first design where the swimming pool meets the edge of the house at a large expanse of glass, producing a dazzling effect both indoors and out. This was also Marc’s first use of his now signature narrow, vertical “ribbon” windows.
Marc: The row of ribbon windows are a way to bring in natural light without exposing a wall full of glass. You can use them on more private sides of the house, you can use them in the front where the house is facing the street. It’s a really successful way to set up rhythm and a design so that it's graphic.
The famous architectural photographer, Julius Shulman, came and visited the house after hearing it was going up and that it was different.
Marc: Shulman told me cellular architecture was what came to his mind. Our client was really into how natural light changes at different times of the day. Because we had a south facing room and wanted north light in it, we pulled the roof up which provided space for north facing windows. And that's what gave rise to all the different roof heights, and contributed to the decision of a one story design.
The Early Days & Modernism as a Strategy
Marc has been drawn to modern lines since the beginning of his career in his twenties, when he was hired and mentored by one of the original California modernists, the uniquely diverse Los Angeles architect, George Vernon Russell. He admired Russell’s devotion to simplicity, clarity, and clean design. While managing various projects for Russell, Marc worked on the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, beginning in 1985. This included over 30 different projects within the 400,000 ft. facility in Exposition Park.
Marc: Museum work is complicated because it's a multi-headed client. There's a board of directors, there's a director and an assistant director of the museum. There are curator groups, and the exhibits department, historians–the list of groups that you've got to integrate and work with is something close to a dozen. I loved it because it was complicated and interesting, all the different departments are fascinating in the focus of their work… insects, fish, birds, dinosaurs, it's the full gamut.
When Russell passed away in 1989, Marc continued to work under the name, The Russell Group, and one of his early projects in this era was the opportunity to design a major ‘down to the studs’ remodel of a midcentury modern for a commercial director. Standout features of Rustic Canyon include the use of clerestory windows, and the double-height ‘lightbox’ entry, both elements that are still part of Marc’s signature style.
A few more projects from this early era include:
Chesebro - 2000
A prime voice in the planning of this project was the land itself; a vacant piece of golden, Southern California chaparral, perfect for a simple barn-like house with trusses in a T-shape that could easily be added on to for future expansion.
Marc: That house is all about the central living space and the volume of it. A loft style, with a huge volume of space, that was the anchor of the whole thing.
Siena Hotel + Spa - 2003
This large project was completed in 2 years, from design to opening. It includes 250 rooms and suites, a casino, banquet facilities, and a spa with pool on the roof.
Marc: It's not a style necessarily, you can bring the modern design approach to a project that to everyone else looks like a traditional building, but it still has that modern design methodology. Modern basically manifests in the floor plan. The floor plan is the organization of the building. And then, modern design tells you, form follows function. The function is the floor plan. The form is the skin, if you will, the third dimension. And in the case of these other projects, the same thing, the strategy is modern. The floor plan is modern, but it may not look that way from the outside. Essential to the modern design are view axes, circulation axes, a certain amount of symmetry, definitely balance and harmony between the spaces. But, not - here's a room with four walls and a door. Here's another room with four walls and a door, you're free of all that. So, that's the main difference. In the case of the Siena Hotel, the process of checking into the hotel is actually more popular now than it was then. It was, come in and sit down and have an experience with the person behind the desk, as opposed to getting in line and getting up to a counter. So, it was a different type of thinking, a sort of re-examining. And that's what modern philosophy is, you just look at things a little bit differently. What would be enjoyable, as opposed to just following the norm, what would be appropriate, what would be a different way of doing that particular thing?
Petersen Automotive Museum -1994
The challenge with this project was to transform a former department store into the largest automobile museum west of the Mississippi. The ground floor featured a dedicated display of automobiles set in their historical context, including more than 150 rare and classic cars, trucks, and motorcycles.
Looking ahead, we’re excited to continue evolving and growing our repertoire of luxury modern designs! Stay tuned…