About Whipple Russell Architects
HOW WHIPPLE RUSSELL WORKS WITH CLIENTS
Our work begins with a series of collaborative dialogues. By listening carefully to our clients, we discover how they will live in their home, and what their unique preferences are. From this listening a floor plan starts to emerge that supports their desired experience. This in turn, determines the design’s overarching aesthetic, such as whether the home should be a series of nest-like spaces, or more of an open expanse.
Throughout the entire design process, we maintain a flexible and evolving relationship with our clients, prioritizing communication and a productive flow of ideas. What we design is what is built, so it’s important that there’s a complete understanding of the final plan. Comprehensive 3D videos and a virtual reality experience allow clients to see their project as it takes shape, before construction begins.
HOW WHIPPLE RUSSELL DESIGNS
Spanning 40 years, our work has ranged from Mediterranean and Prairie Style, to Provençal and Bauhaus, but today we are almost exclusively called on to design modern resort style luxury homes. Each showcases exceptional elements that enhance property values, including hillside settings with ocean, city, and canyon views, indoor outdoor live / work spaces, pools that reflect fire features, and atriums with light filled open volumes. Our warm modern designs are both peaceful retreats and exciting places to entertain, and clients have happily remarked that living in them is like “living in a resort hotel.”
Each of our designs includes five essential components, to varying degrees:
Drama
Drama creates a place where people long to be, and can be created with design elements like double-height glass walls, spacious light filled open volumes, skylights, sweeping vistas, and floating glass walkways. Fire and water features add the drama of nature’s wildness and serene beauty to the built environment, while textures found in contrasting materials add visual interest.
Light
Glass walls and skylights flood our modern homes with natural light, illuminating interior spaces all the way down to lower level anti-basements in houses with open volume atriums. Views, sunlight, and shadows stream in, adding visual displays that change throughout the day.
Elements
Incorporating nature’s elements into the built environment (also known as biophilic design) can contribute to feelings of wellness in the people inhabiting those spaces, as the practice supports the primal desire to be close with the natural world. With floor to ceiling sliding glass walls open to seamless indoor outdoor living, expansive windows and skylights letting in natural light and views, and the use of natural elements and materials in décor, including fire and water features, marble, and textured stone, we add nature’s beneficial presence to our homes, and create immersive, healing, awe-inspiring, and transportive spaces.
Connection
A guiding principle that shapes the architectural design of our homes is our ‘living small’ concept, which ensures that a sense of connection and closeness can be maintained between inhabitants of a house, no matter its size. View corridors and open sight lines that reach throughout multi-story, open volume spaces, and across expansive landscapes, allow for visual connections and shared experiences throughout each day. It’s a philosophy that we continue to evolve with each new project.
Breadth of Experience
Marc’s early work on over 30 designs for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) required him to respond to the varied needs of the museums’ many administrators, restoration experts, and museum curators. From exhibition halls to the storage of ancient artifacts, meeting the museum’s multi-faceted requirements forged his ability for organizing, and translating complex needs into satisfying finished designs.
From the very beginning, Whipple Russell Architects has enthusiastically embraced new technologies and cutting edge products and materials, alongside the application of solid institutional oversight. With specialized knowledge, patience, and a love of problem solving, we navigate building codes and permits, and the politics and processes of planning departments and communities.
MARC WHIPPLE AIA, Principal
Every day, Marc enjoys the privilege of doing the very thing he has been passionate about since early childhood. Born the son of an American diplomat, he grew up overseas, where he was exposed to a multitude of cultures throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe. His introduction to classical architecture in a variety of styles has had a significant impact on the classic influences underpinning his modern architectural principles.
Following his education at Eton College and London’s prestigious Architectural Association School of Architecture, Marc was hired and mentored by the uniquely diverse Los Angeles architect, George Vernon Russell, one of the original California modernists, well known for designing the Café Trocadero on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. George made Marc a project manager on complex projects at a very young age, and when Marc opened his own firm, he honored his late mentor by including his name in that of the practice.
Today, Marc’s signature work is his modern residential designs exemplifying the luxury resort style of the west coast. And though he enjoys a reputation for being one of the top modern residential architects in Southern California, his project roster has expanded to clients from all points on the compass, eager to import the Whipple Russell vision.
YOAV WEISS, Principal
A fascination with the nuances of space – its form, voids, and the movement it enables, has been central to Yoav’s path as a designer. Early childhood explorations building with Legos and K’nex led to formal training in drafting throughout high school, and a degree from The USC School of Architecture in 2011. His perspective is informed by a love of the timeless, tasteful styles of the Bauhaus and Scandinavian modern movements, discovered while studying abroad, and an appreciation for innovation and emerging technologies. In integrating cutting edge tools and techniques, Yoav continually seeks to elevate and improve the design process. Licensed in California since 2018, and part of the firm since 2013, Yoav now serves as one of our principal architects.