beverly crest: a luxury modern terraced hillside mansion in beverly hills
project name
beverly crest
location
beverly hills, ca
completion date
april 2025
project team
principal architect: marc whipple aia
architect + project manager: yoav weiss
developer
huntington estate properties
consultants:
interior design: ramtin ray nosrati
structural: mlb engineering
audio / video: plug it in systems
photographer: simon berlyn
media coverage
In Los Angeles, where the landscape is as much a client as the human resident, architecture becomes an act of translation. This Beverly Hills hillside home, conceived by Whipple Russell Architects, answers a geologic challenge with sculptural serenity: a cascading Mediterranean retreat that follows the natural slope of its ridgeline parcel with grace, restraint, and reverence.
Perched on a steep incline without a single flat pad, the home emerges not as a monolith, but as a rhythmic series of terraced levels, each responding to topography, setback, and sun. A three-story stack was prohibited by geology and code; instead, the home steps elegantly down the hill, revealing five distinct levels that blend into the terrain like architecture in dialogue with earth.
A bridge across a tranquil reflecting pond welcomes visitors to the entry, where glass, stone, and wood begin their quiet interplay. Just below, a 500-square-foot basement lounge sits recessed beneath a courtyard, hidden from the street and wrapped in stillness.
From the main floor, anchored by the kitchen, breakfast nook, and entertaining spaces, two staircases lead to the lower level: one winding downward in a sculptural S-curve past an Audrey Hepburn portrait to the lounge, bar, theater, indoor spa, and basketball court; the other also rising to a rooftop terrace, where the view stretches from downtown to the ocean with a tilt of the head.
Throughout the home, materials reflect a warm modernism rarely seen in contemporary hillside builds: rich woods, green velvet, natural stone, and white venetian plaster create a palette that is tactile and timeless. Finishes were intentionally softened, gridded guardrails, wood slats, and box-mullioned glass lend a sense of craft and structure. This is not minimalist modernism; it is an invitation to linger.
In the primary suite, a sense of intrigue persists. The entrance to the primary bath is seamlessly concealed behind wood paneling, hidden doors flush with the headboard wall swing open only to those who know they exist. It's a moment of architectural theater, subtle and seductive.
Outdoor space was treated as essential architecture: the pool, flanked by sculptural fire features and accessed via mirror-image pool steps, is a stage for reflection and play. Water trickles from spherical fountains surrounded by square fire rings, and a waterfall at the edge of the infinity pool cascades down into ponds beside the lower-level lounge. Each elevation offers its own retreat: a spa here, a gym there, mini golf below, all revealed in layers, never at once.
Maximized to its zoning envelope and carved directly into the slope, the home is a feat of constraint and vision, as responsive to code as it is to climate, as reverent to the land as it is luxurious in use. It is, in every way, a house that couldn’t belong anywhere else.
