Our California Modern Legacy: 38 Years of Evolving Luxury Resort Style Living

Beverly Hills has long been known for its distinctive blend of exclusivity, luxury living, and sunny Southern California climate that’s perfect for year around indoor outdoor living.

Los Angeles has become one of the most recognizable settings for luxury residential houses and modern architectural designs, with its unique combination of warm Southern California climate, luxury lifestyle, community of creatives, coastal and hillside settings, and love of outdoor living.

In exploring the creatives who help to bring our modern homes to life, we spoke with Helene Brown and Tanya Kim of Fresh Paint Art Advisors, a woman-owned, women-led art consulting firm with a mission to transform our environments through art.

In Los Angeles, where the landscape is as much a client as the human resident, architecture becomes an act of translation.

Our out-to-the-edge floating glass walls that eliminate the divide between outdoors and in bring nature’s thrilling visuals right inside our luxury bedroom suites, elevating them into truly resort style spaces.

Modern resort style homes are retreats from the outside world, places to live out nearly every facet of our lives, in the comfort and privacy of our own space. Home movie theaters (and media rooms) complement this luxurious mode of living, inviting us to unwind and relax, escape the day, explore, and get inspired, without having to go anywhere.

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!

Trained as an architect, and drawn to the avant-garde, Paola Navone carved out a path for herself within high end modern design with a trademark style full of color, whimsy, art, craft, and cultural celebration.

A modernist who welcomed the emotional landscape into his architectural designs, Luis Barragán created modern homes as sanctuaries for communing with the self.

Designer and artist Ray Eames was instrumental in creating some of the mid-century modern styles and products adored and coveted by a post-World War II America, but in her time received almost no credit for her contributions.

Luxury resort style living doesn’t require an enormous home or modern estate, it can be enjoyed in as little as 5,000-10,000 square feet.

Imposing and intimate, dangerous and beautiful, abstract and expressive, Richard Serra’s otherworldly steel sculptures, bent into gracefully curving shapes and modernist planes, stand in delicate balance, tilted against one another, or simply against the air, paused in movement by the forces of gravity.

As we continue to explore the aesthetic power of water in architecture, we look here at its use in our own modern designs.

From the Bauhaus era of architecture (1920s - 30s) on into the present day, the great modernist architects have often integrated water into their architectural designs.

Water has long been incorporated into the architectural design of cities and homes around the world, as both a necessity and sensory pleasure.

Oscar Niemeyer, the modernist architect who brought curves to concrete and a sense of sculpture to public design, famously worked until the end of his life, continuing to go into the office daily, well into his hundreds.

Oscar Niemeyer, modernist architect of the curved line, fled Brazil’s right wing military dictatorship in 1965, and set out on a self-imposed exile, which lasted nearly twenty years. During this time, he opened up an office on the Champs Élysées in Paris, and began taking international commissions.

Oscar Niemeyer, one of Brazil’s most celebrated architects, and an internationally recognized titan of 20th century modern design, introduced curves to a modernist style that almost exclusively celebrated straight lines and angles.

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.

Views add the inspiring beauty of nature to modern architecture, and an elemental warmth to contemporary design. It’s a pairing we love, especially in our primary bedroom suites, which whenever possible, we orient towards the views.

Florence Knoll Bassett, one of the biggest influencers in American modern design, steered the legendary Knoll brand towards global success as partner, design director, and president.

In our continuing exploration of creative design minds, we look at some of baker Caitlin Freeman’s iconic art inspired desserts.

Never formally trained as a baker, but the former co-owner of the San Francisco bakery, Miette Patisserie, and the innovator of the acclaimed modern art desserts at the SFMOMA museum cafe, Caitlin Freeman created a niche for herself in the baking world with her oeuvre of edible artworks.

Instantly recognizable with their bright squares popping in primary colors, expanses of bright white, and intersecting lines in asymmetrical grids, Mondrian’s modern art was groundbreaking in its day, and still inspires artists, architects, and designers today.

We continue our exploration of biophilic design, its benefits, and the ways we incorporate this practice into our modern resort style homes with part II of our blog, The Nature of Biophilic Design.

Psychoanalyst, social psychologist, and sociologist Erich Fromm first introduced the word “biophilia” in 1973, with the meaning, attraction to that which is alive.

Coral House, named for the iconic Santa Monica tree that stands at its entrance, is located on a coveted street overlooking the canyon, with views to the beach and the blue and white surf of the Pacific.

Harry Gesner comes from a long line of inventors, adventurers, and artists, and his own life is an encapsulation of those all.

Here is part II of our exploration of iconic modern homes featured in film:

Each of our designs is inspired by the lives of those who will work, live, and play in them. The lives that occupy the work, inspire the body of work. Architectural spaces hold the stories of our lives, and similarly, movie settings are containers for unfolding storylines.