A yard ... and much more
>>> In Los Angeles, the traditional family home can have many configurations. ¶ For 15 years, Jamie Klasfeld’s home base was the Sierra Towers high-rise condominium complex in West Hollywood. ¶ “We’re from New York and liked apartment living,” she says. ¶
So when she and her family moved in November 2015 into a new 4,000-square-foot home in Studio City — their first — the artist was overcome with emotion.
“It’s like a dream,” she says of the house she shares with her husband and their two children, Frankie, 11, and Duke, 7. “When we lived in a tiny apartment in New York, we had a view of a wall.”
After searching seriously for a year all over Los Angeles, the couple purchased a 1946 Tudor in desperate need of remodeling and hired designer Bryan Wark to draft something new.
Working with contractor Dana Benson, Wark proposed a simple and modern design based on Klasfeld’s vision board: A light-filled family compound influenced by the spare geometry of pioneering Modernist architect Irving Gill.
The exterior of the house is classic Gill with smooth plaster walls, simple lines and a flat roof. But inside, Wark created an up-to-theminute feel with 12-foot-high ceilings, warm woods, layers of white and board-form concrete walls.
“It’s a unique blend of a lot of different things that work seamlessly together,” says Wark. “It’s a very Los Angeles house for right now.”
Custom details include 8-foottall Hollywood Regency-style doors, delicate wallpaper based on Klasfeld’s artworks and custom steel windows and doors, powdercoated black and made in Tijuana. A floating wall filled with firewood doubles as a vestibule and niche, giving the crisp white walls of the living room a warm, organic feel.
In the kitchen, white walls blend with board-form concrete partitions, white porcelain tile and rustic wide-plank oak floors. At the expansive kitchen island, the kids can rest on bar stools and chat with Klasfeld as she cooks. And in a striking touch, the panel-ready refrigerator is covered in handscraped white oak panels that are installed in a chevron pattern.
“This is my dream kitchen,” Klasfeld says.
Perhaps the biggest impression, though, comes from the colorful blue Moroccan tile that Klasfeld spotted in Elle Decor magazine.
“I ripped the page out of the magazine years ago and saved it,” she says. “We searched the Internet and found the dealer in Belgium.”
But not everything is custom. Whenever possible, Wark used thrifty furnishings: White laminate IKEA cabinets in the playroom, porcelain countertops in the kitchen instead of high-priced Carrara marble, bar stools from CB2 in the kitchen, and West Elm furnishings in Frankie’s room.
Relaxed yet refined, the finished project evokes a warmth that is undeniable.
It’s a feeling that is not lost on Klasfeld, who anticipates that her first home may be her last.
“I plan on hosting my grandkids here someday,” she says with a smile.