Architecture Wednesday: A Trousdale In Beverly Hills

Ah, Beverly Hills! Swimmin’ pools! Movie stars! Trousdale homes!

Back in 1954, Paul Trousdale bought 410 acres of unbuilt property that was once part of the grand Doheny Estate. Soon after he began developing sprawling view properties of solely single-level homes designed in what we now call Mid-Century Modern. This home, an original Trousdale design, is a renovation, and restoration of a 5500 square foot home in the Trousdale Estates section of Beverly Hills built in 1962.

The home sits near the top of a cul-de-sac and enjoys roughly 270° spectacular views of Beverly Hills and downtown Los Angeles. The current owners bought the property with the intention of turning it into an open, airy and contemporary home to showcase their collections of modern and contemporary photography, but they have retained much of what made the house spectacular some fifty-four years ago.

The original curved and circular elements have been kept, and are repeated motifs throughout the original design. The goal of the architect and designers who worked on the property was to edit the various elements of what had become, over time, an out-of-date house and yet keeping the 60s feel.

The front façade was re-organized as a simple, platonic gesture in the curved shape of a monumental wall clad in Indiana limestone panels; that ribbed stone contrasts with the smooth stucco exterior of the rest of the house.  But, other than the front courtyard, the majority of the exterior is a simple affair of stucco curves and a long serpentine glass wall reflecting the generous scope of the views, which draw you into, and through the house.

It’s a little like a newly minted time capsule from the 60s; I half expect James Bond or Austin Powers to come sauntering through ...

click to emBIGGERate the floorplan.

Dennis Gibbons Architects