Lily&Rose Design Studio

This mul­ti­cul­tural mod­ern home in Venice Beach Cal­i­for­nia, is the home of Archi­tect Steven Ehrlich  He designed his home incor­po­rat­ing archi­tec­tural lessons he learned liv­ing in Africa, a mod­ern aes­thetic and the cli­mate and com­mu­nity of Venice Beach, Cal­i­for­nia. Ehrlich calls his approach “mul­ti­cul­tural modernism.”

The design had to take into account Venice Beach’s typ­i­cally long and nar­row lots. He recalled lessons he’d learned from the local archi­tec­ture of Nige­ria and the court­yard lay­out of houses in the med­i­nas in Morocco.  The result is a house that takes advan­tage of the cli­mate and uses nat­ural sys­tems & tech­nol­ogy to boost the home’s effi­ciency. The design takes advan­tage of every inch of the nar­row lot in a way that respects the neigh­bor­hood, open­ing wide to incor­po­rate three inte­rior court­yards that pro­vide addi­tional liv­ing space.

The home does not have air con­di­tion­ing; instead its ven­ti­la­tion design makes the most of cross breezes. Piv­ot­ing glass doors off the din­ing area open up to one of the home’s three exte­rior court­yards. The large expanse of glass oppo­site the din­ing room doors also opens up to let in the breeze.

Mate­ri­als are car­ried through­out the prop­erty, some repeated on the inte­rior, exte­rior and fence walls. Ehrlich paid extra atten­tion to using sus­tain­able mate­ri­als as well. Con­crete floors through­out the first floor pro­vide radi­ant heat dur­ing the colder months and help keep things cool dur­ing the summer.