Rising steeply into a canyon in the Hollywood Hills, Nina and Andreas Grüter’s concrete home evokes the lair of a villain in a James Bond thriller. Brutalist Elrod House in John Lautner’s Diamonds Are Forever comes to mind. The nearby Hollywood sign adds to the movie atmosphere. charm.
For some people, building a home on a small lot on a hillside, especially at the end of a dirt road, may seem like a dangerous place. But for the globe-trotting European developer, this was an exciting challenge he was happy to take on.
“Are you afraid of heights?” Andreas asked as we ascended one of the house’s many stairs to the roof deck. “We’re working on a zipline from the beach to here,” he joked upon reaching the top floor. This floor was used in the music video for “Forever Sunday” by Kesh You and Snoop Dogg, as well as the World Series commercial starring Saweetie. .
As developers of Snow Hill’s visionary projects, including an art hotel in the North Atlantic off the coast of Canada and sustainable housing in Yucca Valley, the couple saw a for-sale sign on a vacant lot while hiking in Griffith Park. I immediately became interested. .
“We do everything from purchasing the land to designing the interior,” Andreas said of their project.
The couple purchased the 10,500-square-foot property in 2012 for $40,000 after reaching out to owners who owned several properties across the country. Little did they know that it would take more than a decade to build a home on this difficult land.
“It was meant to be,” Andreas said. “The land wanted us, not the other way around.”
This sense of destiny is evident in the Grüter family’s connection to the land, which is covered in a canopy of mature plane trees. The property overlooks Beachwood Canyon and “on a clear day you can see Catalina,” Nina said, and hikers stopped nearby to peer into the house as if it were an attraction. “Yesterday, we saw the sea and the islands.”
The couple wanted a contemporary yet iconic building, so they turned to WHY Architecture. Architects Yoichiro Hakomori and Krapat Yantrasast, known for their work on the Grand Rapids Art Museum in Michigan, were asked to bring the Grüters’ vision to life. .
“We wanted the house to be as stylish and clean as possible,” says Andreas, who grew up clean in a Bauhaus home in Switzerland.
After leaving the firm, Hakomori continued to assist WHY in obtaining building permits and planning permission. Once the Gruters obtained a building permit, they continued construction with StudioHau, which Hakomori had founded.
Wine cellar (left) and Nina Gruter’s walk-in closet (right).
Hakomori never thought it would be impossible to build on this site, citing other hillside homes such as Rudolf Schindler’s Wolf House on Catalina Island, but the site’s unique The unique terrain posed many challenges during construction, from ensuring the stability of the structure (more than 35 caissons) during construction. Manage the permitting process and meet with multiple neighborhood planning committees.
Andreas talked about some of the challenges faced during construction. “When we started construction, everyone underestimated how difficult it would be to get concrete trucks to the site,” he said. “The roads were narrow and the trucks couldn’t be too long or big. One company refused to even drive there. For a long time it looked like it wasn’t going to happen.”
For Hokomori, who has worked with architect Tadao Ando and his mentor Frank Israel, this project was unlike anything he had undertaken before. But after considering several stacking formats, he ultimately decided on a sustainable building with three L-shaped frames (with living areas in between) extending up the steep hillside to take advantage of the views. We designed a house made of slab concrete where possible.
Hakomori adhered to the hillside’s strict height regulations and designed each floor of the four-bedroom, four-bathroom home to have direct access to the outdoors. “We tried to create an outdoor space even though it’s floating above the ground,” he said. “The house literally floats above the landscape.”
The four-story, 4,455-square-foot home offers a different experience on every level. There is a car elevator that can accommodate two cars (due to city street parking requirements). There is also a sauna, office and walk-in wine cellar. A dramatic wading pool cantilevers out from the living room, and its side incorporates a specially designed window that opens onto the kitchen, allowing the pool to change color in the sunlight and illuminate the room. Gives a soft light.
At the bottom of the multi-story building is a separate guesthouse, frequented by a deer the couple affectionately named “Hugo.”
And then there’s the Hollywood sign. Los Angeles is full of inspirational hillside homes, from Lautner’s Chemosphere to Frank Lloyd Wright’s George Sturges House, but few with a Hollywood sign in their backyard like the Grueters there is no.
“It’s larger than life,” Hakomori said of the familiar icon. “It’s much bigger than you think – like an Ed Ruscha painting. It almost overwhelmed the site.”
But from below, the view “feels like you’re inside a cave,” he said. When you’re at the top, you feel like you’re in the air. ”
Balancing the natural world is essential to Hakomori’s architectural practice. “I’m very influenced by the indoor-outdoor movement and California modernism,” says the University of Southern California professor, who was born in Japan before his family moved to Boston. It all comes from seeing it all and living in California and experiencing fusion with nature.”
For the Grueters, designing this home was a collaborative effort and a labor of love that infused their unique styles. “We are in this together,” Andreas said. “It’s like magic. It’s fun, like turning a black and white movie into color.”
Grüter especially appreciates brutalist architecture embedded in nature. Still, as interesting as this house is from the outside, it is their home. “We wanted to give architecture a soul by filling the construction site with beauty, joy and art,” said Andreas.
For the couple, designing this home was a collaborative effort and a labor of love, infused with their unique styles. “We are in this together,” Andreas said. “It’s like magic. It’s fun, like turning a black and white movie into color.”
The couple decorated the interior with bold, rich colors, including velvet curtains and wallpaper with Parisian tiger and botanical prints. Their style, which Nina describes as “a combination of contemporary cool design and warm, inspiring atmosphere,” reflects the Grueters’ love of art and beauty.
Because wall space is limited due to excess glass, the couple’s extensive art collection is installed in unlikely places, including above windows and inside a car elevator featured in a Lamborghini commercial. . “Due to the tight parking lot, we had to add an elevator according to city regulations, so we turned it into something beautiful,” Andreas said.
The interiors are quirky, with a photo of Howard Hughes, the notorious obsessive-compulsive disordered man, hanging in the closet and a portrait of Hollywood legend Humphrey Bogart in one of the rooms.
“Everyone loves this room,” Nina said with a laugh as she stepped out onto the guest room’s shaded outdoor patio. “It feels like you’re buried in the trees.”
The Gruter House’s pool cantilevers out from the living room, with a window that illuminates the kitchen.
But for the couple, the most appealing aspect of their new home is living in nature just 10 minutes from Hollywood Boulevard.
“It’s very quiet here at night,” Nina said of living near Griffith Park. “I can see the stars and hear the owl.”
“Every hour is different, and after 6 or 7 o’clock it gets a little spooky,” Andreas added.
Renowned Los Angeles architect John Lautner once described the city as “sickeningly ugly,” but the couple has fallen in love with the city they call home.
“LA has such a beautiful energy,” said Nina, who is German. “No one in Europe can believe the combination of nature and city life here. We have the Hollywood Bowl, museums, mountains, culture, great food and diversity.”
Despite being one of the Gruters’ most challenging projects (the couple declined to share the cost of the project, other than the fact that it was more expensive than expected), that L.A. spirit makes their home It’s infused.
“Every step was difficult,” Andreas said. “But when the sun sets, the house transforms into something special. The whole property has an incredible energy. It was worth it.”