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encountered as a young man in the late 1960s and early 1970s while working in Morocco and Nigeria.
In Africa, he was struck by how “architecture without architects,” his term for vernacular design, offered effective and
simple solutions to regional climatic and cultural conditions using local materials and simple technologies, whether large roofs for rain collection in arid climates, thick mud walls with cross ventilation for severe heat or open-air interior courtyards. He was astonished, he writes in his 2006 book Steven Ehrlich Architects: Multicultural Modernism (a term he coined), to learn that, hidden behind walls in the densely populated medinas of Morocco, urban dwellers “enjoyed private, interior courtyards, with sunlight, fresh air, trees, fountains, and gardens.” This discovery, in particular, had a profound impact on his own approach; throughout his career, he has sought design solutions that offer the same “soothing and harmonizing” qualities of the dappled foliage, sounds of nature and pools of water he found in those North African courtyards.

His own home in Venice, California, completed in 2004, is a laboratory for ideas about space, materials, technology and climate that he has been developing for many years through his Los Angeles firm, Ehrlich Architects. Venice is a bustling town, full of shops and restaurants, with a fair amount of foot traffic. Located on a corner lot, close to a busy street, the house balances privacy with outdoor living, while avoiding imposing an impenetrable façade. Translucent fiberglass and acrylic panels along the southwest street-side property line screen the outdoor living areas as well as the ground floor interior of the house, which is set back behind a long, narrow lap pool. Out of concern for the scale of the neighborhood’s one-story bungalows, a mezzanine and the second floor of the house step back even farther, with bedrooms and a study fronted by narrow roof decks.

The floor plan was driven by the creation of three exterior courtyards, each situated to catch the shade of an existing tree, with the main house and a separate structure housing the guest house, studio and garage, nestled in the remaining space. The main living area is a dramatic 56-foot-long volume, flowing unimpeded between two vast, perfect squares, 16 feet wide and 16 feet high. At one end, full-height glass doors disappear into pockets in the wall to open up the living area to the mottled sun and shade of a massive Aleppo pine in the front courtyard; at the other end, the dining area flows out to a palm-shaded courtyard between the two buildings through glass doors that pivot from the center. A second Aleppo pine on the sidewalk, just outside the translucent screen, partially shades the long pool court. Half of the glass wall along the pool slides open as well.

These large and variously situated openings allow the house to be cooled by ocean breezes, while heat dissipates towards the extremely high ceiling. Working in tandem with the cross ventilation, a steel frame projecting out from the long southwest façade is outfitted with retractable canvas shades that can be adjusted at the push of a button to screen the afternoon sun from the pool court and the interior.

The house’s materials, left in their raw state, were chosen to weather naturally and gracefully. The exterior contrasts COR-TEN steel, which rusts to a deep orange, with Trex decking, made from recycled and reclaimed plastic and wood. Inside, the polished concrete floor, colored with iron oxide, is another cooling element (radiant gas Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125
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