“This site has a 360° view from a promontory high
above most of the peaks in the Santa Monica
Mountains. From this location, you can see
Channel Islands that you didn’t know existed. On
a clear night, from the opposite direction, you can
even see the faint glow of the lights from the
Luxor in Las Vegas.”
The client presented Steve Yett with a generic house plan book; the kind that you find in the check-out
line in the supermarket. They asked him to copy one of those plans. Fortunately, they wanted a single
story residence, and the house they liked in the book was two story that couldn’t be converted to single
story. They also wanted a courtyard for their pet parrot, and none of the houses in the book had such a
courtyard.
“At one point the husband, who also built the
house asked me to give it one singular shed
roof; telling me that the flashing details would
be easier, and the roof would be less likely to
leak. I was intrigued. I wanted to see how
that would look. But before I even took a
stab at it, his wife realized that it would make
the house look more modern, and she didn’t
want a modern house.”