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Principal and Founder of Kovac Design Studio, Michael Kovac was born into an Air Force family in coastal Maine. His upbringing afforded him extensive travels as a child, including long stays in Okinawa, Japan. This early exposure to non-Western cultures, aviation, and aircraft would later go on to subtly inform his work.
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“We did a lot of research on how we could get this pattern, but then budget reality intruded.” A solution came when they looked up, noticing the material of the conference room ceiling in their office. The result is striking in the desert’s penetrating light, casting dappled shadows on the sand-colored walls and poured concrete floors and living up to its inspiration—Jean Nouvel’s Louvre Abu Dhabi. In the evening, a programmed lighting system by Lux Populi synced to sundown slowly brings up the warm lights embedded in the canopy, creating a candlelit glow from above. The back of the house is composed of nearly frameless motorized glass doors that perfectly frame the landscape and retract to make the most of indoor/outdoor living when the pool or views beckon.
Skinny Japanese house
Outside, Gloster sectionals, a firepit, William Haines Malibu Chairs, and a bespoke Cremo Delicato marble dining table that seats twelve complete the outdoor living area. Inside the house, warm tones, midcentury furniture, and tactile fabrics predominate, from the bronze mesh curtains to a sprawling velvet Patricia Urquiola Tufty Time sofa to the vintage Pierre Paulin chairs reupholstered in wool. The walls are made of integral plaster in a shade that was developed on-site by looking at the colors of the desert, because “big expanses of white plaster become fatiguing,” Kovac says. Indoor-outdoor fabrics were also specified in many places, given the easy back-and-forth between poolside and inside when the back wall is left open, as it is most of the time. For Todd Feldman, a film and television agent at Creative Artists Agency, it was not having to choose. Photovoltaic panels provide for nearly all of the house’s power needs, while a green roof insulates the home and mitigates storm water runoff.
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Each casita boasts its own private patio and firepit enclosed by a wood-clad wall that can retract to connect to the neighboring casita for easy socializing. Each also includes its own bath with an indoor/outdoor shower and mini-fridge and bar so guests can enjoy a drink without going to the main house whenever a private escape is wanted. The home’s natural palette of plaster, wood, and stone underscores the surrounding landscape with which it intertwines. There is no better place for an escape from the stresses of daily life - it is a true oasis in the desert.
Madison Desert Club / Kovac Design Studio
Downstairs, there’s a generous gym with adjacent massage studio and locker room. But the main event is a six-bed, walnut-paneled bunk room, beloved by Feldman’s nine-year-old son but also fun for adult slumber parties. (Every bunk is outfitted with a charging port, a reading light, and a beverage shelf.) “It can be juice boxes or rosé in the fridge down there,” says Feldman, depending on the age of the guests in residence. The five-part ensemble is tied together by the 5,000-square-foot sunshade, made of panels of an off-the-shelf aluminum foam product originally developed as an acoustic material. “We hoped initially to do a canopy modeled on a cholla cactus skeleton,” Kovac says.
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In this way, the site's native flora have indelibly marked this home, serving as a reminder of the environmental consciousness with which it was designed.
Michael Kovac
The entrance to the home brings visitors past a reflecting pool, under a mesh-like canopy that shades the front door. "Upon arrival, one circles into the motor court and is greeted by a still dark water element that seems to rise from the ground, water shimmering down its sides," said the architects. By taking maximum advantage of natural ventilation to control temperature and airflow, the home employs passive strategies - as well as active systems - that typify our firm's approach to sustainable design. Well-loved gallery The Future Perfect (New York/Los Angeles) aims to respond directly to the classical decor within the Paul R. Williams estate and present works by Genesis Belanger, created in collaboration with Bower Studios. There are a total of 16 participating galleries including the likes of Southern Guild (Cape Town/Los Angeles), R & Company (New York), and Gallery FUMI (London).
Sycamore House Pacific Palisades
A Hollywood Agent's Jaw-Dropping Desert Home Comes into Cinematic Focus - ELLE Decor
A Hollywood Agent's Jaw-Dropping Desert Home Comes into Cinematic Focus.
Posted: Wed, 08 Dec 2021 08:00:00 GMT [source]
In the bar tucked behind is an intimate conversation area complete with four vintage Pierre Paulin Groovy Chairs. Throughout the house, we worked around Lautner’s avant-garde engineering and sculptural applications of wood and concrete to carefully repurpose spaces to suit the client’s needs. Our changes included a new media room, enlarged bedrooms, home office, and chef’s kitchen. Some might say – don’t tamper with a John Lautner house, but the new owner, a longtime, passionate swimmer, wanted to add an indoor pool to this classic modernist beach home.
Daily updates on the latest design and architecture vacancies advertised on Dezeen Jobs. Sent every Tuesday and containing a selection of the most important news highlights. At the back of the large entertaining area, a glass wall with motorised panels can slide open, revealing vistas of the surrounding golf course and mountains beyond.
Located in La Quinta’s fabled Madison Club, this vacation home was designed as an interpretation of a boutique hotel for a sophisticated client who loves to entertain family and friends when in town. He sought to take maximum advantage of the dramatic desert views and, through the home’s interior design, pay homage to the Golden Hollywood era of nearby Palm Springs. These factors along with his love for indoor/outdoor living served as driving forces behind the project’s design and articulation.
Thus began a significant addition and interior remodel project where the great challenge lay in balancing client goals with the spirit of the original architect’s creation. Kovac’s family eventually settled in Las Vegas, from whence he left to attend the USC School of Architecture on a Trustee Scholarship. Upon graduating, Kovac worked in the office of notable modernist Jerrold Lomax before founding Kovac Architects - now Kovac Design Studio - in 1988 with commissions for high-end health clubs, commercial spaces, and detail-rich residences. His award-winning projects have been featured in publications such as Architectural Digest, Elle D cor, Dwell, Architectural Record, Design Milk, and the L.A. We firmly believe each space has its own sensibility — one shaped by people, place, and material. By listening and observing intently, we create spaces of connection with our surroundings, and with those around us.
Kovac Design Studio, a multidisciplinary architecture firm focused on the realization of personalized private residences, and mixed use spaces, recently designed itself a new office in Los Angeles, California. Designed as the home of Founder and Design Partner, Michael Kovac, Sycamore House serves as a laboratory for the studio’s ongoing research into sustainable architecture and a showcase for Kovac’s design philosophy. The home’s integration of environmental systems and green materials has made it one of the first residences in California to garner a LEED Platinum Certification. We replaced an awkward 1990’s addition, incongruent with the original Lautner residence, with a new indoor swimming pool that was designed to be largely indistinguishable to Lautner’s building.
Through dedicated leadership and an intimate knowledge of the local landscape and building codes, we help execute concepts into built spaces of enduring quality. Our partners have included John Pawson, Peter Zumthor, Vincent Van Duysen, Ferguson & Shamamian, Studio MK27, and Foster + Partners amongst others. Inside the home, the kitchen, great room, bar, and lounge are entirely open to one another, ideal for easy entertaining. A Tufty Time sectional by B&B Italia, Platner Easy Chairs by Knoll, and bespoke Armadillo rug furnish the great room and provide luxurious comfort to all who spend time in the main house.
News from Dezeen Events Guide, a listings guide covering the leading design-related events taking place around the world. Each has its own ensuite bathroom, private terrace and fire pit, and other features that enable those staying to be self-sufficient. This canopy, which is made of a stabilized aluminium foam manufactured by Alusion, spans the entire home, shading areas between the main central volume and five additional wings scattered around it. The home's boxy massing is arranged around a central, double-height volume that contains the kitchen, dining area, and plenty of lounge space. The Madison Desert Club residence is named after the exclusive golf club where the 9,220-square-foot (856-square-metre) home is located in La Quinta, California, near Palm Springs. In keeping with the modest scale of its neighbors, the house presents a single-story elevation to the street, while the view from below reveals a series of sculpted volumes cascading down toward Rivas Canyon.
The wall was back-painted to mimic the shallow waters of the Caribbean, which were the inspiration for this and several other unique elements in the home following owner and Kovac Founder and Design Partner Michael Kovac's trip to "The Baths" in the British Virgin Islands. The home's generous skylight boasts an impressive curvilinear form, which references the considerable airflow that graces the main living and dining space thanks to thoughtfully placed windows that allow for cross-breezes. Harrison will also curate a Podium exhibition themed “Master Works of Collectible Design, 1938-Present” that will showcase a selection of old and new works sourced from various galleries. Inspired by the city’s design heritage, the first Design Miami LA will run from May 16 to 20, and is one of the major announcements in this pivotal year, which marks the 20th anniversary since its first flagship fair launched in Miami. Officelovin is a platform that showcases the world's best office designs. Currently, you can browse through more than 3,500 offices of companies such as Airbnb, Dropbox, Slack, Etsy, and many others.
The new state-of-the-art, wake-free lap-pool is surrounded by retractable glazing which lets in natural light, and the ocean’s smells and sounds, blurring the boundaries between sea, house, and sky. “Inspired by the history of the building, the Kovac Design team reimagined the spaceby implementing an industrial palate and exposing the concrete floors, brick walls and ceiling beams. The original New England Divers outdoor signage was maintained, paying tribute to the space’s history. The home's interiors have a refined palette of wooden ceilings, rough plaster walls, and polished concrete floors. We collaborate with select visionary designers across the globe to provide architecture of record services.
