Bough House
On a recent trip to disneyland with his 5 1/2-year-old son, Jesse, it dawned on architect Jeffrey Tohl that his Studio City home had a lot in common with the Swiss Family Robinson’s. “It’s the ultimate treehouse,” Tohl says of the 2,900-square-foot home that is ostensibly two stories over a garage but actually features 10 different levels connected by stairways and a bridge. The indoor span of steel, perforated metal and bar grating is a favorite with his three kids and their friends. It allows natural light to filter down to the hallway adjacent to the children’s bedrooms and “creates an additional playroom for them,” Tohl explains.
Like many California modernists before him, Tohl delights in bringing the outdoors in. Several French doors, 14 skylights and more than 70 windows of varying shapes and sizes do the job nicely, flooding the house with light that changes throughout the day and year. “All the main living spaces have a direct relationship to the outside,” he says. The living and family rooms, as well as the master bedroom, open outward by way of French doors, while balconies off the two children’s rooms provide alfresco play areas. In the living room, a large, angled picture window frames a portion of the surrounding mountains and a skylight offers a glimpse of the clouds drifting by overhead. Says the architect: “We’re always experiencing the weather firsthand.”
The house, which rises 55 feet from the sidewalk, appears to have sprouted unexpectedly out of the ground. Tohl intended the building’s tilted, bowed form as a metaphor for the “precariousness of the hillside,” he recalls. “I wanted it to feel solid and massive but also have a playfulness of movement within the sculptural forms.”
To select hues for the colored plaster inside and out, Tohl and his wife, producer-director Ellen S. Pressman, spent hours sitting outside, contemplating the landscape. They decided on a natural palette, with each color defining a design element. The colors--dark to light blue-gray, ochre and white--allude to the earth, leaves, clouds and sky. “We wanted the house to blend in with the neighborhood,” Tohl says. Just like the Swiss Family Robinson’s.
