Artist's spirit takes wing at the Brecht house in Santa Monica

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The addition is connected to the Brecht House by a see-through glass bridge on the second floor. Designer Natalya Kashper describes the installation as a light touch between old and new. “What is the most respectful way to add on to this beautiful home? We decided it would be the smallest architectural addition possible. a glass bridge connected to an existing window. It feels ceremonial to go between the two spaces.” (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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While the charming foursquare house served as a place for Bertolt Brecht to write “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” and other plays in the 1940s, today the house is one component in a multigenerational family home for Rina Welles, husband David Golubchik, her mother Joanna and children Leah, 10 and Alek, 6. Because the house is located on a busy street, there was not a lot of interest when it was first listed in 2011. The home’s cultural landmark status didn’t help, limiting potential homeowners who would be required to preserve the rundown home. Indeed, after the couple purchased the house and began renovations, architect Gabriel Sandoval was surprised to find the house had no foundation. “The two floors of the house weren’t structurally connected to one another,” Sandoval says. “With no foundation and no structure, it’s amazing the house was standing.” The home received a 2014 Preservation Award from the Santa Monica Conservancy in February. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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The front door of the addition, right, is composed of extra-thick solid douglas fir. “It is part of the abstract nature of having a long rectangle against the long slender house,” says architect Gabriel Sandoval. A cutout in the foyer, left, offers a quiet place to sit and take off your shoes. The interior is dark, compact and an intimate space before you enter... (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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...the open and airy first floor of the house. “It’s a big reveal,” Gabriel Sandoval says. “You don’t take everything in immediately.” (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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Inside the sun-filled first floor of the new home, the outdoors is always present. From the kitchen, the family can watch Leah swim, pictured at left, or Alek pick blueberries in the garden. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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Because the first floor of the addition is open, the kitchen was designed to be more private. It is connected to the outdoor space, emphasizing an outdoor dining experience. The intimate breakfast booth/island combination differentiates the kitchen from the formal dining room. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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The addition houses the family’s living areas downstairs and the parents’ and Alek’s bedrooms upstairs. With bedrooms on the second floors of both homes, natural light and privacy is enjoyed by all. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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In the outdoor lounge, Alek Golubchik, 6, plays with a Meyer lemon from a nearby tree while his dad David looks on. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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A balcony off of the master bedroom suite creates one of many private areas throughout the house. “Having rooms off to the outside creates unique experiences,” says Natalya Kashper of Dub Studios.”Everything being open can get repetitive.” (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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In the new wing, known as the Bar for its slender shape, stairs to the second floor are framed by an enormous picture window. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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Alek practices piano in the second-floor play area of the original 1921 home. A glass bridge, left, connects the traditional home to its modern counterpart. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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“Designers like the idea that you can live upstairs,” architect Gabriel Sandoval says. “It’s a concept of the lower floors being public and integrated with the landscape. The flow between the yard is very pronounced, but it’s nice to go upstairs to your more private spaces.” In the master suite, the bed is pulled out away from the wall to add some visual interest to the room. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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The master bathroom connects to an outdoor deck and balcony. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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The backyard is divided into four areas; a new garage at back left, an outdoor lounge, a dining room (not pictured) and pool. Garden designer Mimi Kahn installed a low-mow festuca rubra (creeping red fescue), at right, because the family wanted to avoid unnecessary watering and noisy lawn mowers. “It is a little clumpy and fun,” Kahn says of the grass. “You really only need to mow it a few times a year.” (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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The open living and dining areas are illuminated by floor-to ceiling windows that look out to the backyard. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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The formal dining room. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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Rina Welles, who remembers reading Brecht’s “The Threepenny Opera” when she was 10 in Poland, says she maintained Brecht’s writing room, now her office, in the exact location that he described in his journals. “I felt a creative spirit the first time I walked in this house,” says Welles of her Santa Monica home, once rented by German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht. “I liked the energy. It felt European to me.” (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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Though the modern addition is understated from the street, in back it is enlivened by glass walls that connect it to outdoor dining and living areas, lush landscaping and a pool. The floor-to-ceiling glass is a modern juxtaposition to the more traditional exterior of the Brecht house. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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The outdoor dining room is connected to the kitchen, at right, and garage, left. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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“I always push my clients to get rid of their lawn if they are willing,” Mimi Kahn says. She also installed repeating plantings of Mexican sage, low-growing lavender, sagebrush, ceanothus, flax and the colorful Australian native Kangaroo Paw, pictured at left. “A lot of people don’t think of drought-tolerant landscapes as romantic,” Kahn says. “But these plants have flair.” (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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Dymondia margaretae lines the path to the front of the house. “After its first year it will become a tight mat and will look stunning,” Mimi Kahn says. She also planted mounding Muhlenbergia rigens (Deer grass), Provence lavender and Artemisia pycnocephala ‘David’s Choice’. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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In a nod to Bertolt Brecht, who described the property’s lemon trees in his journals, garden designer Mimi Kahn added a Meyer lemon tree to the landscape. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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Nassella tenuissima (Mexican feather grass) at the end of the pool. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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Nassella tenuissima (Mexican feather grass) on either end of the pool provide a sense of calm and movement and adds to the casual sensibility of the outdoor space. “I didn’t use it in the front because it self-sows and can show up somewhere you don’t want it,” garden designer Mimi Kahn says. “The back is more about sloppy elegance, and that’s OK with me.” (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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To help balance the traditional architecture of the Brecht house with its modern counterpart, garden designer Mimi Kahn created a romantic landscape using mass plantings of drought-tolerant shrubs and grasses. She planted ‘Silver Sheen’ Pittosporum in front of the new house, at left and ‘Silver Magic’ Pittosporum in front of the Brecht house, at right. Ficus repens (climbing fig) will eventually cover the modern addition, creating a green screen. “In about seven to 10 years, it’s going to be a great green structure,” Kahn says. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

By Lisa Boone

March 15, 2014 5 AM PT

“I felt a creative spirit the first time I walked in this house,” says Rina Welles of the 1921 Santa Monica house that was once home to renowned German playwright Bertolt Brecht. “I liked the energy.”

The foursquare house was where Brecht penned “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” and other plays during the 1940s. Today the house is one component in a multigenerational family compound for Welles, husband David Golubchik, her mother, Joanna, and their children, Leah, 10, and Alek, 6.

The home, which has been renovated and complemented by a new addition by Dub Studios, also stands as a success story for preserving cultural landmarks in fresh and inviting ways.

PHOTOS: The Brecht House as a study in contrasts

From the outset, the couple knew they wanted to keep the character of the Brecht house while adding a wing that would look and feel modern. They also wanted room for living quarters for Welles’ mother.

But adding on to the back of the two-story home would have devoured the substantial backyard, a feature that had originally drawn the couple to the house.

“We wanted openness,” said Golubchik, who was born in Kiev, Ukraine, but grew up in Santa Monica. “I fell in love with the property and wanted to encourage my kids to experience outdoor living rather than indoor living.”

So after architect Gabriel Sandoval and principals Natalya Kashper and Michael Piper renovated the Brecht house, they worked with the landmark commission to design and build the addition alongside the original structure. The new building stretches from the front of the site, on what was once the garage, to the back of the 12,000-square-foot property. They call the addition “the Bar” for its long and slender shape.

To cut back on traffic noise inside the new house from busy 26th Street, they designed the front exterior without windows. It is covered in smooth plaster and is intentionally subtle and stark.

“It is supposed to be a part of the landscape,” Kashper says. “It is eventually going to be covered in a creeping fig, which will allow the Brecht house to shine.”

The addition connects to the Brecht house by a glass bridge on the second floor. Kashper says the installation was designed to be a light touch between old and new.

“What is the most respectful way to add on to this beautiful home? We decided it would be the smallest architectural addition possible — a glass bridge connected to an existing window,” she says. “It feels ceremonial to go between the two spaces.”

The original house now contains an office and a guest suite, where Welles’ mother lives, on the ground floor and a bedroom and lounge for the kids on the second. Welles, who remembers reading Brecht’s “The Threepenny Opera” when she was 10 in Poland, says she maintained Brecht’s writing room, now her office, in the exact location that he described in his journals.

“Designers like the idea that you can live upstairs,” Sandoval says. “It’s a concept of the lower floors being public and integrated with the landscape. The flow between the yard is very pronounced, but it’s nice to go upstairs to your more private spaces.” (Welles’ mother’s unit has no direct connection to the new house, which affords her more privacy.)

Though the addition is understated in front, in back it is enlivened by glass walls that connect it to outdoor dining and living areas, lush landscaping and a pool. The floor-to-ceiling glass is a modern juxtaposition to the more traditional exterior of the Brecht house.

Inside the sun-filled first floor of the new home, the outdoors is always present. From here, the family can watch Leah swim or Alek pick blueberries in the garden.

Two years after breaking ground, the new compound stands largely as envisioned: It’s an open, sunny and surprisingly quiet environment deeply in unison with the outdoors.

Brecht did not feel connected to Los Angeles. He famously dismissed it as “Tahiti in the form of a big city.” But Welles says that his house, which received a 2014 Preservation Award from the Santa Monica Conservancy in February, has enriched their family life.

“The house, the neighbors, Alek’s school — being a part of this community has made a difference in our lives,” she says.

Drought-tolerant plantings at the Brecht house in Santa Monica

To help balance the traditional architecture of the Brecht house with its modern counterpart, garden designer Mimi Kahn created a romantic landscape using mass plantings of drought-tolerant shrubs and grasses. “I always push my clients to get rid of their lawn if they are willing,” Kahn says. She also installed repeating plantings of Mexican sage, low-growing lavender, sagebrush, ceanothus, flax and the colorful Australian native Kangaroo Paw. “A lot of people don’t think of drought-tolerant landscapes as romantic,” Kahn says. “But these plants have flair.” Here she shares some of her low-water choices for the property.

Festuca rubra (Creeping red fescue): Because the family wanted to avoid unnecessary watering and noisy lawn mowers, Kahn planted low-mow fescue in the front and backyard. “It is a little clumpy and fun,” Kahn says of the grass. “You really only need to mow it a few times a year.”

Pennisetum orientale (Oriental fountain grass): Kahn created a soft meadow feel by planting bunches of 2-by-2-foot Oriental fountain grass. “A lot of people often get grasses that are way too big,” Kahn says. “I did not want to hide the house.”

Muhlenbergia rigens (Deer grass): Large clumping grasses planted along the path to the front of the house were inspired by similar plantings Kahn spotted at the Getty Center.

Nassella tenuissima (Mexican feather grass). California natives on either end of the pool add to the casual sensibility of the outdoor space. “I didn’t use it in the front because it self-sows and can show up somewhere you don’t want it,” Kahn says. “The back is more about sloppy elegance, and that’s OK with me.”

Dymondia margaretae: “After its first year it will become a tight mat and will look stunning,” Kahn says of the ground cover she planted between the stepping stones to the house.

Pittosporum (‘Silver Magic’ and ‘Silver Sheen’): Kahn chose different kinds of the New Zealand native evergreen in the same family to add elegance and privacy. In the back, Kahn planted ‘Silver Sheen’ against the white walls of the garage and ‘Marjorie Channon’ near the living area by the pool. At the front of the house, ‘Silver Magic’ softens the homes’ facade.

Ficus repens (Climbing fig): The evergreen vine will eventually completely cover the modern addition. “In about seven to 10 years, it’s going to be a great green structure,” Kahn says.

lisa.boone@latimes.com

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