Swimwear designer Rod Beattie's house: Garden views galore

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The living and dining areas of Rod Beattie’s house feel suspended in treetops thanks to glass that runs from ceiling to floor on two sides, bathing the space in filtered sunshine. The clerestory windows above Beattie, on the sofa, bring in more light. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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The vertical wood paneling and brick fireplace are original to the 1950s house. Rather than replace them, Beattie simply refinished and cleaned them, to bring out the materials’ organic warmth. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Rod Beattie furnished his dining room with period-perfect furniture and lighting. He replaced the cork flooring and refinished all the original woodwork. A door opens onto a deck that wraps the back of the house. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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After living with the original kitchen for more than 10 years, Beattie recently replaced the aging appliances, old cabinets and flooring. He worked with architect Don Holtz to design a modern kitchen that fits the house’s Mid-Century past and delivers views of the backyard pool and the Arroyo Seco beyond. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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The home’s selling point was its beautiful views and the classic California connection between indoors and outdoors. Pictured here: Beattie with his cat, just outside the glass door leading from the kitchen and living area down to the pool. Note the patch of barrel cactus behind Beattie. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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With that same patch of cactus now in the foreground, Beattie stands on the deck that wraps the back of his house. Outside each room, he has composed deck and patio vignettes, so that each interior space has an outdoor counterpart. The result is a large property that is beautifully segmented into distinct spaces. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Beattie walks on a path that he added, linking once-disconnected sections of decking to create a circuit throughout the property. Behind him is the deck outside the dining room; in front of him is the wing of bedrooms. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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The bedrooms are small by today’s standards, but Beattie preferred to retain the original floor plan. The master bedroom gains visual scale thanks to the wall of glass and door to the garden. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Above the headboard, the fashion designer displays a series of vintage Vogue magazine covers dating to when his home was built. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Beattie uses another bedroom -- the only room in the house that doesn’t open onto the garden -- as his office. The light is original to the house. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Beattie lounges in another bedroom, this one used as a study. Like the others, the compact space feels airy and uncramped thanks to its connection to a back patio. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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The ceramics on the top shelf are all by Barbara Willis, a California artist whose work was included in a recent Autry Museum show, “California’s Designing Women, 1896 to 1986.” The bottom shelf is filled with flea market finds. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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In the slender hallway running through the bedroom wing, Beattie replaced a long closet with a built-in bookcase that he designed. The passageway is highly useful as a library space. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Daily inspiration: iconic black-and-white fashion photography on the wall. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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More black and white: Beattie, an alum of the Otis College of Art and Design, bought the graphic ceramics at the school’s annual student art sale. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Even the carport welcomes visitors with an arrangement of potted plants and a sitting area beyond. One advantage of the carport over a garage: It allows for easy delivery of plants, mulch and large containers to the backyard. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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As the sun begins to drop, Beattie heads from the pool back toward the house. Much of the landscape’s color comes from his collection of new and vintage pots in a Mid-Century palette of lime, orange, turquoise-blue and yellow. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Silhouetted by the setting sun, chaises and umbrellas sit on a pool deck that Beattie added. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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The 1950s pool, in the evening glow of the Arroyo. To the right is the original cabana, and up the steps in the distance, the house. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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For swimwear designer Beattie, the restored ‘50s pool is a natural beauty, surrounded by live oaks and views of Pasadena’s wild side.

More profiles: Photo tours of California home design (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

By Debra Prinzing

Sept. 12, 2013 10:45 AM PT

At swimwear designer Rod Beattie’s house in Pasadena, pass through a courtyard dominated by a majestic tree believed to be more than 200 years old, and soon you’ll find yourself inside a glass-walled living room, surrounded by 30 live oaks and stunning views that take in the Rose Bowl and the Arroyo Seco.

LARGE-FORMAT PHOTO GALLERY: Rod Beattie’s indoor-outdoor Pasadena retreat

Nature plays a role in making each part of this home feel special. Virtually every room in the 2,000-square-foot residence has a door to the outside, where Beattie has created not one garden but rather a series of intimate vignettes — distinct deck and patio areas punctuated with artfully arranged container plants and furniture.

“So much of the impact of this property is there,” Beattie said of the outdoor connections, adding that the landscape has another effect on the interiors. “You think the house is much larger than it really is.”

The three-bedroom house is on 1.3 acres that Beattie has replanted and updated over 15 years, taking as inspiration frequent visits to the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino and Lotusland in Montecito.

The Mid-Century post-and-beam stood vacant and unattended for more than a year before Beattie purchased it in 1999, becoming the home’s second owner.

“It hadn’t been altered, and no one had done a weird 1970s remodel,” he said. “It was like they built this amazing home in 1953 and then never did anything else to it other than letting it age naturally over the years. It was a canvas just waiting to be painted upon.”

William Rudolph, a commercial architect, was said to have designed the home, although Beattie hasn’t been able to learn much about him. The big windows, beamed ceiling and indoor-outdoor connection are what resonated.

“I grew up in a 1960s tract home in Eagle Rock, and certain aspects are familiar to me here,” said Beattie, creative director for Pasadena-based Bleu/Rod Beattie, a women’s swimwear collection that launched in 2012. His aesthetic is “clean, uncomplicated and simple,” and he often finds inspiration on the road.

“When I do design research in Europe or Brazil, I don’t just look at swimwear,” he said. “I go to art museums. I look at jewelry.”

Rose Brantley, founding chairwoman of fashion design at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, where Beattie trained, said her former student can move easily from one medium to another.

“Design principles show up in fashion as well as architecture,” she said. “It might mean creating a focal point to lead the eye or considering proportion. Thinking about proportions of plants isn’t any different than proportions in sportswear.”

Indeed, back in Beattie’s living room, the eye is drawn through ceiling-to-floor windows to the garden, the swimming pool and the Arroyo’s wild landscape beyond. The free-flowing living and dining areas connect with the kitchen, renovated this year, to form the top of the house’s T-shaped footprint. Bedrooms, including one furnished as a home office, sit off a long, intersecting hallway.

Beattie replaced a closet that ran inside that hallway with a built-in bookcase and cabinetry that feels original to the house. He updated other parts of the interiors with a light hand, replacing original cork flooring and refinishing the existing beams, the tongue-and-groove ceiling, paneled walls and other millwork.

When it’s extra hot, Beattie heads to the swimming pool. The contractor who built it once knocked on the door to introduce himself. “He told me that the shape of the pool was supposed to be an abstract profile of a man’s face,” Beattie said. Restored and resurfaced, the pool has a new deck that cantilevers above the ravine and is walled in glass, allowing for hillside views. Festive groupings of planted containers come in California hues: poppy orange, ocean turquoise, lime green and sunny yellow.

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