TRANSFORMATION VIA SUGGESTION

“TRANSFORMATION VIA SUGGESTION
with architect Dragan Mrdja
from a series of conversations about Los Angeles Architecture LA Talks
By Gregor Zupanc”

 

Why is this your favorite place of the house?

This used to be a driveway, just a driveway, plain, concrete driveway.

I was like: “Wait a minute, let’s make two gardens here, like two levels”. Let’s level this one to the highest level of the gate and then have a retaining wall, and then have a lower part of the garage with parking spaces at the lower gate. So that space fits four cars and at the same time you get this incredible garden.

I mean, this is my favorite garden of the house because it’s very private actually despite the fact that it’s facing the street. Usually people don’t use front yards, everyone keeps that sort of open, but this is totally private. We have some of the nicest evenings here because I also extended this porch to be this big and we covered it with this translucent roofing and underneath we made it look like a trellis.

Before:

Now:

You transformed this place completely?

Yes! We put these three big olive trees, which was expensive, because each one of them is seven to eight thousand dollars, plus the cost of planting since you have to get a crane and all that, but you know, it was worth it because now this house immediately, just because of this, looks and feels like “Wow!”, and not just like another ordinary suburban house.

The way it was before, the Sun was scorching this area from above because there was nothing to create the shade but now all these olive trees are giving a beautiful shimmery shade, you know, shimmery light. Olives are beautiful because they don’t give, it’s not like linden tree in Serbia, which gives a heavy shade. Olives give that nice light shade and this is good for Mediterranean type of climate because it lets the sunshine through a little, but it’s never too hot and the leaves are gray and silvery and they turn around when if it’s going to rain but otherwise, they’re this way, they’re sort of like a natural bio protective structure.

And besides that, you know, the trees always offer the sound diffusion, so whatever happens in the street or whatever happens in the house, people on the other side of the fence won’t hear it clearly, they might hear some something, but not clearly, so once you’re here, you immediately feel you are in a private zone, you can talk freely, you can laugh, you can feel safe.

Before:

Now:

This street is not the most beautiful part of the West Hollywood, obviously, but you created this space to resemble an urban oasis, comfortable and beautiful.

Well, even if there were buildings across the street, which there aren’t any, it would feel the same, you would feel the same safety. These are all suggestions, and I’m aware of that, as I’m doing that, I’m creating suggestions to guide you towards the story.

That’s really interesting, I’ve never heard anything like this, the creation of this is your suggestion, that’s something that’s your thing, your authentic approach to the architecture?

Well, we live in LA, I mean, this is the world of projections, suggestions, what are movies, they are illusions, and our reality is the same, just that we, we think, and that’s, thank God, we do, because my job then gets more interesting and easier, because I know that you will take this seriously.

There is a connection between you as a creator of this, and this city, and this environment, and the people that are here…

And the history of Los Angeles, that taught me so much, when I moved here, took me about three, four years to just understand where I’d arrived because it was so different than anything else. I had a bigger, much bigger cultural shock, moving from New York to LA, than moving from Serbia to New York.

Tell me a little bit about that, from your perspective as an architect?

Well, it’s not about architecture, it’s about the fact that, for some reason, it must be some different energies working in different parts of the world. In the Balkans, there is thousands of years of very, very, very settled story, that is so deep, and passionately connected to certain roots, and it’s really hard to detach, and to rise above it.

LA didn’t have any attachment to Europe, or European culture. People that came here, were the people who tried everything, who were done with everything else, they came here as desperate seekers of own truth, or destiny, or freedom, or a type of life that maybe they could achieve here. And so there must be something in the ground.

I believe in those telluric energies because I believe that earth is a conscious organism.

What kind of energies?

Telluric. Telluric. Yeah, the Earth is a being, a conscious being. The Earth is not some kind of passive thing you walk on. It’s a conscience being. When you go on Google, and you Google earth, and when you start enlarging Tibet, and you’re seeing all these wrinkles, and all these gigantic mountains, but they look like wrinkles on somebody’s skin and you’ realize that the earth is old.

I believe that there is some rarefied type of telluric energies here that helps people send mental projections out, and they come back. They do the job, and they come back. You can’t have that in New York.

I lived in New York, my best friend already moved to LA, but we were talking often, and I was telling her what was going on, and she was like: “No, no, you don’t understand, you can’t do that in New York. New York is dense, too many people, too many same ideas, too many projections. You have to come to LA to have your own projection wide open, and it will become a reality.”

It would manifest itself. And imagine a 100 years ago, when the architecture started happening here, modernism became the biggest in the world here in LA. LA is the biggest, most important center of modernism in the world.

That’s very important to say about LA I believe.

I mean, just because of the climate, because modernism wanted to connect the inside with the outside. But in Europe, this meant that you were sitting on the second floor, and you had a big window, you were looking out.

But that’s not it! No, you want to have a big glass doors, wide open, and you are walking from your living room into your garden without any steps in between, without any boundaries between the outside and the inside. You’re walking straight onto the grass or onto the gravel, and the door are kept open because of the pleasant climate.

Hence, the house is just a shelter. It’s just like a roof, basically, during some months of the year, you don’t need walls. In Europe, it’s all about walls, walls, and more walls.

That’s the whole story about the difference between this lifestyle here and anywhere else. Of course, there are other areas of the world that have lived like this forever. Mediterranean, Thailand, and all of those places.

And until the 60s or the 70s, the culture of outdoor living didn’t really take roots here either. I used to work with, Nancy Gosley Power, who is the biggest landscape designer in the country, she’s the author of many books, and she was my mentor.

One of the things she told me, which was very important for what I did here, and for what I’ve been doing ever since, was that if you don’t design something to be used the way you want it, it’s not going to be used at all. If you put four chairs and a table in the middle of the grassy lawn, nobody’s ever going to sit there, because that’s not it. You have to create an outdoor living room, it has to be a living room, it has to be a dining room, it has to be outdoor, it has to be as if it’s indoor, but it’s outdoor.

That’s the essence of the whole thing of our relationships with other people, of who we are, how we relate. Are we welcoming, or are we, like, you know, creating insecurity, uncertainty, questions, animosity? When Anderson, the owner of the home, opens these doors, he always has the biggest and most sincere smile.

He really welcomes you, and that’s how the house reads. We designed this together, essentially because we’ve known each other for, like, I don’t know, eight years, and we had already worked on a couple smaller projects together, so this was our masterpiece in the sense. It’s not perfect. There are many things we couldn’t do because of money, but in the sense of how much we did with what we had, this is incredible, and particularly in expressing that sort of social aspect of relating to the world and to each other. I mean, just think of all those walls in the Balkans and Turkey, and the hidden lives behind it, and the gossip that goes around, that happens as a result of it, because gossip is an aggressive attempt to learn something about the other person since they’re hiding everything.

Architecture as a pure art form that tells stories?

One super interesting essay on the difference between American and European architecture, or rather traditional old-world architecture, and when I say American, I mean really original American, 19^th and 18th century American architecture that happened as a result of how the country was and as an expression of all the belief systems that created this country, as unity in one and oneness in unity. Old architecture is all about big columns that are supporting big elements, everything is about the very big elements that are like big trees in a forest that are very important, without which the society cannot function.

It’s big people that lead, kings were God-given.

And an American wall is built by 15 little studs that are nailed by 10 people who are working together. Studs at the top and the bottom, and then you put a wall up and then you adjust, then you connect the elements, a lot of members, elements that create a stable structure which works quite well with the earthquakes and everything. It’s not so massive that if one element cracks, like the way it happens in European architecture, in temple architecture, it’s all coming down.

So, the biggest American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, he got rid of the columns completely, and for the same reason, because he realized the structure isn’t necessary, it’s not important, and it’s just sort of like something that subconsciously gives one the idea that they have to be supported by something or someone. We have columns here because this house is from 1920s, it was built in 1922 originally, and there were actually only two columns here, because it was only this porch, these two others we added in order to create this thing.

Do you want to show me what you did in the back of the house?

If you look at those two steps in front of the door… So, you would get out of the kitchen, that’s the kitchen, and this was living room, and you would have immediately two steps that you have to kind be like: “Oh, oh my God!”, maybe you’re carrying food, or the kids are running without paying attention, and they’re going to get hurt. And at the same time, it wasn’t really comfortable, and it didn’t give enough separation between that particular area and the rest of the garden.

So, I was like, okay, we can raise this whole thing to level interior with this level, and then have steps. Once we have things happening there that we need an outdoor kitchen, we need barbecue. It’s part of, like, everything that’s happening.

We need a dining table there. We need a sitting area here. But it all has to be on the same level, otherwise it’s going to feel weird. You have to do that, since people might be drinking.

Again, you were thinking about people, humans who actually live here.

I have 17 years of training in New York, exclusively in interior design and architecture. I’ve learned where everything comes from. I also did a lot of theater and stage design, where I understood that for an actor to feel comfortable on stage, I would talk to her ask her all these questions. So, this is your room, right? What do you do? What do you like? This is the top drawer. If you open the top drawer, what would you like to see there? She said, my cigarettes and my lighter. I said, okay, so there you go, cigarettes and lighter.

You’re basically allowing for life to happen.

Wow, that’s a really great idea, really. I mean, wow, that’s interesting. What about the pool?

The pool was much bigger and that wasn’t so much a problem.

Again, the problem was that the guest house also had the steps. Because you see now, there are two steps there. Before that, there were five steps going to the guest house. Now there are only three, which is okay since three steps are not too much. There was also a railing here.

So, you would come up and there was a metal railing, which separated it completely from the pool. And then the pool had a big drop of 48 inches. And I realized, that I can cover those 30 inches of the pool with decking and create steps coming down where people can sit as if it’s some kind of a little theater. And at the same time, you could walk around it. This also allowed us to legally remove the railing because you have to have a railing if it’s more than 36 inches.

And that was a big deal, removing the railing and creating this. And then this allowed us to have the extra space to install that machine that creates waves so you can swim in them. And that’s underneath the deck.

Before

Now

We created an area there with the fire pit and there is a beautiful big fire going there almost every night.

Again, here we also planted these two olives trees. They used to have palms trees here, but, but we chose olives just like in the front and we installed this beautiful stone with the gravel and the little grass that’s growing in between them.

You have to make it look natural.

It doesn’t look perfect and cold. It looks like it’s nature. It looks like it’s been here forever.

The beautiful planter created a soft corner because this used to be a garage.

When we were working on this house, there was a big table here where I was doing my drawings while the construction guys were working beside me. This wall wasn’t there.

There was nothing. This was concrete because this used to be a garage. Concrete going all the way to the street and this was a driveway.

And while I was sitting here and drawing a couple of times during the day, a really, unpleasant breeze would come from the top of Hollywood Hills, turn around here, hit the house, turn around here and hit me. And it was like March, April, it wasn’t that hot. And I would feel like, this is so cold.

I was like: “Oh, I have to make a wall here.” And from that idea of stopping the breeze that was unpleasant, I created two walls and they stopped the breeze completely. You can also open it if it gets too stuffy.

You open it, you get the breeze and you get the draft that takes whatever stealth, stuffy old air. But at times when you need the heat to accumulate, you close this and you get this really nice little garden. That was supposed to be different at first.

And you have an open shower room here?

Because we turned this into a room and it’s not a studio anymore, it’s an office room for a doctor, for a physician.

And that was the only room that didn’t have a shower. Hence, we created this outdoor shower, which is actually quite cute. I like it very much. It’s very beautiful. This is my favorite spot because it gets a really nice shade. It doesn’t get too hot. And it’s so cozy. It’s nice.

But you still have views, you know, it’s not blocked. You get a nice far view. You see almost a mile away from here. And you also get this beautiful skyline.