Perched on a knoll in Los Angeles’s historic Hollywood Hills, is a skybox-like home that offers extraordinary panoramas of downtown LA. When Russell Holthouse, principal at Vantage Design Group, first saw the home, it was a far cry from its present avatar. “The neighbourhood is known for its winding streets, celebrity residences and excellent downtown views. But the original house was oriented away from the city,” recalls Russell, whose firm was tasked with transforming the home into a warm and welcoming haven for entertaining.
From the street, Tanager Way House gives little away. The facade appears opaque, a functional intervention pointed at preserving privacy. The interior, however, is an altogether different story. A larger-than-life pivot door heralds visitors into a vestibule that serves as a world unto itself.
The interior is a pleasing antithesis to the guarded facade. In an effort to maintain a seamless transition between the interior and exterior, Vantage Design Group opted for our Scala® Travertine, a terrestrial limestone that works equally well across indoor and outdoor environments. “It was important to find something that would perform at the scale of the house. Anything busy would have felt overwhelming. Since travertine is unfilled, fairly neutral, and doesn't have highly directional grain, it meant that we could use it freely on both sides of the threshold. It also interacts well with other materials,” shares Russell.
Vantage Design Group opted for our Scala® Travertine, a terrestrial limestone that works equally well across indoor and outdoor environments.
The rationale behind choosing it was rooted in a desire for a natural finish. After all, the beauty of the stone lies in the fact that it stays true to its original form. Its imperfections and rawness are thoughtfully preserved by Eco Outdoor; the only intervention has been to saw each tile into shape.
Scala® Cross Cut flooring is used throughout the entrance, living area, dining area and entertaining area. It also appears on the wraparound balcony, the pool coping, and the stairs leading down to the pool. It serves as a sweeping backdrop to the house, parlaying from one room to the next, while harmonising the various realms with its unassuming presence. “It’s always there, always elegant, but never the centre of attention."
The challenge with a house of this scale, and with views as distant as this, was to create spaces that felt warm and inviting. The solution, Russell found, lay in constructing a nuanced material palette, with rich grains and textures. He elected to use robust walnut wood for the primary cabinetry, a vein-cut silver travertine with prominent dark veins for the fireplace cladding, and added Ceppo di Gré-style benchtops. This layered materiality, which features darker, deeper tones and textures, is balanced by the soft neutrality of the Scala travertine flooring. The result was an equal marriage of soft and dark tones, with the travertine underpinning the darker materials in the periphery.
The swimming pool is neatly integrated into the shell, providing an enveloping presence to the interior. By the same token, the travertine extends right up to the water’s edge. For Russell, the choice of travertine for the poolside was influenced in part by the need to find a material that would play well with the water.
