36 DIGS.NET
| 12.10.2021
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R E S T O R E D | E Y R C B L U E S A I L
EHRLICH YANAI RHEE CHANEY ARCHITECTS
works in a modern idiom but without a set vocabulary
or language," explains architect Takashi Yanai, a part-
ner at the firm, its Residential Studio Director since
2004 and the current leader of its San Francisco Studio.
"Each house is a collaboration with, and a portrait of,
the client," he says, "Design for us is often about edit-
ing and keeping the architecture as a backdrop — for the views,
for the client's life, their art, their friends and their family. Of course
the design has to be beautiful and enhance the experience for
the client, but in a sense, the design becomes secondary to the
experience of the landscape and the lives lived within the house."
That's well illustrated in this project in Los Angeles' Pacific
Palisades neighborhood. The client dreamed of a home that
would launch the next phase of her life. An empty nester with
grown children, she was drawn to the neighborhood's hiking
trails and its proximity to the ocean. An active volunteer in a
grueling profession, she hoped to create a restorative sanctuary
for herself and her dogs that would also welcome her friends
and her grown children.
The house she'd purchased, a simple one-story traditional home
with a peaked roof, was nondescript. "It wasn't exactly awful"
Yanai remembers, "But the shape was all wrong". Although it was
physically in good condition, situated on a sloping hillside in the
Pacific Palisades, its uninspired design failed to take advantage
"
