Mandeville Canyon by Marmol Radziner

Architect Ron Radziner’s Los Angeles home was designed to yield to the site’s mature oak and sycamore trees. Eight years in and Mandeville Canyon now sits seamlessly in the landscape.

Ron Radziner is well versed in the intricacies of a good home. As design partner at Marmol Radziner – the Los Angeles-based design-build firm he co-founded with Leo Marmol in 1989 – he’s had a hand in delivering countless contemporary residences celebrated for their rigour and reverence for craft. The studio has also restored several modernist Californian masterpieces, including Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann, Brown and Lew Houses.

“I choose a few things to explore thoroughly and it’s about being really direct and simple with it.”

Mandeville Canyon, where Radziner has lived with his wife, graphic designer Robin Cottle, and their two children since 2016, is the third house he has designed for his family; their previous two homes were in the nearby Venice neighbourhood, where they lived for 15 years. “I’m very lucky because I’m able to explore so much with my clients’ homes, but when I do it for myself it’s more reductive,” he says. “I choose a few things to explore thoroughly and it’s about being really direct and simple with it.”

This rationale meant crafting Mandeville Canyon as a home that sat in nature “in the purest way possible”. Between a canyon road and a hillside in the Santa Monica Mountains, the tree-filled site is populated by mature oaks and sycamores and Radziner designed the two-storey home to yield to these surroundings. “My goal was to somehow weave the house between the trees,” he says. The stacked, rectangular forms realised in handmade Danish bricks and dark, patinated zinc panels, thread through the site, following the tempo set out by the landscape and simultaneously championing it. The structure also sits about half a metre off grade, giving the home a certain lightness of form and lessening its impact on the earth.

Between a canyon road and a hillside in the Santa Monica Mountains, the tree-filled site is populated by mature oaks and sycamores and Radziner designed the two-storey home to yield to these surroundings.

The design process is ultimately a rumination on practicalities and requisites, and Radziner and Cottle have developed an effortless dialogue on the subject. “It starts by talking about what spaces we want and what parts of the site we want to interact with, and what adjacencies we want from those spaces,” says Radziner.

“Then Robin really gives me room to develop the architecture and the massing.” It’s a privilege not lost on the architect, who energetically recounts this undertaking. He sees “designing a house as an opportunity to make a big sculpture that I get to walk in, pass through and, in this case, live in – and it gives me joy to do that”.

Though the house and pool could both be considered dominant, geometric forms, the verdant landscaping comes to the fore.

Though the house and pool could both be considered dominant, geometric forms, the verdant landscaping comes to the fore. “I like the wildness and I’m never bored by it. I always feel best when I’ve designed a home that I can imagine as a ruin completely covered in landscape, because hopefully that’s what will eventually happen to it.” He quips that the green roof gives Mandeville Canyon a ‘head start’ in this pursuit and it’s certainly going this way; in the years since its completion, the dwelling has melded with the landscape, the distinction between the two progressively blurring as shrubs, grasses and California natives grow freely around the architecture, engulfing it in places and softening its edges in others.

This discourse also guided Radziner’s approach to the interiors, where rationalised forms and dark materials redirect the experience to the outdoors, and large windows frame the ever-changing canopy. Fumed oak floors and ceilings set the mood alongside dark plaster finishes, and Danish bricks reappear within, bringing texture and gravitas.

Custom pieces in a palette of smoked oak, walnut and natural and patinated bronze crafted by Marmol Radziner’s wood and metal workshops are scattered through the space, alongside the family’s collection of art and vintage furniture.

The primary ensuite, which features a lighter plaster finish and earthy natural stone, is Radziner’s favourite space, not least for the sunken tub that seems to hover in the sycamore branches like a protected nest.

The primary ensuite, which features a lighter plaster finish and earthy natural stone, is Radziner’s favourite space, not least for the sunken tub that seems to hover in the sycamore branches like a protected nest.

This project is a product of its inhabitants’ preferences and patterns of living. Radziner likens it to a physical expression of their thoughts on home; however, the couple’s adult children have flown the proverbial coop, stirring a potential shift. He admits he’d be content living at Mandeville Canyon forever – it’s a guaranteed front-row seat to the home’s continued rapport with the garden – but he catches himself on a thought. “Moving on to someplace else, well,” he pauses, realising the silver lining, “it’d be an opportunity to design something new.”

Architecture, interior design, build and landscape design by Marmol Radziner. Artwork by Sam Durant, Julian Hoeber, Tony Lewis, Sterling Ruby and Caroline Walker.