Oct. 21 (UPI) — President Donald Trump accepted the Architect of Peace Award from the Richard Nixon Foundation during a closed ceremony at the White House on Tuesday morning.
Trump earned the award due to his central role in negotiating the current cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel to end the unchecked war in Gaza that began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, CBS News reported.
Award presenters included former President Richard Nixon’s daughter, Tricia Nixon Cox, former national security adviser Robert O’Brien and acting U.S. archivist Jim Byron, CBS News reported.
Trump had argued he deserved to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for securing a cease-fire in Gaza and ending other wars.
Among wars that Trump has said he ended are those between Cambodia and Thailand, the Congo and Rwanda, Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Serbia and Kosovo, the president told the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 24.
The Nobel Peace Prize went to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who opposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in that nation’s 2024 presidential election, which exit polling suggests Machado won despite Maduro’s victory claim.
The Architect of Peace award is not given annually but instead when foundation representatives decide one has been earned by those who “embody [Nixon’s] lifelong goal of shaping a more peaceful world,” according to the Architect of Peace Award website.
The award last year honored former President George W. Bush, Farah Pahlavi and Reza Pahlavi.
Sept. 24 (UPI) — Well-known Chinese architect Kongjian Yu died with three others after a plane crash in the Brazilian wilderness.
Yu, 62, was reportedly killed along with three other passengers Tuesday afternoon after their plane crashed in near Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state in the lush Pantanal wetlands near the borders of neighboring Bolivia and Paraguay, according to The Guardian and The New York Times.
The crash of the small four-seater single-engine Cessna killed its pilot and the two Brazilian filmmakers traveling with Yu, Luiz Ferraz and Rubens Crispim Junior, after the plane spiraled after an aborted landing attempt.
Yu and the film crew were on the way to a ranch while shooting a documentary on Yu’s globally-renowned architectural work.
The film styled as Planeta Esponja, or Planet Sponge in English, was to highlight the Peking University professor’s groundbreaking theories on his “sponge city” concept and work on how cities around the world can best cope with flooding and other extreme weather-related events due to widening effects of climate change.
Chinese government data suggested in 2012 that roughly 40% of China’s rivers were seriously polluted and unfit for drinking.
Yu deployed ancient Chinese water system methods to reimagine urban planing and water conservation in hundreds of cities across China as part of the Communist nation’s rapid urban industrialization across its vast national landscape.
He recently took part at an architecture and urbanism conference in Brasilia to speak on “sponge city” planning where he later told cities must “remain water, slow down water,” and “embrace water.”
“It’s important to make friends with water,” the late Yu previously said.
James E. Silcott, a trailblazing Los Angeles architect who, thanks to many gifts to his alma mater, Howard University, became the most generous benefactor to architecture students at historically Black colleges in the U.S., died July 17 in Washington, D.C. He was 95.
Silcott’s memorial service took place on Saturday at Howard; he will be laid to rest in L.A.’s Inglewood Park Cemetery on Sept. 6.
Silcott, who started in Los Angeles working for Gruen Associates alongside colleagues like Frank Gehry, made history as the first Black project architect for both Los Angeles County and UCLA. His successful legal battles with the county — he alleged that he had been unfairly terminated because of his race, and was later a victim of retribution for his lawsuit — shined a light on the entrenched barriers Black professionals faced in public institutions at the time.
Born Dec. 21, 1929, in Boston, to parents from the Caribbean island of Montserrat, Silcott grew up in the city’s Roxbury neighborhood during a time of limited opportunities for young Black people. Living in tenements and walk-ups, and making friends of all races and ethnicities, he learned self-reliance, resilience and cultural fluency, as he recounted in a 2007 oral history for Northeastern University’s Lower Roxbury Black History Project. After graduating high school, he worked as a hotel cook alongside his father. “I didn’t know what I wanted,” he said. But an aptitude test at a local YMCA pointed him toward architecture. After being rejected from several architecture schools, he received a lifeline via Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Silcott entered Howard — its architecture program was the first at a historically Black college to receive accreditation — in 1949. He came under the mentorship of Howard H. Mackey Sr., one of the most prominent Black architects and educators of the 20th century, known for instilling a sense of architecture’s civic purpose. Silcott’s studies were interrupted by three years in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, where he rose to the rank of sergeant. Returning to Howard, he earned his 5-year bachelor of architecture degree in 1957.
Those years were marked by constant financial strain — often forcing him, as he put it, to decide “whether to buy books or buy food” — an experience that would later drive him, as a donor to Howard, to ensure that future students wouldn’t face that choice. He would never forget the role Howard played for him.
“He felt like when nobody else would take him, Howard took him,” said his niece Julie Roberts. “He really credits them for laying the groundwork and setting the path and changing the trajectory of his life.”
Silcott began his career working for architect Arthur Cohen in Boston before moving to Los Angeles — he always hated the cold, said his friends and family — in 1958. Joining Gruen Associates, one of the era’s most influential firms, he, among other efforts, collaborated with Frank Gehry on the design of the Winrock Shopping Center in Albuquerque. He would soon work at UCLA’s architectural and engineering office, becoming the school’s first Black project lead on buildings like the UCLA Boathouse (1965), with its light-filled, maritime-inspired form — including porthole windows and an upper story deck for viewing races. Also at UCLA he collaborated with Welton Becket and Associates on the Jules Stein Eye Institute (1966), with its clean-lined facade of pale stone columns and glass walls that opened to natural light while maintaining shade and privacy.
He later joined Los Angeles County’s Department of Facilities Management, where he would become a senior architect and help oversee projects like the Inglewood Courts Building (1973, another collaboration with Becket) and Los Angeles County Southeast General Hospital (1971), eventually renamed Martin Luther King Jr. General Hospital. As the only Black architect working in the county, Silcott’s good friend (and fellow Howard architecture graduate) Melvin Mitchell said he was not always welcome. “None of those men could ever imagine someone of Silcott’s race or color wielding that kind of power, despite the phony smiles and benign language used,” Mitchell said in his eulogy at Howard.
At the end of the decade Silcott was demoted and later laid off during budget cuts — a move he contended was racially motivated. The county’s Civil Service Commission eventually agreed, ruling in 1984 that he had been improperly terminated in order to preserve the jobs of white employees with less seniority, and ordering that he be reinstated with full back pay. “I had to fight for my job just to make sure the rules were applied fairly,” Silcott told the Los Angeles Times.
Chief County Engineer Stephen J. Koonce, left, gestured as he discussed with James Silcott the details of the architect’s return to work, on March 15, 1984.
(Steve Fontanini / Los Angeles Times)
But the reinstatement was short-lived: within months, Silcott alleged that the county had retaliated by stripping away meaningful duties, among other retributions. “They had him working in a closet at one time,” said Roberts. Later that year, the Board of Supervisors approved a roughly $1 million settlement offer to resolve his federal discrimination lawsuit. The Times noted that his case had “become a rallying point” for those seeking greater equity in public employment. As Silcott later reflected, “This was never just about me. It was about making sure the next Black architect who comes along doesn’t have to fight the same battles.”
Silcott would later work as an architectural consultant to public agencies and universities while serving on several public boards, including the South Los Angeles Area Planning Commission, the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission, the Los Angeles Board of Zoning Appeals and the California State Board of Architectural Examiners.
He built a stylish home in Windsor Hills, where he would regularly host family, not to mention mayors, council members, and, later, former President Obama, said Mitchell.
“He was always there to help. For advice, support, anything. Without hesitation he’d say, ‘I’ll do it.’ He just had that generous spirit.”
— Gail Kennard
In 1995 — retired as an architect — he took on minority ownership and a board seat at Kennard Design Group, one of the largest Black-owned architecture firms in the country, following the death of its founder (and Silcott’s good friend) Robert Kennard. “He didn’t hesitate,” said Gail Kennard, Robert’s daughter, who still leads the firm, and wanted to ensure the company’s stability at a difficult time. “He was always there to help. For advice, support, anything. Without hesitation he’d say, ‘I’ll do it.’ He just had that generous spirit.”
But Silcott’s greatest love, noted Kennard, was Howard — particularly its Department of Architecture — where he would go on to become a historically prolific philanthropist, and help mentor generations of aspiring architects.
“He would tell me stories about people who were coming up in the profession,” said Kennard. “He’d say, I found this new student and he or she’s my new project.”
Silcott’s ability to support the school financially grew out of skillful real estate investments, which began with a few buildings in Boston that he inherited from his mother. He managed and expanded numerous properties both in Boston and Los Angeles.
In 1991 he helped establish the James E. Silcott Fund, now valued at $250,000, offering emergency aid to Howard architecture students in financial distress. In 2002, he established the James E. Silcott Endowed Chair with an initial $1 million, bringing architects like Sir David Adjaye, Philip Freelon, Jack Travis and Roberta Washington to teach and mentor at Howard. And with a $1 million gift he funded the T. George Silcott Gallery, named for his late brother, providing a venue for exhibitions, critiques and public lectures. Silcott also made unrestricted contributions of hundreds of thousands more to Howard’s Department of Architecture, supporting scholarships, travel fellowships and capital improvements. By the end of his life, his contributions to Howard exceeded $3 million, making him, according to the school, the largest individual donor to architecture programs at historically Black colleges and universities in the country.
“Howard and its school of architecture was at the very center of his life,” said Mitchell, who noted Silcott’s gifts also helped keep the school afloat during difficult periods.
Silcott received the Howard University Alumni Achievement Award, the Centennial Professional Excellence Award and the Howard H. Mackey Dean’s Medal, named after his mentor. He also received the Kresge/Coca-Cola Award for philanthropy to HBCUs. In 2020, he was elevated to the AIA College of Fellows.
After a stroke in 2020, Silcott moved to Washington, D.C., to be under family care. He was placed in hospice in 2022, and put on a feeding tube, but lived three more years against the odds, noted Roberts, one of seven close nieces and nephews who called him “Uncle James.”
“He would not acknowledge that he wasn’t going to live forever,” said Roberts. Silcott remained engaged with Howard until his death.
On a wide, empty stretch of Venice Beach in 1980, seven Los Angeles architects — Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Eric Owen Moss, Coy Howard, Craig Hodgetts, Robert Mangurian and Frederick Fisher — gathered for a group portrait by photographer Ave Pildas. Clad in mismatched outfits and standing casually in the sand, they looked more like a rumpled rock band than the future of American architecture.
The resulting image, published in Interiors magazine, distilled a seismic moment in L.A.’s creative history. Those seven, gazing in their own directions yet joined in a sense of mischievous rebellion and cocky exuberance, represented a new generation that was bringing a brash, loose creativity to their work and starting to distance itself from the buttoned-up codes and expectations of the architecture establishment.
Each would go on to have a successful career, from Pritzker Architecture Prize winners to directors of architecture schools. And they and their compatriots would, for a while at least, help put a rapidly changing L.A. at the center of the built culture.
“That one photograph contains a whole world,” notes filmmaker Russell Brown, who recently directed a 12-part documentary series about that Venice architecture scene. “There was risk going on, and freedom; it was all about ideas.”
“It’s become a kind of reference point,” adds architectural journalist Frances Anderton, host of the series. “It just keeps reappearing whenever there’s a conversation about that period.”
The 1980 image is the jumping-off point for “Rebel Architects: From Venice to the World Stage,” produced by Brown’s nonprofit, Friends of Residential Treasures: Los Angeles. Four of the architects — now in their 70s and 80s — gathered for a (far less brash) new photo and an honest conversation about their early careers in L.A., and what’s transpired since for the series, which began streaming monthly on FORT: LA’s website July 1.
A native Angeleno with a background in feature and documentary filmmaking, Brown conceived of the concept after a chat with architect Robert Thibodeau, co-founder of Venice-based DU Architects. After a deeper dive into the image with Anderton, the idea for a reunion was born.
“We thought, why don’t we restage the photo and then use that as an excuse to get the guys together?” Brown explains.
He preferred a spontaneous, lighthearted group discussion to the typical documentary, with its one-on-one interviews and heavy production.
Frances Anderton, from left, Frederick Fisher, Craig Hodgetts, Thom Mayne and Eric Owen Moss catch up for “Rebel Architects,” a 12-part series.
(FORT: LA)
“It’s about the chemistry between creative peers,” says Brown. “The real legacy of these architects isn’t just in the buildings. It’s in the conversations they started — and are still having.” He added: “There’s a spark that happens when they’re together … They talk about failure, competition, teaching, aging. It’s a very human exchange.”
Episode 1, titled “Capturing a Moment in L.A. Architecture,” opens with four of the surviving architects — Fisher, Mayne, Moss and Hodgetts — recreating that seminal photograph for Pildas and sitting down for an interview. (Howard was interviewed separately, Gehry declined and Mangurian died in 2023.) The group dissects the photo’s cinematic, informal composition, in which Pildas aims down from a berm, the neglected buildings behind the eclectic crew shrinking into the horizon, merging with the sand. And they remember a time in which the city’s messy urban forms and perceived cultural inferiority provided endless creative fuel, and liberation.
Pildas recalls how the original shoot came together at the request of British design editor Beverly Russell, who was looking to capture “Frank Gehry and some of his Turks.” (The international design press was gaga for L.A. at the time. Anderton notes that her move from the U.K. resulted from a similar assignment, on the “subversive architects of the West Coast,” for the publication Architectural Review in 1987.)
At the time, most of the architects were working in garages and warehouses, forming their studios and collaborating with equally norm-busting and (relatively) unheralded artists in the scrappy, dangerous, forgotten, yet exploding Venice scene. In a later episode, the architects start listing the art talents they would run into, or befriend, including Larry Bell, James Turrell, Ed Ruscha, Fred Eversley, Robert Irwin, Robert Rauschenberg and Jean-Michel Basquiat, to name a few.
Basquiat was then living and working in Hodgetts’ building. “It was a spectacular fusion of all this creative energy,” Hodgetts remembers. “There was no audience, there were no guardrails, and one did not feel constrained.” He adds, later: “We all felt like we were marooned on a desert island.”
Pildas, who had studied architecture before switching to design and, eventually, photography, was uniquely suited to capture the group. He had shot some of the small, quirky experiments of Mangurian and Mayne, and knew most of the others through social and professional circles. (He even knew Hodgetts from high school back in Cincinnati.)
The first attempt at the photo seemed stiff, says Pildas, so he took out a joint, which all except Hodgetts accepted, he says. The icebreaker worked. In a later image, says Pildas, Fisher is hugging Gehry’s leg, the others huddled around. “It got pretty friendly in the end,” he jokes.
Pildas argues that the photo is much more layered with meaning (not to mention nostalgia) now than it was at the time. “Back then, it was just another magazine shoot. Now, it’s history,” he says. Adds Moss: “Its relevancy, or not, is confirmed by the following years. Otherwise it’s gone.”
Frederick Fisher, from left, Thom Mayne, Craig Hodgetts and Eric Owen Moss recreate their famous 1980 photo.
(Ave Pildas)
Each episode explores the image’s layers, and the unfolding stories that followed — the challenges of maintaining originality; crucial role of journalists in promoting their work; maddening disconnect between L.A.’s talent and its clients, along with the mercurial, ever-evolving identity of Los Angeles. The tone, like the photo, is unpretentious and playful, heavy on character and story, not theory. This was not always an easy task with a group that can get esoteric quite quickly, adds Anderton. “I was trying to keep it light,” she laughs. “I don’t think I even have the ability to talk in the language of the academy.”
“They’re cracking jokes, interrupting each other, reminiscing about teaching gigs and design arguments,” says Brown. “There’s real affection, but also a sense of rivalry that never fully went away.” Hodgetts doesn’t see it that way, however. “It was really about the joy of creating things. We wanted to jam a bit, perform together; that’s really life-affirming,” he says.
There are some revealing moments. Mayne, whose firm Morphosis is known for bold, city-altering buildings such as Caltrans HQ in downtown L.A., reflects on teaching as a way of “being the father I never had.” (His father left his family when he was a young boy.) He tenderly discusses the seminal role that his wife Blythe — a co-owner of Morphosis — has played in his career. Fisher reveals that Gehry was the chief reason he dropped everything to come out to L.A. (At the time, he was working as a display designer at a department store in Cincinnati.) “I remember seeing this architect jumping up and down on cardboard furniture. I could see there was something going on here. Something percolating,” he says. Moss opens up about his struggles to negotiate the demands of the practical world, while Hodgetts performs brilliant critiques of the others’ work, sometimes to broad smiles, others to cringes.
Notably absent from the reunion is Gehry himself, who is now 96. “He’s at a point in his life where trudging through sand for a photo wasn’t going to happen,” says Brown. “But his presence is everywhere. He’s still the elephant in the room.”
One episode explores how Gehry, about a decade older than the others, both profoundly influenced and often overshadowed the group — a reality that was perhaps reinforced by his nonchalant dominance in the photo itself. “Frank takes up a lot of oxygen,” Mayne quips. Still, all admire Gehry’s unwillingness to compromise creatively, despite often heavy criticism.
Another prevailing theme is the bittersweet loss of that early sense of freedom, and the Venice of the 1970s, with its breathtakingly low rents and abandoned charm. Today’s architects — wherever they are — face higher stakes, infinitely higher costs and tighter regulations.
“The Venice we grew up with is completely gone,” says Fisher. “But maybe it’s just moved,” noted Moss. Distinguishing L.A. as a place whose energy and attention is constantly shifting, he wonders if creative ferment might now be happening in faraway places like Tehachapi — “wherever land is cheap and ambition is high,” he says.
While Pildas was capturing the seven architects 45 years ago, he was also busy chronicling the city’s street culture — jazz clubs, boulevard eccentrics, decaying movie palaces and bohemian artists. All were featured in the 2023 documentary “Ave’s America” (streaming on Prime Video) directed by his former student, Patrick Taulère, exploring his six decades of humbly perceptive, deeply human work.
After reviewing the recreation of the photo — the architects are still smiling this time, but their scrappy overconfidence feels eons away — Pildas wonders who the next generation will be, and how they will rise.
“Maybe it’ll happen that they’ll have another picture someday with a bunch of new architects, right?” he says. “This is a fertile ground for architecture anyway, and always has been.”
Exposing that “fertile ground” to Angelenos of all kinds is FORT: LA’s overarching goal. Founded in 2020, it offers architecture trails, fellowships and a surprising variety of programming, from design competitions to architecture-themed wine tastings. All, says Brown, is delivered, like “Rebel Architects,” with a sense of accessible joy and exploration — an especially useful gift in a turbulent, insecure time for the city.
“Suddenly, you kind of think about the city in a different way and feel it in a different way,” says Brown. “This is a place that allows this kind of vision to come to life.”
Lindsay and Daniel Sheron dreamed of buying a home of their own. But in Los Angeles, where housing is expensive and in short supply — the median home price is roughly $1 million, according to Zillow — purchasing a home can be difficult for first-time homebuyers with limited equity.
So after many years of renting various homes, including a Craftsman house in Portland and, most recently, a small bungalow in Eagle Rock, the Sherons, who are both 36, reached a tipping point while searching for a house in northeast Los Angeles. They quickly realized that they couldn’t afford to live in their neighborhood.
“We weathered the pandemic in a 900-square-foot bungalow in Eagle Rock,” Lindsay, who is an architect, recalls of the house, which their landlords had listed for $900,000 before they decided to rent it out. “I thought, ‘If that’s what $900,000 gets you in Los Angeles, why don’t we look at land and see about designing and building our own house?” she adds. “Maybe we can gain more value that way.” (The bungalow sold for $1.3 million after they moved out.)
Daniel and Lindsay Sheron in the living room of their home. “We would have never been able to afford an 1,800-square-foot house,” says Lindsay.
Using Zillow, the couple scouted several hillside lots and eventually purchased a 4,300-square-foot hillside property in 2021 for $212,000. Located at the top of a small ridge at the end of a cul-de-sac in Mount Washington, the north-facing lot was on a buildable slope with lovely views of the San Gabriel Mountains. More importantly, the vacant lot had access to utilities such as electricity, gas and water, including a sewer manhole at the bottom of the property. There are many lots for sale, Lindsay notes, but many of them don’t have access or utilities.
With their entire savings invested in the land, the Sherons took a cost-saving, hands-on approach to the next step: construction. In addition to Lindsay’s design services as an architect, they decided to serve as general contractors and subcontract the major trades, including the concrete foundation, tile, framing, exterior siding and hardwood floors.
Although the architect was thrilled at the prospect of designing her own home, she had never built one before — or bought one, for that matter — which perhaps is why she could ponder the formidable tasks of securing a construction loan, deciphering Urban Forestry and municipal building codes in a neighborhood with strict development regulations, permitting the house (which took seven months with the help of an expediter) and deciphering new development fees linked to affordable housing. “Every step of approval is not straightforward,” Lindsay says. “We were on our own for all of the inspections.”
“I wanted the house to be warm,” Lindsay Sheron says of the Western hemlock paneling and House of Leon dining room table that serves as the hub of the house.
“It only worked because Lindsay knew how to do it,” says Daniel, who is a musician and, by his admission, had never used a nail gun before tackling their 1800-square-foot home project. “Because she has a background in construction administration on huge commercial projects, she had the answers when a concrete contractor had questions about what PSI [pounds per square inch] concrete to pour.”
From the outset, nature was a priority for the architect, who, like Norman Jaffe and Joseph Esherick and William Turnbull, Jr. of Sea Ranch fame, was concerned with the relationship between architecture and landscape.
Mindful of her neighbors, Lindsay devised a plan for a modern three-bedroom house that did not overwhelm the cul-de-sac: a two-story house that steps down the hill and is complemented by a pitched roof that soars parallel to the natural slope of the hillside.
Lindsay Sheron was initially nervous about designing a single-wall kitchen, but so far “there have been no issues,” she says.
“I designed the house to descend into the hill rather than being perched on top of the street,” she says. “That would have felt invasive. I wanted to bring nature in and blend into the hill as much as possible, even in an urban setting.”
The effect, Daniel says, is a sense of wonder: “It feels like you’re living inside the hill.”
Working together, the couple completed a significant portion of the work themselves, including the interior trim, and Lindsay even built a bench that doubles as the HVAC register. They also undertook extensive waterproofing on the exterior of the house and around all of the doors and windows, dug a trench for their water line and spent most weekends filling in the gaps where labor was lacking. When Tropical Storm Hilary marched through Southern California in August 2023, they crawled on top the house and frantically covered the framing with 100-foot-long tarps.
“That was stressful,” Lindsay says with a sigh. “If we had a crew, we could have asked them to help.”
Daniel Sheron waterproofs the exterior of the house above the living room.
(Lindsay Sheron)
Daniel Sheron and a friend install interior Hemlock paneling, above. Lindsay Sheron waterproofs windows in 2023, below. (Photos from Lindsay Sheron)
There were other unexpected fees. When all was said and done, the couple paid the city more than $80,000, with some fees meant to stymie new home development , even as there were discounts for accessory dwelling units, or ADUs. If they had added an ADU, the calculation for one fee would have been $1.08 per square foot rather than $8.30 per square foot, they later learned. “If I had known the difference would have been $2,000 versus $23,000, I might had added an ADU,” Lindsay says now of the attached studio they installed at the front of the house alongside the carport.
Similarly, when they went to obtain their Certificate of Occupancy last December, they learned they owed a parks and recreation mitigation fee — a payment that would go toward “improving park and recreational facilities for new residents,” according to the city website. “We were tapped out at that point,” Daniel says. “We had to pay $8,000 or they wouldn’t issue us the certificate.” They put it on a credit card.
Three years and more than a few hassles later, the couple has a finished home that is a testament to their perseverance. Walk past the carport, which was influenced by Buff, Straub & Hensman’s historic Poppy Peak neighborhood in Pasadena, and a path gently curves around the side of the house to the front door, which opens to a central stairway with breathtaking views that connects the upper and lower levels. Two bedrooms are located on the top floor, while the stairway descends to the living room, dining area and kitchen, all of which are designed to be loftlike, creating an open floor plan bathed with natural light.
The primary bedroom on the ground floor.
“We say this is a house with no hallways,” Lindsay says of her efficient space planning. “You circulate in a connected space. The stairs are connected to the space; the hallway to the bedrooms is connected.”
The larger living areas are neutral, with warm oak floors and exposed Douglas fir beams that are accented with bold moments. The kitchen is a standout, featuring bright green custom kitchen cabinets painted “Raw Tomatillo” by Farrow & Ball, which add vitality to the single-wall layout. A custom metal hood by Practice Fabrication, powder-coated the color of a Pixie tangerine, adds a sense of fun.
“I wanted our house to feel really warm and bring nature inside,” says Lindsay, referring to the Western hemlock tongue and groove planks that she and Daniel installed on the walls and ceilings. “Wood does the heavy lifting in accomplishing that.”
Lindsay Sheron wanted the main rooms to be warm and neutral with bold moments of color throughout the house, including the bathrooms and kitchen.
The exterior of the house, which is clad in shou sugi bancharred wood siding from Nakamoto Forestry, was a priority for the architect but a mystery for the subcontractors. “Everyone presumed we were going to add stucco,” she says, “because that’s what everyone else does.”
She created a small mock-up to illustrate the rainscreen infrastructure system, which offers both fireproofing and insulation benefits. “It’s like putting a down jacket on your house,” Lindsay explains. “It’s a sustainable way to build out your exterior, providing more thermal insulation and allowing your siding to dry. It’s not attached to sheeting so it can breathe thanks to an air gap behind it.”
Toward the end of construction, when they could no longer afford their rent, the couple stayed in a friend’s spare room for four months. Then last April, once floors and drywall were installed, they moved into the house and showered at the gym. “We were squatting in our own house,” adds Daniel, who says he listened to island exotica music while working on carpentry projects late at night to help combat the stress. “I’d fill the house with the dulcet tones of Les Baxter,” he says, smiling.
Lindsay Sheron designed the house to step down the hill.
(Dylan Corr)
The home’s exterior before siding in the early months of 2024.
(Lindsay Sheron)
Looking back, the couple says the most challenging part of the process was that everything started and stopped with them. “We did not have a third person where we could say, ‘Hey, can you go do this?’” Lindsay says. “So many times I wished we could make a to-do list and give it to someone.”
“There was no one to fill in besides us,” adds Daniel, who is now working as a project manager for a residential contractor in the Pacific Palisades. “When the city wouldn’t approve the permit for their driveway, he drove to Norwalk and consulted property records on microfilm to try to determine the history of the shared driveway.
“We could have written a show about the experience,” Lindsay says, to which her husband responded, “It would be a comedy of errors.”
It also taught them a new level of collaboration.
Lindsay Sheron designed a stylish bench for the entryway that hides the HVAC system.
“We had never collaborated on anything to that extent,” says Lindsay. “I’m an architect. He’s a musician. We’re very different, but I relied on him a lot. He was freelance and could be at the house a lot more while I worked full time, so he would call me with questions or he would send me a picture and I would sketch on top of the photo.”
“I gained a deeper appreciation for Lindsay’s iterative approach,” Daniel says.
Longtime friend Nicolas Sohl, who attended Middlebury College with Daniel, remembers walking the boundary lines with the couple after they first purchased the land.
“Their love for each other is evident in the attention to detail in the home they chose to build together,” he says. “They saw it as an opportunity not only to advance their careers but create lasting friendships in their neighborhood.”
Inspired by rustic homes that connect to the landscape, such as Sea Ranch along the coast of Sonoma County, Lindsay Sheron used shou sugi ban charred wood siding from Nakamoto Forestry.
Though their goal was to build the home for under $1 million, in the end, they borrowed a little over that amount. Even so, they estimate they built their house for approximately 45% less than what a similar home would cost. They have seen three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom homes on comparable lots in their neighborhood sell for around $2 million.
On New Year’s Eve, the couple put aside their power tools and opened their home to 30 of their friends. Celebratory champagne flowed freely and thanks to the home’s open floor plan, dancing spilled into the kitchen.
Such joyful moments are especially meaningful after three years spent working as general contractors.
“Our friends say we seem way more at ease now,” Lindsay says.
Since finishing their home, the Sherons have opened their door to celebrate with friends.
