Opening Up: Architect Alison Wright’s Manhattan Beach sand section home let’s the outside in
The Montgomery Wright Residence, which utilizes a courtyard to help create an indoor-outdoor aesthetic, despite the compact lot sizes of Manhattan Beach’s sand section. Photo by Trevor Pearson
Nothing remains from the original property on 32nd Place in Manhattan Beach where the Montgomery Wright residence now stands save a doorknob and a palm tree.
Architect Alison Wright, who designed the current structure for her family in the early 1990s, recalls the previous home as being “about the size of the current garage” and lacking the indoor-outdoor feeling the site longed for. When she and husband, Dana Montgomery, moved into the former structure with their toddler daughter and newborn son, it quickly became apparent that more space was needed and a simple remodel would not suffice. So, Wright chose to disassemble the old house and build from the ground up. Perhaps professionals like the Custom Home Builder in eugene would be of great help.
Completed in 1995, the Montgomery Wright residence addressed the familiar California modernist conundrum of how to open the house maximally while still maintaining a measure of privacy for its inhabitants. As Wright explains, the compact lot sizes and zoning requirement of mere 3-foot setbacks posed a major challenge.
“You’re basically cohabitating with the neighbors,” she said. “I wanted to find a way to make it a more graceful experience.”
With that in mind, Wright created an L-shaped plan anchored around a large, rectangular courtyard, with the principal living spaces grouped together near the back of the lot. A bamboo wall runs parallel to the forward wing of the house, creating a sort of natural screen and cradling the courtyard, which feels much like an entry vestibule with the entry gate serving as an unofficial front door to the home.
The original property featured a palm tree, which Wright adapted the design of her home’s façade to accommodate, and a eucalyptus tree, which died during the course of construction. Although initially ambivalent about adding bamboo, Wright now acknowledges, “It was the right choice aesthetically.”
One of Wright’s major goals for her residence was to engage with the natural environment in a meaningful way. She wanted to bring the outside in, creating seamless transitions between interior and exterior spaces. To achieve this, Wright opened the home’s interior perimeter towards the courtyard via doors, windows, and terraces, flooding the inside with light and providing a physical and visual link between spaces.
[scrollGallery id=235]Wright’s emphasis on light, air and indoor-outdoor design developed during her training at both the University of Southern California and Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). At USC, Wright studied under iconic midcentury modernist Pierre Koenig, whose Case Study houses provided her with a source of inspiration in terms of their open-air aesthetic.
In addition to literally opening her home to the elements, Wright enhanced the sense of interior-exterior fluidity through subtle visual suggestions by repeating certain forms and materials. The rectangular concrete pavers in the courtyard, for example, echo the interior’s concrete flooring, which Wright selected for its durability and practicality. Although not traditionally associated with domestic settings as a finished material, she said using concrete simply made sense for how she and her family live.
“You can walk straight in from the beach without worrying about cleaning off your feet,” Wright said.
Another unifying visual element is the industrial marine lighting, which Wright favors for the beautiful, propeller-like silhouettes its caged frames cast against the exterior and interior walls of her home. Typically used in nautical scenarios, the marine lights are far removed from their normal context. Wright cites Frank Gehry’s influence in her decision to work with alternative and unexpected construction materials. She also identifies deeply with Gehry’s view that art and architecture are mutually reinforcing. “I always came at it from an art vantage point,” Wright said, referring to her design philosophy.
Her artistic sensibility permeates the residence. A series of built-in niches, or “memory boxes,” rhythmically punctuate the stairwell walls. Wright’s inspiration for the niches came during a visit to the home studio of designers Charles and Ray Eames. The Eames’s interior featured carefully arranged displays of items from their travels, including a collection of Japanese combs that Wright remembers as particularly striking.
For her display niches, Wright selected various objects accumulated over the years, such as tiles from Tanzania and Mexican Dia de los Muertos figurines. Mixed in among these travel memories is something closer to home: a single glass and brass doorknob encased in a small frame. Following the demolition of the old house, Wright had invited neighbors to help themselves to any materials they might want to repurpose. A friend recuperated the doorknob and presented it to Wright as an artwork, making for a very memorable housewarming gift.
“We were completely taken aback since the original house had been gone for a year,” Wright remembered. “It was as if it had materialized out of nowhere!”