As they raised three children in Malibu, Calif., Jennifer Kell and Dominic Surprenant bought, renovated and sold numerous houses, rarely staying in one place for long.
“We were doing a lot of house flipping,” said Ms. Kell, 56, an architect, who noted that she loved the process of renovating homes.
By the 2010s, however, all the construction and moving began to grow old. Finally ready for a home where they could stay put, she and Mr. Surprenant, now a 69-year-old retired lawyer, decided to go all-in on building a house from the ground up.
Of all the neighborhoods in Malibu, their favorite was Point Dume, which juts into the ocean south of the Pacific Coast Highway and has ideal surf spots on its beautiful beaches. “We decided we wanted to be there,” Ms. Kell said.
In 2014, they bought a lot with a house they didn’t love on it for $2.71 million, planning to tear the structure down and replace it with something new.
Even though Ms. Kell is an architect herself, she hired Lake Flato, a firm headquartered in her hometown, San Antonio, to design a new home after admiring its work.
“What Jennifer and Dominic were really interested in was a building that felt like a series of spaces connected through a natural landscape,” said Steve Raike, a partner at Lake Flato. “Even in harsher climates, integrating with nature and allowing the home to connect to nature is a really important element of what we do.”
With Malibu’s temperate weather, there was no need to hold back on making outdoor spaces part of the daily living experience. Lake Flato broke what could have been one big house into a group of smaller structures encompassing 4,930 square feet of living space, all connected with outdoor walkways.
The largest structure is a steel-and-glass pavilion containing the primary living spaces, including a living and dining room, a kitchen, a media room and the primary suite. There is no traditional front door or entrance foyer. Instead, the walls open up with large-scale sliding and pivoting glass doors so people can cross between outdoor and indoor spaces almost anywhere they please.
The closest semblance to a front door is an outdoor gate leading from the street into a courtyard. Three smaller stucco buildings surrounding the courtyard, which has an outdoor kitchen, dining space and pool, provide other functions. There are three self-contained guest suites that can be used by the couple’s adult children when they return home, and a storage building for sports equipment, including surfboards, paddleboards and bikes.
“Residential design can be very formulaic,” Ms. Kell said, and people often feel like they need to stick to norms, such as putting all the bedrooms together. “But I like being open to changing some of that up.”
Because the family engages in many outdoor activities together, they also built a tennis court beyond the pool and a lawn on the other side of the primary structure as a place for playing games.
Ms. Kell took the lead on designing the interiors. In the primary structure, ceilings lined in Douglas fir and floors of white oak add visual warmth to the white shell. Ms. Kell added more color with furniture and accessories — like red dining chairs from B&B Italia and woven Mexican blankets — as well as with an extensive art collection.
Concerned that a glass house wouldn’t have enough wall space, she instructed Lake Flato to add a few solid walls inside for mounting art, such as a large-scale, multipanel painting by Yvette Molina that now hangs by the dining table.
Ms. Kell and Mr. Surprenant mulled over design details and faced permitting and weather-related delays. Construction began in late 2019, and the family moved in at the end of December 2021. The total construction cost was about $1,200 per square foot.
The home is designed to be resistant to both earthquakes and wildfires. Ms. Kell also worked with the landscape designer Kathleen Ferguson to create a fire-resistant yard, including sparse plantings interspersed with gravel.
Nevertheless, the Palisades Fire this year unnerved Ms. Kell and Mr. Surprenant. They briefly listed the home for sale before deciding to stay put and pulling the house off the market.
After living in so many different places, they didn’t want to give up this house so easily. “It’s just a comfortable space,” Ms. Kell said, noting that the deconstructed design of the home provides enough room for the whole family to get together without leaving a feeling of emptiness when just her and Mr. Surprenant are at home.
It’s so perfect, Ms. Kell said, that it makes almost every other home and hotel she visits a little less appealing. “I miss being in my house when I’m away,” she said.
The post After Years of Moving, They Built One Home From Multiple Buildings appeared first on New York Times.
