A Small Revival of Tradition

Searching for a suitable style for his own home, architect Murray Siegel felt the tug of traditional Japanese design. The result, called Oakshadows, would not be inappropriate in Kyoto or as a setting for a Kabuki play.

Lifted above an active stream bed on a small forest of treated cedar poles, the Encino dwelling is a series of spacious pavilions on the lower slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains.

“Japanese houses seem so serene, so assured in their identity,” Siegel observed, explaining his stylistic choice. “In their calm proportions, feeling for the landscape and sensitive use of natural materials, they seem to derive from a long tradition of human shelter rooted in a deep feeling for what a house is all about.

“Our own traditions of house design are much more varied, but also less deeply rooted,” he continued. “They don’t give you that same profound sense of being truly ‘at home.’ ”

The house Siegel now occupies with his wife, Dolly, typifies a new revival trend in Southern California’s high-end custom housing market. Moving beyond the popular Post-Modern style that has dominated house design for a decade, a small but growing number of architects are taking their cues from traditional styles, particularly Japanese and Spanish Revival.

Post-Modernism is the label given to tradition-inspired design that challenged the long post-World War II rule of anti-historical Modernism in the late 1970s. But, while most Post-Modern designers regard architectural history as a museum of cliches to be mixed and matched, adapted or updated at the whim of the architect, the historic revivalist insists on a faithful recreation of the original model.

Parody of the Past

“The typical pastiche Post-Modern house features a few copycat mannerisms--maybe a streamlined Doric column or two--in an attempt to conjure history and all its cultural and social resonances,” said New York architect Robert M. Stern, a leader of the historic revival movement. “Such dwellings merely parody the past and fail to capture any true sense of period, or the feeling of shelter inherent in the original style.”

In his 1988 book “Modern Classicism,” Stern writes that historic architecture provides us with “the shock of the old” and characterizes its appeal as “a conversation between an idealized ancient world and an evolving present.”

Prominent architects who have turned in recent years from the kind of “pastiche” described by Stern to true historic models for house design include several leaders of the Post-Modern movement.

“In my hopefully now mature years I’m quite happy to exactly repeat my favorite kind of architecture, the traditional Southland Spanish Revival style,” said California’s Charles Moore. “Why streamline, Post-Modernize or in any way update perfection?”

A recent Moore project in Malibu’s Point Dume area, for example, is an Andalusian-style hacienda dramatically poised on the edge of seafront cliffs. Designed in collaboration with Moore’s Santa Monica-based partners Buzz Yudell and John Ruble, the villa has steep red Roman tile roofs, pink stucco colonnades and strong parapet walls rising from the bluff.

Airy Ambiance

The interior is pure Spanish. Terra cotta tile floors, stucco walls, arcaded windows and natural fir open roof timbers provide an airy ambiance clean as a wave-whitened bone.

“We looked through a lot of old books on Spanish houses, built in Andalusia and in Southern California,” explained the owner, who asked not to be named. “The style seemed so fitting for this landscape, and somehow at peace with the past. We feel we can live with it forever.”

Moore thinks the Malibu house could have been “even more traditionally romantic. My younger partners favor a Cubist-inspired severity of detailing. I went along with their instincts in this to some extent. Left alone, I would have had a richer hand in all the finishes, just as the old Spanish Revival designers did.”

Describing the attractions of historic revival house design in a contemporary context, Moore said that “the constantly changing modern world, exciting though it is, offers little comfort to the soul, and few real clues to deep shelter from its incessant turbulence. When people conjure up the concept of ‘home,’ they have to reach back into the past to find real images of domestic refuge. And if you’re reaching back, why meddle with the model? Why not be faithful all the way?”

Traditional Spanish Revival and Japanese styles have long influenced domestic architecture in Southern California.

The Spanish Colonial Revival mode, popular in the early part of this century, evolved out of the earlier Mission Revival manner. It was motivated by the myth of Southern California as a romantic “Ramonaland,” a term inspired by Helen Hunt Jackson’s popular novel “Ramona.” In domestic design Spanish Revival reached its true magnificence in the Santa Barbara villas, such as the Southland-Andalusian Steedman House in Montecito, dreamed up by George Washington Smith.

Japanese Influence

Japanese tradition influenced America’s early Modernist architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed Tokyo’s famous Imperial Hotel, completed in 1922. Perhaps the most subtle Japanese influence on Southern California domestic design can be seen in the way garden vistas flow seamlessly out of interior living spaces.

Historic revival architecture that passes beyond pastiche and remains true to its details does not come cheap. And its character may not suit many typical American families.

To find the 70 special cedar poles he needed to build “Oakshadows,” Siegel had to search the length of California. Poles suitable for construction were finally located near the Oregon border and had to be trucked south on logging rigs that were “painfully maneuvered onto our narrow Encino side street,” the architect remembered.

Siegel’s problems did not end there. “I couldn’t find craftsmen who knew how to work the poles,” he said. “How to line them up properly on plan, how to form the foundations so the timber would not rot. No wonder my house cost more to build and took twice as long to complete as a normal bungalow.”

Classical Japanese domestic design, Siegel observed, implies a way of life that is seldom apt for the typical suburban family with children.

“My previous house in Sherman Oaks was a straightforward suburban bungalow, relaxed, spacious and noisy,” he said. “I guess we had to wait for our two kids to grow up and leave the nest before our mature life style could match some of the serene formality a traditional Japanese design imposes.”